Page 36

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

REMI

When I was running regularly, I got up before dawn, but walking down Main Street of Ely’s campus at nightfall is new to me. The cemetery is the only place that sees me after dark.

It’s Thursday night—football night—and the sidewalks are crowded. Students, faculty, alumni, and more in orange and black jerseys, some with their faces painted like tigers and others sporting tiger paw necklaces bigger than their fists.

It’s loud and chaotic, a little chilly too for a September night.

Despite that, cars roll by with their windows down, the bass of different soundtracks colliding in the air.

People whistle and laugh loudly, some clapping and cheering in their three, four, and more person groups as they descend the cobblestone walkways down toward the stadium.

And for once, the sight of all these football fans and the tense energy crackling beneath the stars overhead doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. Because Sloane, Van, Ryann, and I are headed in the opposite direction of the Tiger masses.

The scent of popcorn and cotton candy is thick as I inhale and despite the lies I’m keeping from my best friends, I can sense fall in the air and it makes my heart soar.

Tonight, there’s nothing but water and a double shot of espresso in my system, and for the first time in days, I finally feel happy.

Maybe it’s my cycle, or not talking to Cortland, or hearing Ryann—whom I’ve never hung out with before—giggle as punctuation to all of her sentences as she talks nonstop.

Or maybe it’s just knowing we’re headed to a secret “gem,” as Van called it, that’s part speakeasy, part underground crime meeting place.

Those are, also, Van’s words. He said one of his professors told him the name of the place and he’s been diving into Reddit threads searching more lore ever since.

I avoid Reddit at all costs, so as not to see my own name there, but I’m still happy to be out.

Part of me thinks Cortland gave me this confidence. But the rest of me won’t let him have that.

“Does the mob work here?” Sloane asks as we shift to accommodate a family climbing up the sidewalk to heard toward the stadium. We’re walking downhill, and I like the way I can see everything from this angle.

The mountains jutting star ward ahead. The luxurious red brick buildings surrounding the green quad to my left, the road at my side, and a cathedral owned by Ely across it.

With all the lights on around campus, it’s easy to see the beauty.

And in a group like I’m in now, I’m relaxed enough to appreciate it.

Van has his tattooed arm around Ryann’s shoulders and he twists around to glance at me and Sloane. “Wouldn’t it be mostly moonshiners and gold miners?”

“Neither of those things are illegal,” I point out, arching a brow as I smile at him.

“Moonshine can be,” Sloane counters at my side.

Van is practically walking backwards now, letting Ryann guide him as he stares at me. “See? Always shooting my ideas down but I’m smart.”

“You’re so smart,” Ryann chirps. “The smartest. The most intelligent man in the world. The most, best, absolutely unbelievably smartest person I’ve ever?—”

Van puts his hand over Ryann’s mouth as he turns to faux glare at her. But she twists under his arm and looks up at him, and he can’t stop his laugh.

“Ah, young love,” Sloane says. “They’ll probably have babies together.”

I widen my eyes. “They’ll what now?”

She glances at me as we contort our bodies to dodge another rowdy crowd of Tiger fans.

“You too, Remi. You try to hide it but all that love you bury will burst forth one day and your kids will be spoiled as hell. And I’ll be the cool aunt still because I’ve got a beach house and you…

don’t.” She cracks up and I can’t stop my lips from pulling up into a smile.

“I’ll have a mountain cabin and you won’t be invited if you keep cursing me with babies.” But I don’t mean it. I want them. Because she’s not wrong. I feel too much sometimes. Couldn’t I pour that into someone else?

“Before Remi can have babies, ” my cousin says, apparently ignoring everything else Sloane said, “she’d have to actually get laid.”

Ryann glances over her shoulder at me, her light brown eyes big and round as her lips curve up. “It’s not a bad idea, you know?”

Van groans low in this throat before he jerks his arm tighter around Ryann’s shoulders and I sense Sloane staring at me.

I glance at her and her brows are high, her lips pressed together like she’s trying not to laugh.

For some reason, I don’t blush, and I don’t feel uncomfortable. I just shake my head at Sloane in a don’t ask gesture.

She mimes sealing her lips shut and throwing away the key, then links her arm through mine. A weightlessness seems to fill me at that close gesture, and being out under a fall sky with my friends, Cortland’s whereabouts locked down to a stadium we’re walking away from.

But Sloane glances down at my arm in hers, the smallest furrow to her brow. The lies I’ve told her seem so loud between us, even as neither of us speak a word about it.

The Veil seems haunted. It’s all black and gray colors with orange accents and a smoky haze filling the space.

It’s not open concept, and it looks all the more like an eerie church because of it.

There are sectioned-off rooms with different themes, dark curtains dividing up booths in each one.

It’s unlike any place I’ve been in and with the black marble flooring beneath my boots and an orange velvet booth seat underneath me, it feels like a place I belong.

Part elegance and part horror, and we’re in a room that seems to be reserved for vampires, with blood painted on the tables and a photo of Bela Lugosi in a gilded frame on the wall behind my head.

We’re too many drinks in, an iced water now in front of me at the table after the last shot of tequila I did with the girls. My head feels hazy and The Veil is filling up with more and more people, laughter and squeals going off all around us but we can only partially see who comes in.

“So,” Sloane slurs at my side, one finger pointed at me and another at Ryann and Van, on her other side, “who’s paying tonight?”

I smile at her, the bleariness to her ocean blue eyes. Even half drunk with her hair sticking to her temples and her cheeks flushed, my best friend is gorgeous.

“Van, obviously,” Ryann says, her own eyes bright as she speaks very seriously to Sloane without checking how my cousin takes her words.

His brows are raised and his gaze meets mine, his elbows on the table and head resting against the back of his hands. “Obviously,” he mimics Ryann without looking away from me. Then he nudges his fingers up to run a hand over his shaved head.

I reach for my water, clenching my fingers around the cold glass. “Obviously,” I mouth back as Ryann and Sloane keep laughing together between us.

For a moment, as I bring the water up and drink it, ice hitting my teeth, my cousin just stares at me.

I notice he hasn’t shaved recently and he looks good with a five o’clock shadow.

But he seems to be looking through me, and for one horrifying second, I wonder if he knows about Cortland. What we’re doing, what I’m hiding.

But then he grins at me, dimples popping in his handsome face, and relief spears through me like ice.

I turn my head away to clear my thoughts, and wish I hadn’t.

I see him but I know from this angle, they don’t.

His tall frame is partially obscured by one of the many grey curtains hanging throughout the bar.

There’s a beer in his hand but it’s still full and he doesn’t appear to be fully focused on the guy beside him.

As the guy rambles on, occasionally tapping the back of his hand to Cortland’s chest, my nightmare’s eyes are up, focused on the TV screen mounted discreetly in the wall.

Laughter goes off around me and I’m sure I’m supposed to be in on the joke, but I angle myself back a little on my bench seat and try to get a view of the screen. Is it a game? Highlights from the one he just played? We’ve been here too damn long.

Sloane’s sharp elbow lodges against my ribs and I jerk toward her, trying to clear my expression.

“Take a shot with us!” Ryann is squealing as I settle my body back in gravity and get rid of this falling sensation in my stomach.

But I think I saw what was on the TV.

“Shot, shot, shot!” Van starts his chant and Sloane is divvying up the shots of what looks like tequila newly arrived at the table.

I smile at my cousin, then turn once more to steal a glance at the TV.

My body goes rigid.

It must be the horror room, with Scream posters on the wall.

But it isn’t Ghostface on the screen.

It’s a crown being thrown into water.

Ryan Phillippe diving in to get it.

I Know What You Did Last Summer.

When I look back at Cortland, he isn’t watching the movie anymore, the same one he put on that night everything went to hell after he cleaned me up in his bathroom.

His eyes are on mine.

Slowly, he swallows down his beer, the one he’s barely touched, and he doesn’t look away from me.

“Here ya go, Remi, baby.” Sloane’s singsong voice is right in my ear and I glance down and see the shot glass she’s pushing my way.

I’m tipsy, but I’ve been sipping on water between drinks and I still feel in control. With Cortland eyeing me like he wants to snap my neck but unable to make a scene with all these witnesses, I feel like I have the power. I feel giddy.

His fingers tighten around his glass. I see his knuckles whiten and his biceps flex beneath the deep gray sweater he’s wearing.

“Take it! Take it! Take it!” Van starts another chant and thanks to the strange decor of The Veil, no one can see what I’m staring off at. Since I’m at the end of the table, it probably looks like I’m working up the courage to shoot back the tequila.

Ryann starts clapping and Sloane slurs my name.

Cortland lifts his chin and his eyes narrow.

Then, holding his gaze, I throw the drink back. And when I slam the glass on the table, I reach out and snatch back the curtain, blocking his view of me.

My phone vibrates as I lie in bed with only a slight buzz, Sloane softly snoring in the bed across the room.

I smile as I lift my phone over my head and read the text in the dark.

Cortland

You’re in my head.

My response is fast.

Then get me out.

Cortland

You never leave.

What do you want, Cortland?

Cortland

You’re lucky I didn’t drag you out of that bar, Remi.

Lucky, huh?

Cortland

If I see you drinking without me again, I’ll embarrass you.

You’re embarrassing yourself right now. This stalker shit is kind of pathetic.

Cortland

Don’t talk to me like that pretty baby, or I’ll carve you up myself.

I swallow hard, staring at this words in the dark. And as the buzz fades and I think of Sloane looking at my arm, my stepdad talking to me like I’m a child, and Cortland’s fingers inside me in a cemetery, self-loathing enters my bloodstream.

A few minutes later and I’ve silently hauled the scissors up into my lofted bed and ran the blade over the inside of my wrist too many times, my phone facedown at my side.

But it doesn’t hurt enough, and it doesn’t bleed enough. Swallowing, I drop the scissors, pick up my phone. I ignore Cortland’s texts and open my browser.

It takes me no time to order box cutter blades.

“Do you ever play with knives?”

Thanks for the idea.

Now, I do.

A message comes through, Cortland’s name at the top of my screen.

I roll over onto my side, tugging my covers over my entire body and burrowing down beneath them.

Butterflies flip in my stomach. My arm stings.

“Your skin is too beautiful to carve up.”

I squeeze my eyes shut tight, trying to keep that door to the basement locked.

My screen is bright behind my closed eyes and I open them to see he’s sent another message. I click on our texts and scan them quickly, wondering what he’d think if he could see me now.

Cortland

Text me back.

And don’t you fucking dare hurt yourself.

That’s for me to do, not you.

Remi, I swear to God.

You know we can’t fight this forever.

I laugh alone in the dark.

I can try.