Page 57

CHAPTER

FORTY-ONE

CORTLAND

As I pull away from Remi’s cabin, I turn to Storm, in the front seat with me, Brinklin in the back. “What did you mean, about Chase?” I ask him as we head the mile back to our place. “And how the fuck did you know where we were?”

Storm is drumming his fingers on his thighs, listening to Dermot Kennedy playing through my speakers that Remi insisted on putting on from my new phone when she rode next to me.

He turns to glance at me, his baby blue eyes holding mine a second, the light reflecting off his matching nose ring.

“You’ll see,” he says, ignoring my second question completely.

“Is he there?” I press. “At our rental?” I don’t even know why the fuck he came in the first place, but ever since Maya texted him to meet up with all of us before fall semester started, he’s been on my ass.

I know it probably has little to do with me.

And everything to do with Remi.

I clench my fingers tighter on the steering wheel and think about his arm around her throat.

“Yeah,” Storm answers me, running his hand along his jaw before dropping it and leaning back in his seat.

“And Maya is too,” Brinklin adds from the back.

I nearly slam on the brakes as I meet his gaze in the rear-view mirror. “I beg your fucking pardon?” I ask the two of them as our cabin comes into view, Chase’s red Mercedes taking up most of the goddamn driveway.

I pull off onto the side of the road, letting cars pass if they need to, but I’m not so sure I’m going back inside there. Not if Maya is there.

I undo my seatbelt and twist in my seat, one arm thrown along the back as I look at both Storm and Brinklin. “Why the fuck is she here?”

Storm stares at the log cabin out the window, but he answers first. “Chase invited her.”

My pulse pounds. “Why?” I insist.

Brinklin tips his head back, staring up at nothing, hands jammed into his army jacket. “Why do you think, Cort?”

I grind my teeth together, glance at the glove compartment and think about that gun in my hand moments ago. I wonder if I should bring it inside.

“I told you this wouldn’t work,” Storm says without looking at me.

“He thinks you need an intervention.” He whispers the last word as he turns to me, seeming to be coming down from his bump.

He doesn’t do many drugs, but sometimes…

well, sometimes he does. There’s dried blood on his face, around his mouth, and he doesn’t seem to give much of a fuck about that.

It’s on my knuckles, too, and I think about adding Chase’s to the mix. Blood brothers.

“I think we should bury his body in the woods.” I say that. Not Storm.

Brinklin sighs in the back and I turn to face him, his angular jaw tight as he dips his chin to meet my gaze. “Don’t be stupid, Cort,” he says evenly. “You’ve got this invented shit in your head that you and Remi can actually be something.”

I clench my hands into fists.

“But we both know you can’t. She fucked that up when she went to the police?—”

“I don’t think she fucked it up, buddy,” I cut him off, working at controlling my temper.

Storm is quiet in the passenger seat, staring at both of us.

“I think we did that just fine all on our own.”

Brinklin’s jaw clenches. “I’m not a fucking rapist.”

I shrug. “She was crying.”

“She didn’t say no.”

My heart races, because these are all the same things I’ve said. I’m not a rapist. She didn’t say no. She didn’t fight back. She didn’t tell us to stop. All the same shit I’ve used in my own defense, but hearing it come from Brinklin after the day I spent with her, I don’t like it.

It’s not easy, facing the fact you might’ve been the monster. And I still don’t know what the hell really went down. It’s all so fucking gray. But in the end, when it was all said and done, she was crying.

And that means something.

It should’ve meant more then.

“That’s all kind of beside the point,” Storm points out, glancing down at his lap, running his palms over his thighs. “The point, right now, is that Chase McGowan is waiting in this cabin with Maya Bell and they’re going to demand that you stop seeing her.”

I laugh at that, running my hand along my jaw. “I don’t really take too kindly to demands.”

Storm turns to stare at me. “This time, you might want to pretend you do.”

My pulse picks up speed, and I can feel it pumping in a vein in my neck. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because they’ve spoken to your mom, Cortland. And with Chase’s dad, your mom, and Maya’s word, they could fuck you over a hundred different ways.” Brinklin speaks those words, but I keep staring at Storm. “They could fuck her over a hundred different ways.”

“They won’t touch her.”

Storm smiles. “You’re delusional.”

“And you two are fucking hilarious, thinking I give a fuck what anyone in that house has to say to me, especially Chase.” I reach for the door of the truck, pulling it open, cool fall air rushing in.

“I’m going to go inside, I’m going to get Maya the fuck out of my house, and I’m going to beat the fuck out of Chase if he so much as breathes Remi’s name. ”

Maya runs up to me as soon as I walk in the door, and I’m ready for her.

I hold up a hand, keeping her away from me as Storm and Brinklin walk in behind me, flanking me. Just like in high school.

“Maya, you gotta go.”

She’s clearly drunk, stumbling closer in only a beige bra and black shorts, her hair a mess around her face, sticking to her lip gloss.

I hear Chase’s obnoxious laugh down the hall, and a second later, he appears, clutching a beer can in hand. He adjusts the hat on his head, grinning at me, then jerking his chin toward Maya.

“I figured you wouldn’t mind. Thought we could all share tonight,” he says, and he rubs a fist over his eye.

Maya comes closer, and I smell her floral perfume.

I keep my hand up. “Get your shit, and get out of my house,” I tell her.

She sticks out her bottom lip, coming ever closer, and Chase takes a drink. “Don’t be an ass, Cort, she gives good head, man.”

I ignore him, my eyes on Maya’s red-rimmed blue ones.

Another step, and her chest is against my palm, still held out in front of me.

Another step, and she’s reaching for my neck, her hands wrapped around me, but she doesn’t dig her nails in like Remi. She tries to pull me closer to her, still pouting. “Baby, let me touch you,” she whispers.

“Maya, step back,” I tell her calmly, used to her drunk bullshit. When I was in Texas, she did the same thing. Drunken video messages where she was all about me when she was alone near the end of the night, and if I didn’t appease her, the next morning she’d scream at me through texts.

“Cort,” she whines, yanking my hand down.

My blood runs hot, and I want to shove her. “Maya, seriously, get the fuck off of?—”

She lunges at me, knocking me back against the door because I don’t expect it. My hands come to her hips, and she’s pinning me to the door, her mouth trailing around my neck, making my skin crawl.

If Remi saw this, she’d lose her mind.

And right now, what Remi thinks matters.

I shove Maya back, off of me.

Storm is there, grabbing her arm, disentangling her from me.

“Ow!” she screams, clutching at her arm, where he touched her, rounding on him as he drops his hand like she burned him. “That hurt, Storm, what the hell?”

I blink, stepping away from the door as Chase watches everything with his beer in hand. “I’ll do much worse than that if you don’t get the fuck out.”

She glares at me, still holding her wrist. “He hurt me, Cort, what the?—”

I step closer to her, looking down as I get in her face. “I’ll fuck you up, Maya. Get out.”

She drops her arm by her side, and for the first time, I see something that reminds me of Remi in her eyes.

Fire.

“Yeah?” she asks, the word slurred, but she’s still staring right at me. “Like all those bruises you left on me before?” She steps closer, and my spine stiffens as I hear Brinklin suck in a breath behind me. “Those marks around my neck, remember that, when I came down to see you in the spring?”

I bite the inside of my cheek, narrowing my eyes. “The ones you wanted?”

She shakes her head, a smile pulling on her lips.

“I didn’t,” she says, eyeliner smeared in the corner of one eye as she rubs a fist over it before she drops her hand.

“I didn’t want it, Cort. You were so rough,” her chin wobbles with that word, but it’s so.

Fucking. Fake. “You were so rough, and you hurt me, and I know what you like to watch.” Big fucking tears well in her eyes, and I see beyond her, Chase watching closely, a smirk on his face.

“You were so, so rough, and you like to watch… rape , Cortland.” She steps closer, her lip poked out.

“And I was scared of you. I took photos, you know?” She glances over her shoulder at Chase.

“I took pictures, to make sure I was safe. And I really don’t wanna hurt you, Cort, but if you keep making us all look bad by fucking around with Remi…

I might have to.” She glances down at the floor, still pouting. “For your own good.”

I want to drag my nails down my skin for ever trusting her.

I want to hurt myself.

Her.

Chase.

I know Maya isn’t stable, either, and she needs help too, but it’s not because of me, and she can’t hang lies over my head.

There’s a roaring in my brain, and I try to take a breath. I try to calm the fuck down.

“What would Tristan do without you, huh, Cort?” she asks with faux concern.

And when her eyes meet mine again, I lunge for her.

My hands are outstretched, ready to wrap around her throat, and I hear Chase say, “There you go, Cort,” just like he did that night when I was fucking Remi, at the same time I see a flash of light from the phone he pulls from his pocket.

But before I can get to Maya, not even moving out of the way, wanting me to touch her, Brinklin and Storm both grab me, shoving me against the door, my head colliding with the wood.

Brinklin gets in my face as Storm turns to Maya.

“Don’t give her what she wants,” Brinklin says, bright green eyes focused on mine as I try to breathe beneath his hand pinning me to the door, a ringing sound in my ears.

Storm stalks toward Maya.

“You’re gonna get your clothes, Maya, and you’re gonna leave,” he says, and I see her backing up, because she’s scared of Storm. She always was.

Chase has put his phone away, and now he’s looking nervous too, because he didn’t get any of what he wanted, and he knows the entire fucking pack is pissed at him.

I want to see him bleed.

I want to break his fucking neck.

Maya wouldn’t do this on her own. I was wrong to go after her. It’s him who needs to die.

I try to move from the door but Brinklin shoves me back again and I just slump against it, listening to Storm.

“And if you don’t,” he snarls, leaning down to get in Maya’s face, “I’ll strip your spine from your fucking back.”