Page 102 of One Killer Night

Murmurs begin around us as I have to force my hands from Noah. He finally lets me go, and I scramble back over the ground, digging my heels into the dirt.

My eyes frantically search the crowd for my sister.

“Get me out of here,” I yell to her before her hands are on me. “Get me out of here!”

Noah doesn’t make a move, his palm hitting the ground as if he’s been knocked sideways. But I don’t stick around to see if he’s okay. I fucking run. I run as fast as I can with my family on my heels straight to my sister’s car and all but rip the door open before slamming it behind me.

“Goldie, what happened?” rings out around me, but I can’t answer because losing Noah is a death. I’m empty.

Even if I never really had him.

Chapter Twenty-One

Camp Weonoke—years prior

Sonny had never seen Davis so mad, but then again, she’d never seen him in a lot of different ways.

“Who would do this?” He paced back and forth in front of the tree he’d carved for them.

The names had been slashed out. She told herself to keep her eyes on Davis, but she couldn’t help but look around and wonder if Billy was watching.

He was always watching now.

She’d met him in secret for two weeks now, in between teaching kids to swim and mediating arguments between the girls in her cabin.

What she knew for certain was that Billy liked when she moaned almost as much as when she cried because he’d grown crueler since the storage room. Even taken to whispering “Slut” once when she passed him on the way to the lake.

She’d been naive to think he wouldn’t hurt her, because the longer she refused to break up with Davis, the meaner Billy became.

“Are you listening to me, Sonny?” Davis said.

She nodded, but she wasn’t. Her mind was on the boy it shouldn’t have been on. This time, not out of curiosity but worry.

The truth of it all was that Billy represented the rebel inside her desperate to break out.Mom and Dad would hate him,she thought.They’d be so embarrassed.

And when she met him, that idea made her happy. She was sure all kids thought their parents were awful, but hers were truly the worst.

She’d never be that way. Not that she could have children. She’d read that having mumps makes you infertile, and she’d gotten sick when she was twelve.

“I’m going to carve it for us again. I swear,” Davis said, taking her hand.

She looked into his eyes, wondering why he was going to such lengths, especially since it was almost time for the campers to leave. The summer was almost over, and that meant they were too.

She decided on a whim to say just that to him, but she never anticipated his response.

Davis cradled her face, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I love you. This is real for me. We’re forever, Sonny. Don’t you feel that way too?”

She didn’t know. She hadn’t let herself consider the possibility, but she liked hearing it from him even more than she’d thought she would.

“People say you do this every summer. How am I any different?”

“That’s true. But you are, and you made me different. I know you sneak around and see someone else. And that’s who probably scratched out our names, but I want you to be all mine. Because I really do love you, and I’ll prove it if you let me.”

She knew she could believe him because she’d already let him go all the way two days ago. And again last night, when she snuck out to the boathouse.

“Okay,” she said as déjà vu hit hard. “I’m yours.”