Page 13 of Our Darkest Summer

She swiped her tongue along her bottom lip, and the innocent movement was enough to finally set the alarms off in my head.

I stepped back, and suddenly I was drowning. “You shouldn’t have come with us.” The words were poisonous, leaving my mouth dry, the only antidote, the girl whose gaze flickered with partly veiled hurt.

Ask me why! Push me! Hurt me!But would I even tell her?

“I’m going back to the party,” she said, stepping around me, and hurrying down the stairs, disappearing into the reality I was trying to escape from.

And I let her go.

Chapter Seven

Kinsley

As soon asI stepped back into the party, I regretted it. The music was louder, the air thicker than before. Bodies pressed together under the flickering glow of the bonfire, the scent of sweat and spilled drinks clung to the humid summer night.

I scanned the crowd for Connor, but when I didn’t spot him, I pulled out my phone and sent him a quick text.

ME

Leaving now. See you back at the house

I needed to get out of here.

You shouldn’t have come with us,Thomas’ words ghosted through my head.

He was right. I shouldn’t have let myself get convinced. Not by Connor, by myself. I pushed through the crowd, and made my way around the dance area while trying to find the fastest route back to the Rhodes’ house. The map on my phone had shown a shortcut.

Twenty minutes on foot. While walking around the way we came with the car would take almost up to an hour. I turned toward the forest, my head still slightly hazy from the alcohol. Ifairly remembered Thomas saying something about the grounds being unsafe, but if the path was marked on the map, it had to be fine.

Right?

I stopped at the edge of the woods, and hesitated. The party’s golden glow stretched only so far, flickering over the first few feet before fading into solid darkness.

The trees stood tall, towering shadows against the silver of the night sky. The breeze whispered between them, and the rustling branches, sent a shiver down my spine.

The music behind me faded, and the woods ahead of me waited.

I exhaled sharply, and stepped forward.

The crunch of pine needles beneath my shoes echoed louder than I expected. My phone’s flashlight sliced through the dark, illuminating the narrow path, but it didn’t reach far.

The deeper I went, the thicker the silence wrapped around me.

The forest was swallowing me whole.

I walked faster, shaking off the unease curling at the edges of my senses. It was nothing. Just my intoxicated brain playing tricks on me.

A branch snapped beneath my foot, and my pulse jumped.

I forced out a slow breath.

Only if Thomas wouldn’t have turned up at the stairs right when I was there…I knew I wouldn’t be here then. Only he could make me lose all of my sane thoughts. Ignoring all the warning signs, I stupidly let the adrenaline and alcohol take control over my brain and drive me deeper within the trees, in the direction of the Rhodes’ house. The pale moonlight didn’t follow me into the pitch-black of the forest. It stayed at the party for the people to dance in, leaving me on my own with only my phone and my not-so-useful senses.

My mind went back into the house, to the hallway where Thomas had me with my back to the wall. Hearing him call me by my old nickname made me feel a lot of things at once, and I hated it. I felt weak because of the way my body reacted to the sound of it; my stomach clenched and the drinks I had earlier moved up into my throat.

I thought back to last fall when we first met. When he was just an annoying boy from my history class.

A nestle.