Page 13

Alex

My phone starts going off with multiple texts all at once, vibrating across my dresser while I dig around in the closet for my Ariats. When I pull them out, my eyes linger on the faint line on the drywall where the paint is slightly different, no matter how much I tried to blend it. But with the dim light and all the shadows, it probably isn’t noticeable to anyone but me.

Just the way I intended.

I slam the door and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Just like every other first day of school for the past three years, we wear our soccer jerseys: blue and white with the Dire Wolves insignia on the front and my number 23 on the back beneath my last name. It’s weird to think this will be the last time.

I grab my phone off the edge of the dresser and pull up the group chat we’ve had going for years. I can’t even remember when it started. And, as usual, Aiden kicks off the morning with an ominous note.

AIDEN (7:24AM): Happy First Day of Senior Year…I’m bringing a surprise

COLSON (7:28AM): Ketamine?

AIDEN (7:28AM): You wish

MASON (7:29AM): Your stepmom’s ass?

AIDEN (7:30AM): Close

Then another immediately comes through.

AIDEN (7:30AM): But better

There’s a big-ass blueberry muffin from the bakery in town sitting on the counter with a Post-it note stuck on the countertop next to it. I recognize Adrian’s jagged, all-caps handwriting immediately.

HAVE A GOOD LAST FIRST DAY FUCKER

There’s never been a more fitting start to the school year. As much as he tries to emulate our parents, he’s still Adrian and it’s nice to know that he still exists somewhere beneath all the nagging and responsibility. It’s also fitting considering that this is the last first day of school I’ll ever have.

I guess that’s not totally true. I could still go to school after I do my time in the Corps. Regardless, I should be pumped about senior year but, at the moment, I already want it to be over.

I need to get away.

The house has been quieter than usual. I would say it’s like the calm before the storm, but the storm already happened and now it’s the calm after everything’s been splintered and destroyed in the wake of a tornado. Maybe I just need something else to happen to dilute the dumpster fire that was last summer. Maybe Aiden knows it and that’s why he’s teasing some macabre surprise for the first day of school.

But when I drive into the senior parking lot and pull in next to Colson’s Civic and Mason’s BMW 3 Series, Aiden’s not even here. His Lexus is nowhere in sight and the bell’s going to ring in five minutes.

“Where’s this surprise?” I call to them as I grab my backpack from the passenger seat.

“It’s actually that he’s in jail,” Colson replies, emptying the remainder of an energy drink into his mouth, “he opted for a text instead of a phone call.”

I slam my door. “That’s unfortunate, my day just got a lot more boring.”

Assuming that Aiden won’t appear in the next 30 seconds, we start making our way across the parking lot to the back entrance of the school. But when I stop at the bottleneck, I feel a tap on the back of my shoulder. As soon as I look to my side, I immediately look away again and dread washes over me when I see her familiar blue eyes and shiny cornsilk hair.

“Hey,” Jordy’s voice feels like a cheese grater on my brain, “can I talk to you?”

“Not if you’re going to make me late for class,” I mutter, dodging people in the hallway until we all clear the doorway.

Hearing our voices, Colson turns and starts walking backward, his eyes locked on her in a loathsome glare. Mason glances back and does a double-take, letting out a groan as he turns back around.

“Well?” I clip impatiently. “What do you want?”

“You to talk to me again,” she tries to ignore Colson, “I just—I need you to know that I’m sorry—” Colson lets out a whoop of laughter and spins back around, earning an irritated look from her.

Near the end of the hallway, Logan, Bryce, Jamie, and Layla stand at the lockers. Colson takes a few strides ahead and sneaks up behind Bryce, grabbing her sides and making her shriek in surprise. Her friends erupt in laughter as she spins around and smacks him in the arm.

“Will you just look at me?” Jordy pleads. “You used to be my best friend…”

I clench my jaw, stopping dead in my tracks. “No,” I slowly turn to face her, “ we’re not friends. They are my friends,” I nod to Colson and Mason at the lockers, “and they know what you did.”

“Alex—” she hisses in a hushed tone, but I cut her off.

“And if they were gone and we were the only two humans left on this planet, I’d blow my fucking brains out,” I lean into her ear, lowering my voice to a growl, “because I don’t fuck with gutter trash.”

●●●

I can see Dallas’s shadow moving around her room while she texts me from the second floor. I’m sure she can hear us. That is, if she doesn’t have her headphones on like she usually does.

“I can’t believe they kept you overnight,” Mason says before thinking better of it, “I mean, I can, but what’d your dad say when he finally got there?”

I have to agree with Mason, it’s pretty impressive that Canaan thought they could come to the Rafferty house, pretend they were arresting him, and let him sit in an interrogation room all night until his father showed up to give them hell.

“The better question is if you weren’t actually under arrest, why didn’t you just leave?” I ask, gazing at Aiden’s photo splashed across the Canaan PD’s social media page. “Why’d you even call your dad?”

“I wanted them to think they were winning,” Aiden smiles, “it’s no fun if they know they’re fucked right from the start. And what better way to do that than tell a few jokes in their tiny cement room until my dad arrives after his schedule is wrecked because his delinquent son is detained for a crime he didn’t commit?” Then he motions to his picture on my phone. “And that’s just another nail in their coffin.”

Whoever put Aiden’s face on the PD’s social media when he wasn’t even under arrest is probably going to have a rude awakening by the time his father gets through with them. There’s nothing the elder Rafferty hates more than people meddling in his personal affairs, especially law enforcement.

It’s obvious where Aiden gets his temper and psychopathic tendencies.

Mason props his sneakers up on the edge of the fire pit. “What we need to do is something that doesn’t result in arrest.” Unlike Aiden, he’s more concerned about jeopardizing his spot on the university’s soccer team.

It wasn’t enough for Colson to smash Bowen’s face in the cemetery. We all know Bowen is responsible for Evie’s death, and waiting on law enforcement to do something about it is a joke. Instead, we’ve decided to come up with our own plan of action.

“Anything good will always carry the risk of arrest,” Colson smirks.

“Except maybe stalking,” Aiden replies, staring up at the stars beginning to emerge in the night sky, “too hard to prove.”

I give a nod. “That could be fun.”

“So could killing him,” Colson deadpans.

Aiden shifts his eyes to Colson with a smile. “You’d probably thrive in prison.”

“I’d rather start with torture, anyway,” I sigh, closing my screen and sliding my phone back into my jeans pocket.

“It’ll be nothing compared to what he did,” Colson mutters, staring at the pile of ashes in the fire pit, “and there’s nothing left to do except make him pay for it.”

I glance up at the second-story window, glowing pink behind the sheer curtain, and then settle my gaze back on Colson. I’ve seen him fight plenty of people, but I can’t imagine him dragging his sister across a room, throwing her to the floor, and their parents having to pry him off of her in some trauma-induced dogpile.

I shouldn’t blame him for losing his mind after what happened to Evie. I know he would never do anything like that to Dallas on purpose and I shouldn’t be angry about it. But I am.

So, I sit around the cold fire pit with my three best friends while the sky gets progressively darker and darker, just like our plans for Bowen Garrison. And at the end of the night, when I follow Aiden and Mason back out to the driveway, I get into my SUV and follow their vehicles down the long driveway to the road. Except, this time, I linger at the end of the driveway until their taillights nearly disappear and then drive a short distance to the same pull-off behind the water tower where I parked the other night.

This time, when I walk back to the Lutz’s house, I don’t cut across the front yard. This time, I walk along the tree line next to the driveway, concealed in the shadows until I get to the back patio. It’s quiet now, the light above the back door off and the first-floor windows dark. Eyeing the side of the pergola, I follow the path from the concrete, up the slats adorned with plant boxes, and to the top, where the slats lead right to Dallas’s window.

I was kind of bluffing at first. I didn’t think it would be so easy.

Similarly, I’m not expecting for the window to actually move when I brace my palms against the top of the pane and start pushing. Once I can fit my body through, I duck underneath the window and into the room. It’s quiet, with a glow emitting from the lamp on the bedside table. And when I look around, I find Dallas standing next to the dresser, staring at me as I pull myself all the way through as quietly as possible.

“Hey, Dal,” I slowly straighten up, waiting to see how she’ll react.

She’s no longer in the same clothes from downstairs, but instead wearing a pair of black sleep shorts and a grey tank top. Her hair falls over her shoulders in a chaotic wave, framing her deep blue eyes staring back at me in surprise.

“Hi,” she replies slowly, studying me as she pushes her thick black glasses up the bridge of her nose and sets a purple case down on the dresser.

Moving like I’m trying not to startle a cat, I take a step toward the PlayStation console next to the TV. “I told you I wanted to play Tomb Raider with you , ” I say softly, reaching up to take the controller from the shelf before tossing it onto her bed.

Dallas gives a faint smile as she reaches for the controller and then sits down with her legs crossed and her back against the pillows. I press the power button and reach for the window frame, steadying myself as I kick off my boots. The game loads and the TV screen lights up as soon as she turns it on with the remote.

“You can go first,” I say quietly.

Then I look over my other shoulder and scan the bookshelf, quickly finding what I’m looking for. Sliding the blue paperback off the shelf, I notice, much to my relief, that the page I stopped at is still dog-eared. Dallas is already playing, and it’s safer to speak now that we’re shoulder to shoulder.

“It wasn’t Col, Mase, or Aiden playing last night,” I say gently, opening the book.

“Then who was it?” she clips, still not believing me for a second.

“My cousins, Noah, Javi, and Liam. They don’t live here, so that’s how we hang out.” Dallas glances at me and then back to the screen. I lean closer to her shoulder and bow my head next to hers. “Dallas, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

I leave it at that, letting her marinate on my words. When she vanished last night, I wanted to blow up her phone and ask her what the hell her problem was, acting like I’ve been a dick to her for the past seven years. I’ve never been anything but nice to her. I even let her eat my candy when I brought it over.

I remember because there were never any yellow fucking gummy bears left.

“Anyway,” I mutter, flipping to the page where I left off, “I doubt Col would like it if he knew I was here hanging out in your room.”

“Because you’re his friend?” Dallas guesses with a sharper tone.

“Because you’re his sister, ” I correct her.

“Don’t you hang out with other girls?”

“You’re a lot younger than the girls I hang out with.”

“It’s just a cultural construct,” she shrugs, keeping her eyes trained on the screen, “humans are considered physically mature and biological adults at 16, but the brain doesn’t finish developing until you’re almost 30. Society’s picked arbitrary ages to define maturity, none of which coincide with any meaningful milestones.”

What the…

There’s a long pause before she finally glances to the side to see if I’m even listening.

“Yeah,” I reply through hooded eyes, “and you’re not even 16.”

“Then what are you doing here if you think it’s so wrong?”

This time, my tone matches the acidity of hers. “You can hang out with someone without wanting to get in their pants.”

“Oh, like Colson? ” she snickers. “I know what you all do. You think he brings girls home to sit in his room and play Halo? ” She can barely keep a straight face, “Sometimes I blow up his phone from the other room when he has someone over. Like, call him every minute to ask him something or go on some long tangent about nothing,” she about snorts into her controller, “it makes him so mad, and then he finally hangs up on me,” she giggles.

She’s such a little hellion , I chuckle to myself, shaking my head at the thought of Dallas being a total cock-block gremlin just for fun.

I take my glasses off, toss them onto the side table, and settle back to continue reading The Outsiders, which has me unexpectedly hooked. Some preppy dude is dead and Ponyboy and Johnny are on the run. Talk about high-stakes drama.

An hour flies by before I close the book and turn to Dallas in shock.

“He died, ” I say incredulously. “Dally fucking died. ”

A smile spreads across Dallas’s face. “Awful, isn’t it?”

“Fucking bullshit,” I say bitterly, setting the book down on the table next to my glasses.

It’s not a long book, and regardless of how much I loved the rest of it, I hate the ending. After all that, Dallas Winston finally redeems himself by saving a bunch of kids from burning to death and the police waste him while he’s having a nervous breakdown.

Fascist pigs.

Maybe it’s because the drama with Aiden is still fresh and the Canaan police are more interested in being goons rather than finding Evie’s killer, but that part hit harder than I thought it would. And, yet, for some reason, sitting next to Dallas and reading about it while she plays Tomb Raider is the most relaxed that I’ve been in a long time.

Nobody knows I’m here. I’m hidden. And I can finally breathe.

“I wonder if people were super awkward when Ponyboy went back to school and they found out his best friend was murdered by the police,” Dallas mutters as she sets down the controller and switches the input on the TV.

She starts flipping through channels and pauses when she sees the 80s horror movie, Fright Night , playing.

“Who’s been super awkward to you?” I ask, wondering if I need to humiliate anyone else tomorrow at school.

“My friends,” she sighs, “it’s like they suddenly don’t know how to talk to me. And then Shelby goes and makes plans for all of them to see the one movie I’ve been waiting months to see...without me.”

I sling my arm over my head and lean back against the wall. “Why’d they go without you?”

“They didn’t want to bother me,” she hitches her voice in a mocking tone.

It’s like I’m looking at myself three years ago, except I was playing Left 4 Dead with her brother or shooting guns in Aiden’s backyard or escaping on vacations with Mason’s family. No one knew what to say, except for Mason’s mom, Gianna, who somehow always knows what to say.

“Grief doesn’t end,” she told me, “it just looks different as time goes on.”

And that’s what surprises me now; I thought girls would know how to deal with this better. But apparently, they can be as shitty as guys when it comes down to it.

“People don’t know how to talk about death, Dal, and it’s not your job to make them understand. But is she otherwise a good friend?”

“Shelby? Yeah,” she shrugs.

“Death freaks people out, but if you can still otherwise count on her, then that’s what matters. It’s not like Col or Aiden or Mase had anything profound to say when my dad died, but they stuck around. They stayed with me in the darkness.”

“What was it like when you had to go back to school?” Dallas asks, settling back into her pillows.

“Well,” it’s easier to talk to her now that she’s only a few inches away, “when I walked into my first class, the day after burying my dad, Jared Blakely asked if I was going to get deported because I was an orphan now.” Dallas lets out a tiny, horrified gasp. “And then Aiden and I got two more days off school because we broke his nose and knocked out two of his teeth.”

Not wasting a captive audience, I reach into my pants pocket and fish out my key ring. I hold it out to Dallas and she apprehensively extends her upturned palm.

“What’s this?” she asks, catching it and turning over a small, blue rubber coin pouch with the pun, France is Nice , printed on one side.

“All my secrets,” I reply.

Dallas casts me a sideways glance and squeezes the pouch to look inside. As soon as she does, her jaw drops.

“Is that—” she flips the pouch and dumps the contents right into her hand, “is that a tooth? That guy’s tooth? ”

She marvels at the large incisor broken off at the root, nestled in her palm amongst a single brass key, a flash drive, and a miniature key-card.

“Aiden has the other tooth,” I confirm.

“Wow,” she murmurs with fascination, picking up Jared Blakely’s tooth and holding it up to examine it. Once she’s finished, she looks down at her hand, “OK, so what’s all this other stuff?”

“I told you,” I reply with a smirk, “my secrets.”

“ Oh, ” she says with a roll of her eyes and starts returning each item where she found it.

“But that’s what your friends do,” I motion to the key ring, “they don’t have to sound like a greeting card, they just have to show up when it counts. You know Aiden actually cried when my dad died?”

“ What? ”

“Yeah,” I nod, “I’ve actually seen him cry twice—when my dad died and when his dog died.

“I didn’t think Aiden had feelings,” she mumbles, handing the keyring back to me.

“Don’t go spreading it around,” I shove my keys back into my pocket, “but what about you? I bet you have secrets, too.”

“Like I’d tell you, ” Dallas scoffs, “you’d probably run off and tell Colson.”

“ Dallas, ” when I say her name, she startles and meets my eyes, “I told you, I would never do that to you. And besides, I just showed you a broken tooth I carry around from a kid I beat up. It’s only fair.”

Dallas eyes me apprehensively while she mulls it over.

“Fine,” she finally agrees as something sparks behind her eyes, “you know your friend, Rory?”

The way she says it immediately puts me on edge. Why the hell would Rory’s name come up in reference to any secret Dallas could possibly have?

“Yes?” I reply slower, and with a much sharper tone.

“Has he ever told you about Elina from London?”

My suspicion suddenly switches to confusion. “The girl he met on vacation a while ago?” Rory still talks about this girl he met while skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Dallas nods. “One and the same.”

“Do you know her?” I squint.

“I know of her,” Dallas’s tone turns venomous and her doe eyes take on a devilish glint. “He texts her all the time. She only texts back when she feels like it, but he keeps coming back for more. Funny how the timing never works out for a meet-up, isn’t it? But I guess it’s more complicated now since her dad got transferred from New York to London.”

I stare at her, glitching out. How does she know anything about Elina? And the more confused I look, the more it entertains Dallas.

“I heard him telling Colson about her one time when he was over here,” she continues, “I searched for her on social media, found out about her, and then messaged him on WhatsApp to say that I— ” she raises her fingers in air quotes, “got a new number, but this is a much easier way to text with all the international travel my family does.”

Holy…shit...

I’m unable to hide my astonishment. “How long have you been doing this?”

“A year and a half.”

“Wait,” I pause, trying to wrap my mind around her story, “ why are you doing this?”

Dallas doesn’t hesitate. “He made fun of my Squishmallows,” she says flatly.

I glance down at the round, pink and purple plush creature with a shaggy head that’s poking out from her lower back. Is that what they’re called? Then, my gaze shifts to the oversized basket across the room filled with blankets and another couple of plush creatures that I can’t decide whether look like animals or vegetables.

“So, what’s in it for you?” I ask, “Just to fuck with him?”

“That,” she shrugs, “and he pays me for nudes.”

“ What? ” I nearly shout before catching myself and lowering my voice again.

Dallas erupts in a barrage of giggles and starts shaking her head. “Not mine, I swear,” she gasps, “I find videos and pictures and edit them to look like I took them on my phone. It takes five seconds. I found a really good preset that saves a lot of time. I also take normal pictures off her social media to mix in every so often to make it more authentic. He wanted to start sending me things like jewelry and shit, but I convinced him money was better so my parents wouldn’t ask questions,” she snickers.

“Are you fucking serious?” I can’t decide whether to be impressed or horrified.

“I made enough money off of him to buy that PlayStation,” she smiles, nodding to the shelf.

I’m still in shock, my mind completely blown. “Wait,” I furrow my brow, “so, if you’re sending him fake nudes… does he send you dick pics back? ”

Dallas doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at me, smiling while she rakes her teeth over her bottom lip,

“Then he’d better not piss me off anymore, huh?” she says, popping one eyebrow and turning back to the TV.

“Oh…my god,” all I can do is shake my head in disbelief, “you win.”

The same wide grin stretches across her face as I saw outside her classroom that first day I walked her back from the cafeteria, like I made her day.

“Fucking hellion…” I mutter, turning back to the movie.

“You won’t tell anyone?” she asks, still not totally convinced she can trust me.

“Hell no, I’m invested now. I have to see if you get an Xbox out of him next. Plus,” I raise my hand, clenched in a fist except for my pinky sticking out, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Dallas Winston might’ve been a tough greaser with nerves of steel, but right now he’s got nothing on Dallas Lutz, hiding behind her sparkly black phone with purple skulls and radiant smile that hides some kind of darkness she keeps from everyone else.

She slowly reaches up and links her pinky in mine, giving it a shake.

“I guess you’re not such a douche after all,” she says as she lets my finger go.

“Did you think I was a douche?”

Dallas shrugs, her eyes wandering across the room as she avoids my question.

“Don’t be shy,” I press, “you just confessed that you’re bleeding Rory dry with porn he can get for free.”

She whips back around, the corner of her mouth curling deviously. “I’ve thought you were a douche since I was in sixth grade.”

“Why?”

“Because you stopped being fun.”

She’s not wrong, once we got to high school, it was soccer from June to November, conditioning until the following summer, and then it started all over again. In between, we partied and raced cars and did whatever we wanted to do because we won a couple of state championships.

“What about the rest of them?” I ask, “Did they used to be fun, too?”

“Colson’s still fun, but only when no one else is around. Mason turned from a spoiled brat into an even bigger spoiled brat—just taller, and Aiden is…” she trails off.

“Aiden?” I finish her sentence, knowing exactly what words she’s trying to find, but can’t.

“Yeah,” she laughs, “what did you—” she starts, but cuts herself off.

“What did I what?”

“Nothing,” Dallas shakes her head, “I’m just glad you’re here now. Actually,” she pauses, lowering her voice to almost a whisper, “you’re the only one who’s really been…here.”

“What do you mean?”

Her blue eyes turn stormy. “The morning that Colson found Evie, my mom and Scott ran out the door and left me here all day. Alone. There was no one here.” Then she sets her jaw with a deep breath. “I found out what happened from the Internet. By myself. ”

I don’t say anything at first, because it never occurred to me that Dallas could be anywhere but school that day. Or maybe Scott and Christy picked her up when they found out what happened. I never would have thought she would be sitting in her house, completely alone, with only the knowledge that her sister was dead and her brother was the one who found her decomposing body in the woods.

“And when they all did come home,” she continues, “Colson dragged me around my room in his sleep. And now, at school, people talk about my life like it’s an episode of CSI and my friends don’t know how to act around me. And I’m so… ” she clenches her teeth, trailing off.

“ Angry? ” I whisper.

Slowly, I raise my arm, beckoning to her with a nod of my head. It’s like waiting to see if a cat will run away if you make any sudden movements. She hesitates at first, but then sinks into my side, resting the side of her face on my chest as she exhales. Then she tucks her hands up at her chest, curling into my torso. And when I turn my head, an intense floral fragrance laced with cedar hits my nostrils. It comes out of nowhere and, almost on reflex, I press my nose into her onyx hair and take a slow, agonizing breath.

Why does it smell so good?

Fuck, I hope she doesn’t move because now I’m getting high on her goddamn hair.

“You don’t have to be a prick to be angry,” I murmur with a smile. “You can still be Dallas in Sen’s Fortress.”

She doesn’t answer, but her muscles relax the longer she rests against me. The silence feels familiar and comforting— uncomplicated. Until, finally, my breathing gets heavier, and then everything goes black.

I don’t remember what time I fall asleep, probably around the time Roddy McDowall discovers Evil Ed turned into a werewolf and starts melting all over the front hallway after being skewered by a wooden spindle. But when I wake up, I’ve slid down in the bed, the pillow at my shoulders rather than the middle of my back.

When I move to reach for my phone, I realize that Dallas is laying on my arm, asleep. She’s on her side, her shoulder rising and falling with deep, steady breaths. Her long, wavy black hair frames her face, falling over her shoulder onto mine. I glance down at my phone. 11:37—I haven’t been asleep that long.

Slowly, I roll onto my side, studying her round cheeks and full lips hanging slightly ajar. I’ve never seen her this still, and now she doesn’t even seem real.

I lift my hand and give a lock of her hair a slight twirl, gently wrapping the end around my finger. The shade looks a lot like mine, black as coal, but not dark enough to have the blue tint that Aiden’s does. I keep twirling my finger, eventually letting it fall back onto the bed.

Barely thinking, I trail my finger up to the side of her face, brushing her hair away from her eye. And then, suddenly, I’m overcome with the intense curiosity of what it’s like to be Dallas Lutz. She’s nothing like Colson. Well, maybe a little like Colson after hearing what she’s doing to Rory, but maybe she’s only so covert about it because she’s half Colson’s size. He can get away with a lot by being 6’4”.

I let my hand fall, brushing my thumb down her cheek so gently that she doesn’t stir. But I hesitate at her mouth. Slowly, I trace the edge of her lips, barely touching her skin. Something sparks deep in my gut as I let my thumb fall down the center of her lip, revealing the edges of her glistening white teeth. As soon as I let it go, she sucks in a breath and shifts. Her leg hitches and her knee bumps into my torso before she settles again.

I don’t know what it is, but now I can’t look away. Her hair, her lips, her big eyes, deep and beguiling…

She’s stunning.

My hand falls from her face down to her waist where her shirt’s riding up enough to reveal her navel. Refusing to acknowledge the gnawing feeling in the back of my mind, I follow the dramatic curve of her hip, over her shorts, to the back of her thigh.

It’s a bad idea, which is why I don’t think too hard about it while my mind is still foggy with sleep.

My fingers hit the curve of her ass and I bite my lip, staring straight ahead at her closed eyes. When she doesn’t move, I slip them underneath the edge of her shorts and she lets out a breath followed by the smallest moan. It’s like a shot of adrenaline straight to my dick and it feels like my lungs are filled with cement.

What the fuck…

Suddenly, she shifts again and I pull my hand away, rolling onto my back. She jostles her hips and her eyes slowly open.

“Hey, Dal,” I say in the same hushed tone I’ve had since I set foot in this room. As soon as I say it, a smile pulls her cheeks so wide that she looks away. “What?” I ask.

“Um,” her voice cracks as she rolls closer, “you know the sound soda makes after you pour it into a cup and it makes that high-pitched hissing sound before it finally stops fizzing?”

“Yeah, actually,” I smile. Because I do.

She hesitates, like she’s deciding whether to continue. “That’s how you make me feel when you say my name like that.”

It spreads through my ribs like a slow burn, a feeling I can’t describe that tugs at every fiber the longer I stay in this room. But before I can think too much about it, there’s a faint clicking and then a sharp noise suddenly cuts through the silence. I jerk my head up to the sound of someone knocking on Dallas’s door.

“ Dallas… ” Colson’s deep voice reverberates against the wood before there’s another jiggle of the doorknob.

Shit, shit, shit…

I roll over and sit up, moving as quickly and silently as I can to the end of the bed. Dallas rolls over in the other direction and climbs off the bed, trying to find her footing as she stands up. There’s another rap on the door and Colson calls her name again, this time with a hint of exasperation.

“Hold on,” she calls back, staggering around the end of the bed to the window.

Not bothering to put on my boots and risk making any noise, I grab the edge of the window and gently slide it up the track. Fortunately, it’s relatively silent and I step out over the sill as soon as it catches at the top. Dallas pulls the cream curtain to the side, holding it out of the way as I straddle the frame.

“ Dallas! ” Colson barks through the door.

She clenches her jaw and jerks her head around, glaring at the door. “Hold on! ” she barks back with the same irritated tone.

My eyes dart over Dallas’s shoulder, and when she turns back around, I reach up and grab the front of her shirt, pulling her toward me. Her lips hit mine and I hold her there for a moment before releasing her. I catch a glimpse of her shocked face, eyes wide and mouth ajar, as she watches me duck out the window and not look back.

Darkness falls as the curtains are pulled shut again and I slowly make my way to the edge of the pergola, maneuvering the beams until I can quickly and quietly climb down to the patio. I go back the way I came, along the trees parallel to the long driveway. I’m nearly to the end, shrouded in shadow, when I look up and nearly have a heart attack. I stop short, staring at the tall, slim figure standing motionless with her hand on the brick pillar mailbox at the head of the next driveway, just watching me.

Fuck.

She’s seen me and I can’t just walk off. I have to stop and talk to her now, after she’s just watched me for who knows how long. I shake off the initial shock and try to act natural as I stroll along the tree line. Finally, I get to the grass between the driveways where she’s waiting patiently, her short blonde hair and flowy linen pants gently blowing in the night breeze.

“Hey, Sydney.”

She glances over my shoulder with her steel blue eyes. “You are in so much trouble, Alex,” she smiles.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I decide to play dumb. It’s more of a stall tactic than anything else.

But Sydney’s smart, so it’s only a question of whether she’s going to actually call me on my bullshit.

“What was that?” she asks, nodding up the long driveway.

“What was what?” I reply, but when I glance back at the house, I realize that from this vantage point, she probably saw me come from the back patio and, to my utter horror, may have also seen me scale the pergola.

“I suspect you don’t normally sneak along the trees when you leave Colson’s house. Where’s your car anyway?” she asks, glancing around.

I can’t lie to Sydney. She’s too smart for that. But I also don’t have anything useful to say, so I might as well cut the crap and get to the point.

“You weren’t with Colson, were you?” she guesses.

“Are you going to tell him?”

With my luck, Sydney probably has a penchant for blackmail. Maybe she’s picked up some new skills in that house of hers over the past few months. But she doesn’t answer right away, just eyes the Lutz’s house before shifting her attention back to me.

“Is there anything to tell?” she asks with an edge as sharp as a razor.

I look over my shoulder at the house, now completely dark. Is there anything to tell? There’s always something to tell—all of us know that.

“ Tomb Raider, ” I reply, lifting my chin, “and commiserating about overprotective, asshole brothers.”

Sydney is unfazed, her poker face stellar, perfected after just a short time in Dire Ridge. But she accepts my response, staring back at me with eyes that could burn a hole through wrought iron. Finally, the corner of her mouth twitches with amusement and she takes a step back toward her car, glowing crisp white in the darkness.

“Bye, Alex,” she smiles before ducking inside and starting the ignition.

I watch her until the car disappears into the tunnel of trees and I’m alone again. I glance around, making sure the coast is clear before jogging across the road. I only breathe a sigh of relief when I get to my SUV and pull away from the water tower. But since I stepped out of Dallas’s window, there’s been only one question on my mind, and now it’s screaming for an answer.

What did I just do?