By making his memory a joke. “She threw him under the bus to save herself, didn’t she?” I turn and head back down the hallway, grazing the wall with my free hand as I go. “Made a joke of a sad guy. Must’ve made her school proud. Must’ve made Weston angry.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “On one occasion, she even invited her whole class over to her house for a party.”
I pass vacant rooms, too dark to see what’s inside, and even though I feel something crawl on my back, I press forward. It’s the dark. Fear is worse in the dark when you don’t know what’s there.
He goes on, “She’d made a pile consisting of every love letter and present he’d given her and joined them in fucking it all up.”
“I’m not going to like Winslet, am I?”
The guy was dead. There was no need to be cruel.
“They broke everything that was breakable,” Hawke explains. “Tore up every letter and smashed every trinket. And then threw everything into a bonfire in her driveway.”
“Do you think she was trying to provoke his friends?”
“It’s possible. His best friend wasn’t a lover like him. He had a reputation for being violent on the field. And in life. She knew Grudge Night was his. He would come for her to get revenge.”
“Now that she was of age, of course.”
I hear his quiet laugh. “Very good.”
Yeah. They waited until she was eighteen, because when it’s a minor, she was kidnapped. When it’s an adult, they can just say she ran away.
“Did he find her that night?”
The texts roll through my mind, thinking about them approaching the house? Did they wear masks? Face paint?
I leave the hallway, feeling him everywhere as I step back into the great room.
“She waited,” he whispers. “Made some popcorn with the kid. Watched a movie.” Wind rattles the windows above. “Put him to bed and then put on some lipstick in the hallway mirror.”
My skin chafes on my T-shirt, and the needles of carpet under my feet spread up my legs as I cross the room.
“Lipstick?” I ask. “Why?”
“Because she was a weapon he needed to fear.”
Hawke’s breath spills out of the phone and down my neck. A lock of hair sticks to my skin.
I look around, searching the dark corners of the room. The shadows. Where is Hawke?
“She walked through the house,” he murmurs, “feeling him. Feeling all of them. His friends.” I drift down the hall, knowing he’s here. He’s watching me. “In the wind against the doors. The creak from the second floor. The shift in the air from an open window she hadn’t left open.”
“What did she do?”
“She walked,” he says. “Slowly stepping past darkened doorways and billowing drapes, peeling off her sweater. And then her bottoms.”
Warmth trails down my arms, my head starts floating, and I feel it. Scared for him to catch me but needing him to come. My chest caves every time I exhale. I can’t catch my breath as I peel off my shirt, feeling the air hit my breasts.
“Did he have a moment when he was scared watching her?” I ask Hawke. “A moment when he didn’t know what to do?”
“He knew what to do.” His voice is like velvet, and I curl my head into it. “He wasn’t a fucking coward.”
I hear a step behind me, and I smile. “Getting warmer,” I tell him in the phone.
“His heart pounded,” Hawke tells me, “but his hands never shook. He wouldn’t be shaking when he touched her.”
A body covers my back, and I break out in goosebumps, gasping a little.
He takes my phone away from my ear, and the skin of my nipples tightens as his fingers graze my back and he sweeps my hair over my shoulder.
“What did she say when he cornered her?” he asks me.
He fists the back of my jeans and hauls me back into his body, burying his nose in my hair.
“‘Am I supposed to run now?’ she said.” I moan, arching into him.
He pushes me left, pressing me into the wall, the cement cold on my nipples.
“I’m not running from you,” I tell him, playing my part. “I don’t want to. You wanted this conversation.”
His fingers reach around, find the button of my jeans, and I gasp, curling my toes into the floor.
“A hunter appreciates its meal more than anyone,” he whispers.
“And a big game hunter needs help,” I taunt. “Is that why you brought your boys? I’m flattered.”
He snickers in my ear, and we’re them, but we’re also us. The rivalry and the river, and he hates so much about me, but he wants me.
“You have a big mouth,” he says. “But I’m so glad you’re not all talk.”
He pushes Winslet’s jeans down over her ass—my ass—and I let him do all the work. He glides them down off my legs, and I step out of them.