“Yeah, I know.” She nods as I walk past her and head toward the house.
Kaye’s face is like a dream. She shimmers in my mind, translucent. I can’t let this go and I can’t let it go on. Her silence is a hammer breaking against my skull, and this needs to end now.
I find her in her room. I pull her door open and stand on the threshold. She’s at the window, staring out, and looks over her shoulder. She doesn’t seem surprised to see me but there’s a flicker of fear in her eyes.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“You haven’t tried to talk to me either.”
I grind my jaw. “That’s bullshit. You’re barely ever here.”
“You’re always busy. Why’s it got to be me making the first move all the time?”
“You don’t make any goddamn moves. You lurk and hide in the shadows—”
She turns, anger flaring. “I’m lurking? You killed my sister, you asshole.”
I release a soft growl of frustration. I walk to her and she backs away, a twinge of fear in her eyes. Normally, I like that fear, but right now it only pisses me off more. I grab her arm and yank her behind me, dragging her into the h all.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to settle this now.”
“Emilio, let me go.”
“No, you’re coming with me, and we’re hashing this out.”
I pull her downstairs and away from the party toward the basement. She struggles slightly and finally gives up, trailing after me with an angry, sullen look. When I reach the door, her eyes widen, and she tries not to let me pull her down into the dank darkness.
I throw her over my shoulder, flip on the light, and slam the door shut.
“You prick,” she says, punching me in the back. “You asshole. Let me go, you fucking—”
I reach the bottom and put her down on her feet. She stumbles back into a stack of beer boxes, glaring. The bottles rattle in the quiet.
I pace past her, but don’t bother going too deep. “We can talk down here.”
“What, we couldn’t talk upstairs? God, you could’ve taken me into your room—”
“No. It isn’t safe.”
Her face screws up. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s a lot more going on at this place than you realize, pet.”
“Stop calling me that. I’m not your pet. I’m not anything to you.”
“That’s a lie, pet. You’re mine. You remember what it’s like being mine, back on that boat.”
She looks away, cheeks turning pink. “That was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t.” My heart’s beating hard. How can she fucking say that? “Those few hours with you on that ship, losing our minds to pleasure, that was the one thing I don’t regret.”
Her expression softens. “What do you want from me, Emilio?”
“I’m tired of you avoiding me. I want to end it now.”
“You want to go back to the way we were on the boat. But that’s not going to happen.”