Up until now, the craziest thing to ever happen to me was dealing with Mom or falling for a guy who hates me. And now there’s this, and I don’t know what to do with it. My only solution is to ask the source, or the sort of source, considering the appearance.
So I work until five, barely paying attention and nearly crushing my toes with a jack halfway through, and then I hop into my Mustang and head out of town.
To Chastain Castle.
As I pull up to the gates, my heart is pounding. What if it trulywasAtticus, and he was on some sort of drug? That makes a lot more sense than an evil twin or a shapeshifter. But I’ve also never known him to need to abuse substances—as far as I know, he rarely even drinks.
Though I don’t think anything supernatural is more believable. Ghosts and goblins and ghouls are all fantasy, and I should remember that.
The gates are locked, of course, and last night Atlas let it slip that he and Julian were going out of town this morning, so I can’t call him to let me in. Not that I’m sure he would have.
Instead, I park off the side of the dirt road and enter the tree line, hoping for some semblance of luck so that I can find a hidden gate somewhere. One that is unlocked, preferably.
My Vans crunch the greening leaves beneath my feet, and memories of what happened when I ran into a Chastain in these woods so many years ago flood my mind.
Visions of being on my knees or spread out with my hands laid flat upon a tree trunk. Of Atticus groaning as he came down my throat and whispering dirty things in my ear as he fingered me until I exploded.
I miss it. His touch, his voice, the way he numbed me.
That’s why… that’s why I let him—or the thing that looked like him—touch me last night. I’m desperate. I’m greedy and sick.
I’m also not finding a damn entrance, no matter how far I follow the curve of the main gate. It appears I’m out of luck.
With a resigned sigh, and not the first one of the day, I turn back. I’ve walked for about five minutes, so I’m not too far frommy car or too close to the actual estate, so I’m nearly startled to death when I round a tree and spot Atticus, staring at me with narrowed, angry eyes.
He’s a handful of feet away, in the direct path back to the road, and is wearing a beater and gray joggers, his hair windblown and face slightly red.
My breath sputters to a stop, and my pounding heartbeat turns into a thunderous roar as I remember last night, both with him in the kitchen here at Chastain, and… maybe with him sometime later in my bedroom.
“Are you trying to break in?” Atticus asks in a calm yet irritated tone.
And it soundsnormal. Not distorted or foreign, and his eyes are so bright, sohazel, even from this distance.
“What?” I reply, startled. Only I kind of was, so I don’t follow it up with denial.
I don’t follow it up at all, just staring at him with parted lips and a whole lot of anxiety and lust.
I will never, not in a hundred years,notwant him.
“Were you,” he starts, punctuating each word with a step forward until he’s right in front of me, close enough to touch, “trying to break in?”
“I-I… I wanted to talk to you,” is what I settle on, because again, I won’t lie. I was.
Atticus glares harder. “Well,Idon’t want to talk to you.”
“Why not?” I demand. “Cassie can talk to you, but I can’t?”
“I didn’t want to talk to her, either.”
“Oh.”
Atticus is glowing. I know exercise can make a person shine, raising endorphins and glistening the skin, but this is different. Almost as if from the inside out, he looksdifferent. Almost unearthly.
I always thought he was ethereal, with his startling beauty and domineering personality, but now, it feels excessive.
“Leave,” he commands, stepping to the side to wave past himself and toward the road. “Don’t come back.”
But I can see it. The way his lip twitches, his eyes never straying from mine, his chest heaving.
