“Holy shit,” Elowen said. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I saw that.”
Even from this distance, I saw Jack’s burning hand. I saw his grimace of pain in the dancing shadows cast by the fire. And I’d seen the stony, impassive look on Harper’s face when Elowen had staked her claim on me.
I’m not sure which was worse.
Are you making fun of me too?
Goddamn, straight to my heart.
As I disentangled myself from Elowen’s octopus grip, I saw my jacket lying in the sand. Harper must’ve slipped out of it when she walked away.
“What is that?” Elowen asked, swaying slightly.
“That,” I said, picking up my jacket and shaking the sand out of it, “is what literature callssymbolism.”
“Huh?
“Nothing,” I said, gripping her around the waist before she fell down. “This bloody night is over.”
Chapter 7Harper
The smell of burnt flesh filled Dean’s car because Jack Wallace’s handwas a nightmare—a fist covered in angry red skin, some of it peeling off. I wanted to puke but figured that wouldn’t be terribly helpful.
Propped between Emery and me in the backseat, Jack moaned, his head rolling on his shoulders, drunk off his ass. He was Emery’s older brother but was in our senior class, having been held back for mental-health reasons. I didn’t know the whole story, but clearly it was more of a nightmare.
“They killed him, Emery,” he said again and again. “They killed him.”
Emery shot me a look, panicked and horrified while Dean drove to the Newport Medical Center. There, a team carefully extracted Jack from the car.
“What happened?” a doctor asked.
“We were at a bonfire at the Castle Hill Lighthouse,” Dean said. He hesitated, glanced at Emery, then added, “I think he fell. He was pretty drunk.”
The doctor took some more information, and Jack was wheeled away.
We pulled Emery aside. “I didn’t know what to tell the doctor,” Dean said. “Or if Jack could get in trouble or something, but you should know, he didn’t fall.”
I nodded. After leaving Orion and Elowen to enjoy the rest of thebeautiful moonlit nighttogether, I’d rejoined Dean. Jack Wallace had pushed between us, ranting and raving. He fell to his knees in front of the fire, and then…
I gently touched Emery’s arm. “He said something about a train… Then he reached into the fire.”
Emery paled, and I thought she might pass out. The three of us sat down, and I brought her some water while she called her father. When he arrived, he dismissed Dean and me as if we were his underlings. I was glad to go.
“Holy shit,” Dean said as we walked back to the parking lot. “That was all kinds of fucked up.” He shot me a smile full of false cheer. “And how was your night?”
The moment when Orion tried to kiss me flooded my thoughts. How we’d both shared something deeply personal, and then that gorgeous face of his was so close to mine, his mouth descending… I’d almost let myself believe it was going to be more than one kiss.
But I wasn’t a fool. What else would it be but a casual hookup? What else could he and I be at a school like this?
Orion doesn’t want anything real, I thought, my defenses running at maximum capacity.He’s used to girls falling all over him and assumed I’d fall all over him too—
“Harper?”
“Oh, it was fine. Whatever,” I said. “I mean, not fine, obviously. I hope Jack’s okay. Emery too. Their dad seems like a piece of work.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Dean said darkly. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they had an older brother named Grant. He died a while back. Hit by a train up in Providence.”
