Page 111 of Darkest Obsession

She’s been gone since the party without a trace. We had to get the police involved when she didn’t come back to the dorms by the next morning, but they’ve had no luck finding her. Her folks back in America heard that she was missing, but they can’t afford to fly all the way to England. Kola’s here on an academic scholarship. I wonder if someone did this to her, or if shit got too real and she ran away.

There are more sinister considerations too. She could be the other half of Spicy Freak. It doesn’t feel right to believe that.

“She’s not part of this,” Thomas says with conviction.

I lift my head and glare at him. Now he’s team Kola?

“You were the one who didn’t trust her.”

Thomas shrugs. “She was a great fake girlfriend.”

He grins, like he’s just said something entertaining, but I just roll my eyes.

“Whatever.”

If I want to come off as someone who isn’t totally bitter and jealous, I’m probably failing miserably.

Thomas leans his arm on my thighs, puffing away. The contact freezes me in place, but it doesn’t feel bad. It feels like I fucking missed him.

“I’d rather have a real girlfriend.”

“You’d better go find one then,” I grumble.

Thomas chuckles. “Yeah. I’d better, hadn’t I?”

He’s coming dangerously close to flirting with me, to getting me to let my guard down.

“What were you doing in London?” I change the subject quickly, so I don’t have to think about relationships or final exams at the end of the month, or how close we are to the Christmas holiday. My parents still can’t tell me where exactly I’m supposed to go for the holiday. They keep arguing via email about who gets to use me in their video content even if I’ve explicitly told both of them that I won’t be spending my holiday working on their channels.

“Seeing family,” Thomas replies ominously about London. He never says much about his family except what he said about his dad.

“I didn’t know that was your thing.”

He puffs on the cigarette a little, using the tobacco until it’s down to the butt.

“It isn’t,” Thomas replies.

He always replies in as few words as humanly possible.

“Okay,” I grumble. He could definitely add a few details.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Thomas murmurs. He tosses his cigarette butt into the leaves and kisses the top of my thighs through my leggings. I sense that he doesn’t want to talk at all. He kisses my thighs again and I let my fingers part the strands of his thick brown hair as he kisses me, just on my thighs and through my clothes for a few more minutes.

When he raises his head, he smiles, but it’s a sad one.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say something was wrong,” I whisper to him, touching his cheek, hoping I can get the annoying Bainbridge boy to open up to me for once.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says. “Except… everything.”

“Kola?”

“Yes. Kola. Sylvia. Molly. I don’t know why she would hurt people because of what I’ve done. If anyone deserves punishment, it’s me.”

“What exactly did you do? Sylvia’s a good friend. She won’t tell me.”

Thomas climbs up onto the hood of the Jeep with me and we clutch our legs to our chests as we sit next to each other. I’m glad he doesn’t touch me, but I’m also glad that he’s this close to me. He feels warm.

I can smell his shirt, soaked with his cologne and the natural scent of his body. He smells delicious. I hate that he smells a little of cigarettes, but I’m getting used to the smell of tobacco in his clothes and just because it’s him… I like it.