The puppy’s eyes spring open, and she sits up, wagging her tail. Demi drops to her knees and crawls over to her. “What … who is she?”
“She’s yours,” I tell her.
The puppy jumps into Demi’s arms and starts licking her face. “Deke.” She sniffs. “I don’t understand.” She looks up at me with the dog pressed to her chest.
I look around the large open living room. The construction on this house was completed last month. I was lucky I found it when I did.
“Well …” I go over to her and take her hand. She sets the dog down, and I lift her to her feet. I wipe the tear from her cheek as I take her other hand in mine. “She’s yours, Demi.” I take a quick look around the house. It’s over five thousand square feet with six bedrooms, a gym, an office, and more bathrooms than we’ll ever need. But I hope that one day we’ll fill it full of kids. “It’s all yours.”
Her brows pull together. “What do you …?”
I let go of her hands and kneel on one knee.
She takes a step back from me, her hands coming up to cover her mouth while gasping.
“Demi Lane Holt.” I pull the Tiffany box out of my front pocket and open it up to her. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Here. In this house.” Tears run down her beautiful face. “Will you—”
“Yes!” She rushes me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, and I stand, picking her up with me.
“Deke?”
I blink, her voice pulling me out of the memory. “What?”
She holds the dog in her arms. “I was telling you that Brynn called me before Austin got here. She’s going to meet up with us.”
I pick up my towel from the floor. “Demi, that’s not …”
“And I guess Shane’s in town too. They’re going to meet us there.” She turns to exit the bathroom, but I grab her upper arm, stopping her.
“That’s not a good idea. You should have asked me first,” I growl.
Her eyes narrow, and she pulls away. “Oh, does this have to do with something that you should have told me?” she asks, arching a brow.
My jaw clenches. She just gives me a smile, then leans down and kisses the sleeping dog on the head before walking out of the bathroom.
“Fuck!” I hiss, running my hands through my wet hair. I need to warn Cole.
I finish getting ready as quickly as I can—throwing on a T-shirt with a pair of jeans and tennis shoes. I’m practically running into the kitchen where I find Demi and Austin sitting at the kitchen table and Cole leaning up against the island. “May I talk to you?” I ask him.
“It can wait.” Demi stands. “We’re already late. Who’s driving?” she asks.
“I will,” Cole offers, his eyes going to his wife’s full wineglass. “I won’t be drinking.”
Just to piss him off, she lifts it to her lips and downs the entire thing. Fuck. This is not going to be fun.
AUSTIN
“How do you find these places?” Deke asks from the passenger seat of my Range Rover.
“Facebook.” I watch Cole in the rearview mirror while he drives to see if he acknowledges my statement in any way.
He doesn’t.
The bastard deactivated my social media page last year. I understood why he did it, but he hasn’t mentioned it since I reactivated it months ago when the girls and I went to Silence. Which just isn’t Cole. He never has a problem telling me what he does and does not like.
“I think it sounds fun,” Demi replies, opening a round mirror compact and turning on the dome light to line her lips with red lipstick.
Deke lets out a growl. He hates that I drag them to these places.
“Is there a fee?” Demi asks, popping her lips and closing the mirror. “I have cash on me …”
“Not that I saw.” I was on Facebook the other day and somehow ended up on this girl’s page. It turns out, she goes to UT with Cole and Deke. She had a picture of her standing in the middle of a field last weekend. Her face painted white, red contacts and black lips. She looked hot in a black leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings. The only thing it said was #DeathValley. So, being curious as to what it meant, I went through the comments. She had over two hundred. Guess the girl is cheer captain at the college and very well known. People were posting their own pictures, and in each one, they were dressed up like it was Halloween.
I had to come see it for myself. Thankfully, someone had dropped the address for a friend she had tagged.
“How much farther?” Cole asks in a flat, borderline annoyed tone.
I bite my lip to keep from smiling. I do love when he’s pissy. Which is pretty much Cole a hundred percent of the time. But I’m pissed at him, so I plan on returning the favor. He’s not going to stand me up and then not tell me why. And when I asked him at Demi’s, he said something came up, which isn’t a total lie, but the truth was he was at practice. Why not just say that? Why hide it? I would have totally understood had he been honest. “Uh ... my GPS says one more mile. It’s up here on the right.”
“This is the middle of nowhere,” Deke goes on, looking out the tinted window. Nothing but wooden areas on either side of the two-lane road that we can see. We’ve been driving for almost thirty minutes.
“Pretty sure that’s the point,” Demi says, rolling her eyes. “Are we staying the night? I didn’t think to bring a bag,” she asks me.
“No,” the guys say in unison.
I sigh. I saw kids talking about how they stayed overnight. Death Valley is over twenty-five miles away from civilization. They come out here to party. Pretty sure they get so fucked up they pass out in their vehicles. But we won’t have that issue since my husband is the designated driver for the night.
“This reminds me of some Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit,” Deke adds.
“Exactly!” I clap with excitement.
He shakes his head. “No one is cutting off my arms tonight. Or any other night.” He straightens in his seat. “I’ll kill a fucker …”
“There it is,” I say, seeing lights up ahead. Bright red and white spotlights are pointed up at the sky. It reminds me of the Batman signal in Gotham.
“What kind of place is this?” Deke asks. “Looks like Silence.”
I snort. “This place is nothing like Silence.” At least I hope it’s not. Silence was an abandoned insane asylum we visited for Halloween last year that ended up being a total disappointment.
“It’s not a tourist attraction. It’s just a place where kids party. Kinda like how we partied at the beach in Collins.”
“Well, we all know how that ended.” Deke sighs.
Yes, we do. Not very well. “There aren’t going to be any fights tonight,” I say, narrowing my eyes on Cole in the mirror. Again, he doesn’t acknowledge me, and my irritation grows. What is his problem?
We pull into a large open field, and he brings the SUV to a stop. We all exit, and I stop to look at the castle that I could only imagine being in London standing tall before us. It’s old with broken windows, some completely missing, and graffiti painted on the concrete sides of the old and massive four-story building. I bet it was gorgeous back in the day.