He can sense it, too, the way he’s looking at me, all smug and shit. He warned me not to fall in love with him and I hate him and I would never and yet I kissed him and now I’m standing here looking like a total moron and everyone is staring and multiple people have their phones out andohmygodthisisgoingonthegoddamninternet.
“Clearly that was your first kiss,” Parrish remarks absently, frowning down at me in that way of his, that way that makes me wish I knew how to acquire ricin poison to slip into his morning coffee. Every goddamn day he makes a cup with Tess’ five-thousand-dollar espresso machine and sits there sipping it in his Whitehall uniform, and it just pisses me the fuck off. I hate the way he drinks coffee, slowly and contemplatively, like there’s actually something going on inside his stupid, ugly head. “But I’ll keep that to myself or else the rumors I’ve spread won’t make much sense.”
He has the audacity to smile at me. I feel like a fucking tea kettle boiling over and steaming.
“Shows what you know because it obviously was not,” I snap back, but he just keeps smiling in that infuriating way of his.
“Then I guess you’re just a shitty kisser. Less spit, less tongue flapping, less desperation, Gamer Girl. If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll let you practice a little.”
“Stick your dick in a meat grinder,” is all that I can manage to get out. I’m losing this battle, no doubt, but I think by befriending Lumen and impressing the students at the party I might be able to win the war.
“Dick can’t be all that small if you’re gonna kiss him like that,” Chas says finally, lifting up his drink in salute and then downing it as several of the people nearest him laugh. Someone lays out a line of what I think might actually be cocaine on a table nearby, and I feel my face pale.
Maybe I’ve just stepped into something I’m not quite ready for?
What was it that Parrish said to me: Hope you’re ready. Because it only gets worse from here on out.
I’m starting to wonder if he was right about that.
By the time I find Maxx and the Jeep Gladiator, it’s twenty minutes past the time we said we’d meet. For his part, X doesn’t seem particularly bothered, offering up a tight smile when I climb into the front seat beside him.
“It seems like you’ve made quite a name for yourself,” he tells me with a raise of his brows. “Good work, Kota. You’ve nailed the Whitehall Prep test.”
“There’s a test?” I ask, but I know what he means. The test of whether I belong here or not. Apparently, I meet their required level of drama, lucky me.
Parrish climbs into the backseat about five seconds later which is both good and bad because I want to get the hell out of here but also, I want to be nowhere near the guy. He’s a disease that I can’t stop obsessing about, and now have inextricably tied my reputation at Whitehall to.
I should’ve stayed home and headshotted some aliens. Or had a heart-to-heart with Tess which, other than this party, sounds like the worst possible thing in the world right now.
“That was an interesting night,” Parrish remarks, like he didn’t stick his tongue down my throat thirty minutes earlier. “Let’s get out of here before things get dull.”
“God, I hate you,” I murmur, closing my eyes in frustration as he laughs behind me.
Neither of us is laughing by the time we get back to the house to find that most of the lights are off.
“Stop here,” Parrish tells Maxx, causing his friend to roll his eyes and sigh.
“This isn’t my first time doing this, you know?” X reminds Parrish as he pauses at the street corner and both Parrish and I hop out. I turn to thank Maxx for the ride when I realize that Parrish has just taken off without me.
“Thanks, I’ll talk to you soon,” I tell him, starting to shut the door. Then I pause and frown. Maybe I’ll talk to him soon? Maybe not at all? It might be better if I didn’t. I glance over my shoulder and notice that Parrish has already unlocked the gate and is strolling through it.
“No problem, anytime,” Maxx replies, but he’s hardly paying any attention to me. Instead, he’s watching Parrish walk away with a strange expression. He quickly returns his green eyes to mine and smiles again. “See you next time Maxine is in Seattle.”
Our goodbye gets suddenly awkward, so I slam the door shut, take a huge breath and close my eyes while Maxx drives away. As soon as his taillights are around the corner and up the hill, I turn and head for the gate.
Realizing that it’s about to close, I start to jog and then sprint, but I don’t make it in time, and the gate slides shut.
“Hey Parrish,” I call out, before he’s too far ahead. I can’t exactly shout to be heard without waking Tess or Paul up. Or hell, Kimber. She’d probably break sibling code right off and run to her mother with the news that I’d snuck out.
Parrish’s walk slows slightly but doesn’t stop.
“Can you please come back and open the gate?” I ask, but he doesn’t turn around. In fact, he doesn’t even stop walking. I gape after him as he slips around to a side door and lets himself into the garage and then, subsequently, into the house. I can see his shadow against a dim kitchen fan light as he passes by.
With a sigh, I pull my phone from my pocket to look up the gate code … and find out that it’s dead.
“No, no, no,” I murmur, frantically squeezing the power button. “This is not fucking happening to me.”
But the phone stays dead, and the front gate stays closed, and I find myself shivering with my arms crossed over my chest. I walk the edge of the property, but there’s no other way to get in, and there’s no way in hell that I can climb it. It’s an eight-foot-tall metal fence with absolutely zero in the way of ornamentation.
Fantastic.
It takes two rounds of pacing outside the fence for me to give in to the inevitable: I am stuck out here for the rest of the night. Tess is going to find out that I left the property. Sure, I could lie about the party but what’s my excuse?
After a while, I end up sitting with my knees pulled up to my chest outside the gate, waiting for morning. If I’m lucky, maybe Parrish will let me in before breakfast? That still gives me several hours of sitting out here in the cold, but at the very least, I’ll avoid Tess’ wrath.
My mind goes immediately back to that awful kiss. I mean, it wasn’t awful in the moment—actually, it was kind of nice—but then I remember the smug look on my stepbrother’s face and I want to scream. How could I have kissed him like that? Wrapped my arms around his neck, lifted up on my toes, leaned in.
My cheeks flush but at least there’s nobody out here to see it.
How dare he lock me out like this, I think instead, realizing as I sit here that he isn’t coming back. No, he’s planning to leave me out all night. In the cold. In a neighborhood that I don’t know. He did say he was going to bury me, so I suppose I should’ve expected this.
I need to push back, swing harder, fight dirtier.
I’m already fantasizing about ways to ruin his life when, much to my surprise, I hear the gate start to slide open. I don’t have a phone or a watch, but I’m guessing it’s only been a couple of minutes. The asshole was just trying to make me sweat.