I’m wrenching the steering wheel to the right, and the tires on Dad’s old Camry are squealing, and I am most definitely pulling off the mountain road and heading down the dirt track that leads to the house where Pax lives.
What the fuck am I doing? What the hell am I hoping to accomplish here? What the fuck, what the fuck, what the FUCK? I have to turn around and keep going up to the academy. I can’t, though, because the road is so narrow, trees pressing in on both sides, that I have to go forward until I reach the house if I want to turn around.
Naturally, it’s just my luck that when I emerge from the forest, entering the clearing in front of the house, Wren Jacobi is already out front, about to get into his car. He stops dead, staring at me through the windshield, obviously trying to figure out who’s just pulled up in front of his house.
My hands lock around the steering wheel. I have a choice to make. I can either make up some bullshit excuse about using their turnoff as a spot to turn around and head back down the mountain. Or…
Or.
I can be honest.
Jacobi used to terrify me almost as much as Pax did. I barely even register a flutter of nerves as he slams the car door and crosses the wood chipped driveway towards the driver’s side window of Dad’s vehicle. He’s far less scary to me now that I’ve seen how he is with Elodie. Any guy capable of loving another human being that much can’t be that terrible. And ever since I woke up on the concrete outside of the hospital, Pax leaning over me, soaked in my blood, I haven’t really been afraid of much.
He bends at the waist and smiles sinisterly at me through the window. “You gonna buzz this thing down or shall we conduct our business through the glass?” he asks.
I buzz it down.
“Greetings,” he says. There’s something gothic and dark about Wren that makes me think he’s a Victorian gentleman who slipped through time and is now doing his best to try and fit in with today’s youth. “I can only guess why you’d be rolling up here in the middle of the day while school isn’t in session.”
The whole statement sounds salacious as hell. The guy could read from the telephone book and make it sound dirty. Taking a deep breath, I decide I’m going to own my shit. No more hiding anymore, ever again. “I came to see Pax.”
He grins. “Of course you did. I didn’t know he’d told anyone about the surgery. He’s been going out of his mind, he’s so bored. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the distraction.”
I frown. “Surgery?”
“Yeah, the—” He laughs softly. “He didn’t tell you about the surgery. All right. Well. He’s in there, but he hasn’t been particularly friendly the past couple of days. Personally, I’d give the whole Pax Davis experience a zero star, do not recommend rating. But who knows? Pigs might fly. He might be nicer to you than he has been to me and Dash. The door’s open.”
“Wait. You…you’re telling me to go inside?”
“You did just say you came to see him?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll need to go inside to do that. He’s still too fucked up to make it down the stairs by himself. Now, I’m gonna need you to move this very average car so I can leave. I don’t wanna be here when the fireworks start. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
17
PRES
* * *
I haven’t spent a huge amount of time inside Riot House—just a few drunken nights when they’ve thrown one of their notorious parties—but I do know where Pax’s bedroom is: Second floor. Second door on the right.
I cross the vast entrance and head for the stairs, trying to quiet my very busy brain. It has a lot of thoughts and feelings about me being here right now, and none of them are particularly good. I can’t bring myself to care, or listen, or do anything other than continue forward on this reckless path.
As I climb the stairs, loud, thrashing death metal meets my ears, coupled with the harsh rattle of machine gun fire. The wall of sound is coming from Pax’s bedroom. I come to stand in front of his door, pondering how hard I’m going to have to knock for him to hear me. I try out a fairly loud, firm rap, still polite, laying my knuckles against the wood. My wrists hurt. My ribs really fucking hurt, but I stand my ground. The aggressive music and the blaring gun fire doesn’t stop. Time for more drastic measures.
Instead of using my knuckles this time, I make a fist and use the flat of it to hammer against the door as hard as I can. Three loud, explosive knocks—DUM, DUM, DUM!—fill the empty landing. Immediately, the music and the sound of heavily artillery cuts off dead. There’s a loud crash on the other side of the door, a dull thump, and a lot of muffled swearing. Then the door flies open, and Pax stands there, wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants, hanging low on his hips, and a foul expression on his face.
The expression does not improve when he sees who’s standing in front of his door. “Jesus Christ. I thought it was the fucking police. What are you doing, knocking on someone’s door like that?” He shakes his head. “Just…what the fuck are you doing here?”
I wait for the panic. If I’d found myself in this position a month ago, I would have thrown up on myself and fled the scene like a common criminal. The panic doesn’t come. “Are you going to invite me in?”
He crosses his arms, wearing a perplexed frown. I try not to look at all of the ink. Let’s face it. I’ve never been able to study his tattoos in person before. I’ve always bolted before I’ve had the chance. What I have done is flicked through google search images of his ad campaigns a thousand and one times. I’ve studied the depictions of the angel and the demon on his neck, just below either ear. The three saints getting high on his right arm aren’t new to me. The snake coiled around his other arm. The intricately drawn mandalas, and sacred geometry all across his chest. The crucifix above his right hip. Every little scrap of ink on his torso is familiar, each piece pulling at my attention, begging me to stare…
“Why’s your face so red?” Pax growls. “You run here or something?”
“No. I came in the car.”
“Cool. Well. Thanks for stopping by but I’m kind of busy.” He goes to close his bedroom door. Actually does close it. I note the dressing taped to his back and over his hip as he turns, squirreling away that detail. I’m not upset by his coldness, or by the way he dismissed me. Best of all, I’m not even remotely embarrassed that I came here. I wasn’t tongue tied in front of him at all.
Wow. Well, isn’t that a development.
Smiling to myself, I turn and head back down the stairs, back the way I came. I hit the sixth step when Pax’s bedroom door swings open and he appears again, this time with a vape pen in his hand. A cloud of smoke trickles down his nose, curling around his face. Through the thickness of it, his eyes are intense, liquid as mercury. “Seriously, Chase. What the fuck are you doing here? I have to know.”
“I just wanted to check something.”
He holds a hand up in the air. “And? What the fuck did you have to drive over here to check?”
I contemplate a lie. I think I’d get away with lying to him now. He’d never be able to tell. But this strange new courage in my chest urges me to tell him the truth. What would be the harm in that now? “I wanted to see if I was still afraid of you,” I say. The confession comes out easily. A couple of weeks ago, I’d never have been able to say this to him. Never. I’d have been too petrified of facing him to manage actual, intelligible words, but today I don’t seem to be having any trouble at all. This moment, right here, might just be the most liberating, freeing moment of my entire life.