“Pax Davis. I live in the house off the mountain road, halfway down the hill. Come find me whenever. I’ll always have time to talk to you, motherfucker.”
Jonah blinks again. Too slow. Processing. He glances over to Chase, something nasty and hungry flashing across his face. “Just remember our agreement, Presley. I wouldn’t want t—”
I grab him by the face, wrenching his gaze away from her. “You don’t look at her. You look at me. You don’t talk to her. You talk to me.”
Angrily, he pushes my hand away. I only let him go because he begins walking backwards out of the computer lab. “That’s all well and good for right now, Pax Davis. But I’m her brother. I’ll know that bitch for the rest of her life. Are you always gonna be around to play bodyguard?” He smiles extra wide, and a sick sense of foreboding makes a knot of my insides. “I don’t fucking think so.”
34
PRES
* * *
“Wanna tell me what that was all about?”
I hurry along the hallway, a monster headache pounding in my temples.
“You can start by telling me why you were unconscious when that fucker carried you inside the building, Chase.”
Pax is a furious whirlwind of questions. His Joy Division t-shirt is straining across his chest; he’s still so wound up that he looks like he’s about to hulk out of the damn thing. His pale grey eyes flash murder.
I’m so alarmed by what just happened that I keep stumbling over my own feet in my haste to get away from him. I need to be alone. “I got lightheaded. I wasn’t feeling well for a second. I fainted.”
“Do you do that a lot around that guy?”
I stop quickly, facing him. “No! I—” I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Open them again. “Look. I didn’t have breakfast this morning, and I was late, and I guess I just pushed myself a little harder than I should have. I passed out. It’s totally normal for girls. We—”
“Fuck that.” Pax folds his arms across his chest, glaring at me.
“What? What do you mean, fuck that?”
“I’m not some neanderthal jock who thinks girls are weak. You guys literally push ten-pound babies out of your vaginas. Feed me another line. A missed breakfast isn’t going to make you pass out.”
“Pax! I really don’t want to do this with you right now.”
He sets his jaw. “What was he so worried about in there? Why was he talking about you calling the cops? And evidence? And what agreement?”
Christ, I was really hoping he hadn’t paid attention to any of that. Exhaustion sweeps over me as I move again, heading for the exit. “It’s really nothing for you to worry about, okay. I don’t want to talk about it. I just…” The sun beats down on me when I step outside, but the heat doesn’t penetrate my skin. Inside, I’m frozen, my insides choked with ice. I feel like, if I try and breathe too deep, all of my vital organs are going to fracture.
Pax hurries ahead of me, turning to face me at the top of the steps, blocking my way. “Where are you going? You forget you live here or something?”
“Pax.” I skirt around him, jogging down the steps.
“You’re running back to your dad’s place, then? Where that asshole is probably waiting for you?”
Oh, God. He’s right. Jonah probably is at Dad’s place. I swallow thickly. “I’m hungry. I already told you. I didn’t eat this morning. I’m going to the diner.”
He moves in front of me, blocking my way again. “No, you’re fucking not.”
My panic mixes with anger, combining to create a volatile cocktail of emotion in my bloodstream. “Were you full of shit back there? Because I swear I just heard you saying that girls don’t like it when they’re forced to do things against their will. And now you’re here, telling me what I am and am not going to do. It’s the same fucking thing.” I feel sick as I say it. This is not the same thing Jonah was trying to do to me, has done to me in the past. It’s not even close. I’m ready to say anything to get out of here, though.
Pax flares his nostrils angrily, looking away. He’s so fucking tense. I can tell he wants to argue with me. He’s fighting with himself, trying not to say something that will make this even worse, and it’s costing him big. He looks down at his feet for a second, blowing out a long, unhappy breath. “Come with me to the house. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“No, Pax. I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re gonna poke and poke at this until I give you the answers you want, and I can’t deal with that right now.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth, considering. A frown forms on his face.
“Come to the house. I’ll make sure you eat. I will not ask you a single question.”
Is he being serious? I don’t know if I can believe that. “You promise?”
He looks right into my soul when his eyes meet mine. So intense. This kind of eye contact is terrifying with him. He places his hand on his chest, directly in the center, right over his heart, and I don’t even need to hear him say the words.
I sigh, giving in. It’s all I can do. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
Watching Pax try to navigate a kitchen is interesting. He’s so sure of himself, and confident in everything that he does. Turns out that’s because he only usually does things he can do well. Put him in an unfamiliar situation and things are a little different. He curses as he yanks open all of the kitchen cupboards. A lot.
Eggs.
Cheese.
Salsa.
Milk.
Avocado.
The items all get slammed down on the marble counter with unbridled aggression. Pax’s mood is black to say the least, but he keeps his promise. He doesn’t ask a single question.
He grabs a bag of tater tots out of the freezer, dumps them onto a baking tray, then hurls the tray into the oven.
“I think…you need to turn it on,” I offer.
“I know what the fuck I’m doing,” he snaps. Then he turns the oven on to three-seventy-five, grumbling angrily. Taking a glass bowl out of a cupboard, he cracks an unholy amount of eggs into it, adds a bunch of milk, a slab of butter, and whisks the living shit out the mixture with a fork, glowing with rage. Once he’s done with that, he adds a heap of salt, some pepper and starts whisking all over again.
He doesn’t utter another word until he’s poured the eggs into a hot pan and he’s scrambling them. “When I was eight, I caught my dad fucking a woman in the elevator of our building. He was so angry with me, he dragged me back to our apartment and shoved me inside. When he pushed me, he pushed me hard. I fell down these three steps that lead into our kitchen, and I broke my wrist. I ran and hid from him in the stairwell. Our neighbor found me and took me to the hospital. When Meredith came to get me, she was so mad. She said I’d embarrassed our family by airing our dirty laundry in public. Slapped me across the face in the parking lot.”
I sit still on the stool at the breakfast counter. “And Meredith is…?”
“The woman you baited me into saving,” he says tightly.