Dallas was just as absent, but in his case I was the one finding excuses not to hang out. My father's threats were all too fresh in my mind, and I'd never forgive myself if Dallas was sent back to jail again. Worse than that, the threat on my stalker mail was haunting me every time I saw his name pop up on my phone. What if some sicko hurt Dallas because they thought he and I were together? Nope. Not going there.
By the end of the next week, I'd pretty much decided Bree was being a bitch. So of course, that's when I found her waiting for me after my psychology lab.
"Well, fancy seeing you, stranger," I muttered, brushing past her and continuing down the hallway. Steele was still driving me to and from SGU and hadn't once asked why I wasn't driving myself, which I appreciated. But he started getting irritated if I made him wait too long—he had an admirer on campus who saw it as her opportunity to flirt shamelessly—so I tried to be considerate.
Bree laughed like I was joking. I wasn't.
"Sorry I've been so busy lately, MK. I feel like such a shitty friend, considering everything that happened last week." She bit her lip, her eyes shifty as I scowled at her. "Anyway, I want to make it up to you."
"Oh yeah?" I asked, not touching her comment about being a shitty friend. "How so?"
She beamed a little too brightly as I pushed the doors open to the back parking lot, where Steele had taken to parking on the days Archer and Kody weren't in class.
"I'm throwing a party," she announced. "Tonight. My place. I've invited a bunch of the old Shadow Prep crew, too. It's about time you expanded your social horizons, you know, outside of Danvers Mansion."
I gave her a knowing smile, but shook my head. "As much as I'd love to come to one of your parties, it seems like a really dumb idea considering... my situation."
Her smile slipped slightly, but then she raised her brows. "Didn't your dad basically say that you've had this stalker for years?"
I frowned in confusion. "Yeah, so?"
She shrugged. "Well... what needs to change? You went to parties before you knew, and nothing happened. You shouldn't have to live in fear, MK. You're tougher than that."
Bree was trying to manipulate me and doing a pretty crappy job of it. "There were no creepy dolls left before."
"How do you know?" she challenged. And damn, she had a point. My father hadn't found it necessary to tell me about my stalker or even report it to the police. So how the hell would I know if any other dolls had been left? They had. I knew they had. The one on my mother's grave had been too similar for this to be all a big coincidence.
Even so, a party still felt like a bad idea, one of those too-stupid-to-live decisions that movie heroines made.
I glanced around the parking lot while considering how to decline Bree's invitation, then realized something. Steele wasn't waiting for me.
A moment later, I realized why.
A familiar midnight-black Corvette Stingray zipped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt beside Bree and I.
"Get in, Princess," Archer barked, not even bothering to get out of the car.
I bent down to peer through the open window and found Kody grinning at me from the passenger seat. Of Archer's two-seater car.
"Doesn't look like there's any space," I replied.
Archer tilted his sunglasses down, looking up at me with those ice-blue eyes of his. "Never stopped you before."
Bree laughed, even if she didn't get the joke. "Okay, there's an inside joke going on there. So, I'll see you tonight, MK. Dress sexy; Leon will be there."
I groaned, shaking my head. The fact that my ex-boyfriend was going to be there was not a selling point for me. Then again, Bree never had understood why I'd broken up with that two-pump-chump in the first place.
"What's tonight?" Archer asked before I could make my excuses to Bree.
She beamed at him. "A party at my place," she announced. "You guys can come, too, if you want."
My head whipped around, and I glared death at her. Her eyes widened like she’d just realized what she'd said, but the damage was done.
"We love parties!" Kody yelled from the passenger seat with a whoop. "Count us in."
Bree gave me an apologetic grimace, then hurried over to her car and left me to deal with two of the three pains in my ass.
"Get in, Princess Danvers," Archer repeated. "Steele got held up working on the Cobra."
I could only imagine that was one of his project cars. Given that I had no desire to walk the whole way home and Bree had just left, I rounded the hood of the car and popped Kody's door open.
"Shift over," I told him, but he just laughed and hauled me onto his lap.
It was safe to say sitting on Kody's lap in a two-seater Corvette was vastly different from sitting on Archer’s in the G-Wagen. For one thing, the G-Wagen had considerably more space inside. For another, Archer hadn't wanted me in his lap. Kody definitely did.
"If I have to slap your hands away from my tits or cunt one more time, Kodiak Jones…" I scolded him with only lukewarm heat after removing his hand from my inner thigh for maybe the fourth time.
He snickered with laughter under me, and Archer shot us both a dark look from the side of his sunglasses.
It didn't take us long to get home, though, and I practically jumped out of the car when it stopped. Not because I hated sitting in such tight confines with Kody underneath me... but because I liked it a little too much.
"Princess Danvers," Archer called out after me as I ran up the front steps to the house. "Who's Leon?"
"Why do you care, sunshine?" I replied, but then, because I didn't care to keep it a secret, I added, "He's my ex. But don't stress yourselves; I'm not looking to reconcile with any guy who declares the female orgasm a myth perpetuated by feminazis."
That really had been the last nail in our relationship coffin a few months before Riot Night. It didn't help that I'd also overheard him bragging to his stupid friends about everything he'd do with my trust fund once he married me. Yeah, never happening, bud.
When neither of the guys seemed to have anything more to say, I carried on into the house and went straight up to my room.
Closing the door behind me, I chucked my bag down on the floor and cringed at all the sparkly pink.
"I need to paint this fucking room," I murmured to myself. I’d thought I could handle it. It was just a bit of pink glitter, right? Who cared?
I did. It made me physically nauseated.
I made a mental note to talk to Steele about a trip to the hardware store over the weekend, then started to get ready for Bree's party.
Some time later, I headed back downstairs to get some dinner before we left. Bree's parties were typically heavy on the alcohol and light on the food—not a great combination under the best of circumstances, and these were far from that.
"Damn, MK." Kody let out a low whistle as I wandered over to where they sat in the den. The huge flat-screen was on, and Archer was playing some sort of first-person shooter. Steaming pizza boxes sat on the table unopened, like they'd just arrived.
Fridays were our cook's day off, so I was quietly glad they'd taken the initiative to order in.