“Wh-what?” I mumble, and his chuckle has my emotions warring over panic and arousal.
“I’m kidding. It only feels like that for a second.”
This time, I do stop, but he senses it, pausing before running into me. Trixie walks a few more steps before realizing we aren’t with her anymore. I notice that he only kept his hand on me.
“What are you talking about?” I swallow nervously and glance around, noticing Trixie’s gaze as she waits for us to catch up.
“Go,” Corbin says to her.
She tilts her head to me. I give her a nod, and she turns, moving up with the crowd still muddling through the woods. He reaches one finger up, tracing my collarbone through my T-shirt, sending goose bumps down my body before he narrows his eyes.
“Who are you?” he whispers, running one hand across my ear and fisting my hair in the back. He tugs, pulling my head back so I look up at him. His eyes glitter as the moon glints off them in the dark, making him look every bit the villain that he is.
“I’m Landry—”
“No.” He stops me with one word, and we stay like that until he lowers his head, pressing a kiss where my collarbone meets at the base of my neck.
I stand, frozen, as he does it, prey in his hands. I’m overcome by him, his touch, his smell. He lets go of my hair and steps back. I skitter to the side a few steps, off-kilter at the sudden release, and when I regain my footing, I look up.
He’s gone.
Empty woods are around me as I turn in a quick circle. I feel like I dreamed up what just happened, but I know it did. I can feel my pulse where he kissed me, thumping against my burning skin, so I press two fingers there.
I can’t see anyone anymore, but I follow the noise until I find everyone gathered in the clearing Trixie and I sat in yesterday. In the sunlight, the small cliff overlooking the water is serene, but now, in the dead of night, it’s a masterpiece of horror. The water sounds like a torrent below even though I know, yesterday, it was calm and trickling. I hang back at the edge of the trees, not even walking into the clearing, when I hear the sound of the first splash. Part of me already knew what the initiation was as soon as we started walking into the woods, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it.
They don’t know. They couldn’t know, could they?
Heights are my greatest fear. I can’t pinpoint a time in my life that created the fear; it’s always been there.
I start shaking and wrap my arms around my middle, fighting the urge to dry-heave as the nerves take over my belly.
I don’t have to do this. This is insane. What if someone gets hurt?
It’s dangerous to jump into water if you don’t know how deep it is or if there are hidden rocks. Although, if this is what they do every year, I’m sure the water has been cleared, right?
A laugh bursts out of me, part hysterical and part self-deprecating. If I sit here and panic like I’m doing now, they win. And they can’t win. They can’t know that this gets to me.
“What’s wrong, lil sis?”
Too late for that.
Bodhi’s mocking tone grates on my nerves, and I pointedly ignore him. I don’t understand their hot-and-cold routine.
What did I ever do to them?
Then, Brock’s cold voice from the first night I met them flies into my mind. “Tell us what you know about your mother.” And it sends chills through me again.
Have I been so blind to think this is only about me?
Of course they hate my mom; she’s the stepmother to them, wife to their rich father. They probably think she’s a gold digger when that can’t be possible. My dad has money, and she left him. Though I doubt he noticed. He’s still yet to contact me, and it’s been almost five days since I arrived at my new “home.”
“It’s almost your turn,” a cold voice says right next to my ear.
I throw a hand out, connecting with a hard chest. Brock. He presses his fingers to my back, exactly where Corbin touched me earlier, but this time, I don’t get the same sensation. Where there were butterflies of excitement, now there is only dread.
As I get closer to the edge, I start to dig my heels in to slow us down, trying to keep myself from going over, but Brock doesn’t stop.
“Brock,” Corbin cuts in, and he stalls, looking over his shoulder. “Let me,” he says.
I expel the breath I was holding in one long whoosh. I don’t know why I was expecting him to save me, but I’m let down. It shouldn’t please me that he wants to be involved, but even through this fear, the exhilaration is back once he grabs my wrist. This has got to be some sort of syndrome, where I am developing feelings for this guy who doesn’t seem to care about me. Something is wrong with that, but I don’t care right now, not when I feel his skin on mine. It dulls everything around me until my toes hit the edge, and I stare down at the darkness where I know there is water. I’m the last one standing. Trixie is off to the side, watching as the three boys step up to stand beside me.
“Any last words, lil sis?” Bodhi asks, and as soon as he does, I feel it—the push that sends me over.
I don’t know which one shoved me, but I hate them all. To my surprise, Corbin doesn’t let go of my wrist, falling over the edge of the cliff with me, and we plummet together. As we are suspended in the air, I look over, his eyes on me, and it’s the last thing I see before diving beneath the water.
Even then, he doesn’t let go. I’m anchored, tethered to him, as he hits the bottom and shoots up, up, up, pulling me with him. As we break free of the watery prison, I sputter, water caught in my nose and throat, choking me, and he lets go of my wrist. I tread water, raking the hair from my eyes, and I find him swimming for the opposite edge, so I follow.
8
Corbin
“What the hell was that?” Landry sputters as she drags her soaking-wet ass out of the water.
Sitting on the side of the bank, she takes a few deep breaths, but I just watch her.
“Guess I fell,” I say, shrugging.
She looks at me incredulously. “You fell? You want me to believe that? You had a tight grip on my wrist the entire time.”
“Shut up,” I say, stalking toward her. “You don’t know what you felt, heard, or saw.” I get in her face, pinning her with my gaze.
I wish I could say I didn’t know why I did it, but I do. Seeing her standing there, obviously petrified, made me think of myself and the terror I used to feel at being helpless, small, and how no one was around to take care of me. I can’t openly say it, but I did what I could to take her mind off of it.
I don’t usually have these types of visceral reactions to the students here, but she’s different. She makes me different, and I’m not sure I like it. I don’t want to try and figure this out, but each interaction I have with her puts us on another level where, eventually, I’m going to have to.
“Why do you act like you hate me one minute and then take care of me the next? It’s very confusing,” she says, standing up, water dripping off of her and onto the ground.
“I didn’t. I fell.” I stick to my story.
We spend the next few moments in a stare-off. I don’t lower my gaze until she finally looks away, conceding defeat.