Chapter 27

Aro

“This isn’t funny!” I yell, thrashing in their arms. “Let me go!”

One of them has my wrists, and I kick against the door, the dark-haired one laughing. I remember him. He’s one of the guys who was in the park that night and in the hideout later. Stoli or something?

“Is he following us?” the blond one next to me asks the driver, and I look around as we zoom past streetlights, driving far above the speed limit.

Stoli pulls me up onto his lap, laughing, and the driver’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror. “Of course, he’s following.”

“Then let the fun begin!” Stoli roars into the night.

The guy next to us wraps something around my wrists, and I pull them away, but I’m too late. He yanks the strap, binding my hands with a cable tie, and I growl, kicking and whipping around. “Dammit!”

My hair flies into my face, and I’m about to launch forward to grab the driver, but Stoli wraps his arms around my body like a steel band, no doubt guessing that I’m capable of anything.

Probably a bad idea to attack someone while they’re driving anyway, but I’ve never been accused of good ideas, so…

They cruise past the last stoplight, turn left, and hit the highway toward Weston.

But then I look over, seeing the other person in the seat next to the driver.

“Hey, Aro,” Schuyler says, rolling on some lip gloss and meeting my eyes in her mirror.

I flinch. Oh, what the fuck?

“We’re just going to give you a ride home, okay?”

“Thoughtful.”

“I mean, you can come back,” the driver tells me, and I see his white teeth flash a smile. “We’re just teasing Hawke.”

Stoli tips back a silver flask, and I look down, seeing his legs cross over mine, locking me in.

“Well, she’ll have to walk, Dirk,” Schuyler tells him. “River rats don’t have cars.”

Bitch. Did she plan this? Get a little pissed when she saw me and Hawke in his room this morning?

But I keep calm, replying, “Someday I will have a car.” I look at her. “Might have a job, too. A career. A family. A little money maybe. A Caribbean vacation.” I pause. “Maybe a cruise. Hey, anything is possible, right?”

She turns her eyes over her shoulder, staring at me.

“But having none of that shit equals being happy,” I tell her. “As you well know.”

Hawke has probably been the only thing to ever escape her. She’s used to getting what she wants.

“I get it,” she goes on. “Hawke is your meal ticket. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t blame you for targeting him.”

Targeting him? I don’t need Hawke. Any woman with half of a brain should bank on paying her own bills. And being a single parent. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

“Some women can only grow by men,” she muses.

Whatever.

Stoli lifts his flask again, and I smell the alcohol. “Why do they call you Stoli?” I ask.

“It’s a mystery.”

Yeah.

The driver—Dirk, she’d called him—increases his speed, and I look behind me, seeing Hawke disappear behind the turn we just sped around.

Shit.

Dirk winds around turns, the tires screeching, and I grab his headrest to keep upright. “Slow down!” I shout.

But Stoli speaks up. “Hey, Weston!” he sings.

I look and see he’s holding out his phone, pointing it at us in selfie mode and recording.

“Got one of your own!” he announces. “Let’s get this party started!”

Idiot.

I look behind me again, but I don’t see anything. Where is Hawke? I can’t go back to Weston. My brother and sister are in Shelburne Falls, and I have nowhere to stay if I go home.

“So, have you guys done it yet?” I hear Schuyler ask.

I don’t look at her.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she admits. “Maybe that’s what Hawke needed. To slum a little. Get himself excited with someone who will only ever be a hot piece of ass.”

“Jesus, Schuyler.” Dirk laughs, glancing at her, then back to the road. “We’re having fun. Don’t be a bitch.”

But she just keeps going. “If he hasn’t touched you, don’t worry about it. He’ll probably be a virgin forever. His dick is broke.”

It was hard enough in my mouth this morning.

I don’t tell her that. Instead, I lean forward, ball my fists tight, still held together with the zip-tie, and jerk my chin. “Hey.”

She turns her head, and I punch her right in the goddamn nose.

She flails, but I launch myself out of Stoli’s lap, grab her in the front seat, and hold her hair as the car swerves.

She screams, and they try to pull me off.

“Hawke is worth a hundred times of every other man you’ve ever met,” I grit out in her face. “If I hear one more piece of shit about him leave your mouth, you’ll need surgery to fix your face.”

“Hey!” Dirk yells, trying to drive and rip my hands off her. Stoli wraps his hands around my waist, yanking me back, but the more he pulls, the more I bring her with me over the fucking seat.

“Ah!” she cries, and I spot a line of blood dripping out of her nose.

The car rocks side to side, we tumble, and I pull her as I kick the back of Dirk’s seat.

He slams on the brakes, swerves to the side of the road, and the car screeches to a halt. Everyone loses their balance, and Stoli releases his hold just long enough. I throw myself out of the car and fall to the road, breaking my fall with my arms. I gasp, climbing to my feet.

I don’t wait to look where I am. If he just posted that video and the Rebels see me back in Weston, they’ll keep me there.

I run.

With my wrists still tied in front of me and my hair flying in my face, I race across the road and into the woods. I see headlights approach, but I don’t stop to see if it’s Hawke.

“Aro!” Stoli yells.

Digging in my heels, I run as fast as I can, through the trees, down an incline, and across a dirt road.

“We’re going to get you!” someone sing-songs.

“Get her!” I hear another shout.

Shit. Sweat dampens my face, and I don’t know when I lost my hat, but it’s probably still in the car.

I fall into a tree, breathing hard and looking around.

“Aro!” Stoli shouts. “I’ve got vodka!”

And I laugh, surprising myself. I know they’re playing—well, maybe not Schuyler. She’d probably chop off all of my hair for making her bleed twice.

But I can’t go back to Weston. Not while things are still unsettled with Hugo and Reeves, and especially not without my sister and brother.

Something shines ahead, and I peer around the tree trunks, making out moonlight on water.

Blackhawk Lake.

I run, seeing racks of canoes that haven’t been put away yet, the dock, and dark buildings barely visible around the water and under the shadows of the trees.

The camp. Hawke and I didn’t go inside any of the cabins last night, and they’re probably all locked, but I race for them anyway. I can hide in between.

But just then, a figure runs out in front of me, and I suck in a sharp breath before I recognize that it’s Hawke. I smile, but he looks pissed. He swoops down and picks me up, throwing me over his shoulder. He runs, and I grunt, his shoulder digging into my stomach.

“I can run, you know?” I tell him.

Why the hell is he carrying me?

He climbs a small set of stairs, I hear a lock twist, and we’re inside an enclosure, the scent of campfire and Axe Body Spray heavy in the small space.

He slams the door and whips around like he’s scanning the cabin for danger. I try to hold in my laugh, but it escapes.

He came after me.

He always comes for me.

God, I love him. I—

I freeze, still hanging there on his shoulder.

I love him...

The words are only a breath in my head, but my heart swells so hard it hurts.

I close my eyes. My arms feel too empty—everything feels empty when he’s not around, I…

I was ready to kick that bitch to the moon for talking about him that way. I couldn’t allow it. It should never happen. She’s not fit to know him, and I’m sick to think she ever got to touch him.

I can’t love him.

But I do.

“Fuck,” I mumble.

“You okay?” he says, hearing me.

He sets me back on my feet, and I shake off everything in my head and the stupid, damn epiphany that I just had. “Yeah, they’re just fooling around,” I explain.

I hold out my wrists, and he pulls out his keys, slicing off the plastic band. “He was going ninety miles an hour, Aro. I’m going to kill them.”

“Four against two?” I remind him. “They’re trying to take me back to Weston.”

He frowns.

We hear shouts in the night, and Hawke walks to the window, peering through the cracks in the shutters that are already secured over the windows for the winter ahead. The moonlight hits the tattoo on his neck, and I’m paralyzed. Was he thinking he’d get it removed someday? Does he already regret it?

Or maybe he’ll keep it forever, always having a reminder of me. That once, we were here together.

The words are soft but clear, and I don’t even try to stop myself. “I love you,” I tell him.

He turns his head away from the window, toward me, but not all the way.

I take a step toward him. “Don’t say anything,” I blurt out. “Please. I don’t want to know if you don’t love me too, and if you say you do then I’ll worry you’re just saying it because I said it. I just…”

I can’t breathe all of a sudden. A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d be the first person to ever say ‘I love you’, but when he goes off to college, I want him to know this was real. That he was important to me.

“I want to crawl inside of you sometimes,” I whisper. “Sometimes I want you to be all that I can see and hear. So that nothing exists in the world to me but the feel of you.”

Something passes by the cabin—a rustle of leaves, someone running, an animal—but neither of us register it enough to hide.

Hawke slowly turns, and I can just make out his blue eyes in the shadows.

“I’m scared, Hawke. I’m always scared.” I take another step. “You don’t see it yet, but your life will change, and I won’t be able to keep up. I know this will end, but I need you to know that you’re incredible and you’ll be my favorite memory. I’ll miss you so much.”

I stand there, my stomach in knots because I’m dying to know what he’s thinking, but a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders now too. I’m always hiding, but I needed him to know that.

He doesn’t speak, though.

Instead, he rushes me, and I catch him in my arms, both of us grabbing for each other as he backs me into the wall.

He catches my lips between his teeth. I can’t breathe. Hawke…

“This is all there is,” I gasp, tears filling my eyes. “You’re all there is, and I can’t stop no matter how much my brain is telling me to.”

He squeezes me, pressing our bodies together so close and our lips hovering over each other. I inhale his scent, wanting to keep it on something I own—anything—and never wash it off.

Let us live, since we must die.

I wrap my arms around his neck and gaze up into his eyes. “We’re kicking and screaming when we come into the world and kicking and screaming when we leave it,” I tell him. “Death is never peaceful or painless. In most cases, we know it’s happening. We’re frightened and suffering and hopeless, because all we can feel is the agony, and we won’t be able to think beyond it, because we’re so scared. We don’t want to go.”

He kisses me, and I kiss him back, memorizing everything I feel.

“We won’t be able to remember everything that was wonderful,” I whisper. “We won’t think of this. It’s what’s between that’s the good part. Between birth and death. Every breath. Every heartbeat. And all the ones that were for you.” I bite his bottom lip softly. “I want your arms around me, because I don’t know if they ever will be again. I don’t know if tomorrow will come or if you’ll think of me when it does, so I want it now. Hold me. Hold me as tightly as you can. I fucking love you.”

He grips my hair at my scalp. “And I’m never going to let you stop.”

He covers my mouth again, his friends outside forgotten as he slips his tongue inside and the feeling reaches down to my goddamn toes.

I groan, pulling off his shirt as he unbuttons my jeans. I push them down my legs, shimmying out of them as he takes my face and kisses me harder.

“Hawke…” I flick his top lip with my tongue. “I want to feel you for the next five fucking days. Fuck me hard.”

He growls, pulls me to the table in the center of the room, and comes down on my back, forcing me over. I hit it, moaning and so damn wet I’m practically melting.

He yanks down my underwear, and then I hear him unwrap a condom. I bring my knee up, laying it on the table at my side.

“Aro…” He fists my hair with one hand, crowning my entrance with his dick in the other, and then says in my ear. “Let me know if this doesn’t feel good, okay?”

He slides inside of me, groans, and in less than two seconds, he’s pounding away.

I tip my head back, close my eyes, and smile, just hanging on as he hits deep. He squeezes my hips, and I prop myself up on my elbows, gripping the other side of the table, feeling him enter me again and again.

“Aro, God,” he groans, but it almost sounds like he’s in pain.

“Don’t stop.” I moan with every thrust. “Go harder and faster. Please.”

I want to feel him when I wake up. I want him to see it on my face. I will never forget him.

“Weston can’t have you back,” he tells me. “You’re mine.”

He leans over me, planting his hand on the table, and pumps harder. I cry out, his groans fill the cabin, and his cock slides so deep I feel it in my stomach. I can fucking taste him. We’re unstoppable.

“It’s too loud,” I pant. “They’re going to find us.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

I smile again and feel the orgasm cresting. “Hawke, Hawke…I’m coming.”

He pumps again and again, and I hold my breath as it bursts open. Spreading through my tummy, and making my entire body freeze, he fucks me, and I ride it out, letting it course under my skin.

My body bounces as he rides me. God, I love him.

But then we hear someone’s voice. “Oh, shit!”

I pop my head up, Hawke stops, and I see Stoli standing in the doorway.

But only for a split-second. Hawke comes down on me, covering my body and face, and then I hear Stoli shout, “Sorry, Hawke!”

And he slams the door.

“They’re busy!” We hear Stoli yell to someone. “Super busy!”

“Seriously?” Dirk says outside the door. And then a shout, “Way to go, Hawke!”

I try not to, but I snort. His friends are so supportive.

But Hawke isn’t laughing. “I’m going to kill them.”

I rise up, propping myself up on my hands and looking over my shoulder. “Tomorrow,” I tell him, backing up into his dick. “I want to take a bath in the lake and then come back in here and ride you until you sweat.”

He growls and wraps his hand around the front of my neck, making my back arch and my ass press into his cock. “Look up, baby.”

I do, seeing the skylight and the stars. He moves inside me, the ghost of my orgasm still there as he chases his.

I feel him—only him—every sense and every breath filled with him, because for the first time ever, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

And the sky is looking back.

“I want to stay here forever,” I whisper.

I lean over the console, burying my nose and mouth in the sleeve of his shirt. I peer up at him, in love with the sight of me all over him. The hickey on his neck. His hair all over the place, because he swam, we played in the water, and then we fucked and played again.

Then we woke up and played some more.

But he shakes his head, one hand on the wheel and the other holding mine. “Girl, don’t give me that look.” A smile pulls at his lips. “We need to eat. And I need a shower.”

I sigh. I know. Me too.

The sun shines through the trees, waning as the late afternoon warmth soaks into my skin. We’d stayed out at the lake all day, neither of us wanting to ever leave.

My thighs tingle, and an ache throbs between my legs, because I’m a little sore, but I love it. I love loving him with my body. I like sex. With him.

We park the car and sneak up to the roof, descending through the door. It’s only been a couple of days, but the place looks different. Still the same comforts, though. Hidden, quiet, safe.

He picks me up and carries me to the shower, and I kiss him the whole way, laughing as we stumble to get our clothes off.

I wash my hair and rinse, both of us unable to keep our eyes off of each other.

We don’t have long before school starts for him. Dylan and Kade won’t go back for a couple of weeks, but college starts earlier. His aunt Quinn had left to get resettled in her Notre Dame apartment before I even came to live in the tower, he’d told me.

“Is it an option for me to stay here after this is all over?” I ask him.

He remains silent.

“I mean, just in case,” I blurt out. “Like if the kids stay in the area, and I want to be close to them, and maybe until I can earn enough to get a place for them and me?”

I don’t know who owns this place, or if Hawke has plans for it once school starts back, but knowing I have a place to live for the next few weeks would help. I’m asking. It’s what he wanted.

He rubs water over the back of his neck, turning away. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

I narrow my eyes. Why tomorrow? It’s not that hard. Yes or no?

I knew I shouldn’t have asked.

“I don’t expect anything for free,” I assure him. “I was just seeing what my options are. Never mind.”

I turn away, but I hear him behind me. “What are you going to do with a GED, Aro?”

Huh?

“You should want more options,” he explains.

Is that his business? My plans for my future?

I rinse off the rest of the soap. “Or maybe you just want a girlfriend who won’t embarrass you.”

He’s going to have a PhD, eventually. He can’t wind up with a high school dropout. I turn away, but in a moment, he’s there, twisting me around and taking my face in his hands. “Don’t ever say that again.”

Tears sting my eyes, and I don’t know what to think anymore. I want what he wants. In a perfect world, sure.

But that’s not going to happen for me. There are more important things. I just can’t.

I pull away, and we finish washing, but we don’t say more. I wrap a towel around me, heading into the tunnel, but as soon as I step into the dim hallway, I see Dylan and Stoli.

Hawke comes out behind me, charging toward his friend in only the towel around his waist. Stoli starts to run, but Hawke grabs him by the T-shirt.

“Dude…” Stoli gasps. “It was all in good fun!”

Hawke pushes him up against the wall.

“I’ll never touch her again!” the moron shouts, holding his hands in front of his face. “I promise! I promise!”

Hawke holds up his fist but doesn’t punch him. Dylan scoffs, sauntering toward me in black shorts, a long-sleeved, loose black top that cuts up in the front a little, showing her stomach, and sheer black tights. She wears black boots with a wedge heel, making her a few inches taller. “You guys almost ready?” she asks me.

I dive into my room. “I have to get dressed.”

We leave the boys to it, and she follows me inside, carrying a bag.

I pull out some clothes, slipping on some underwear under my towel.

“I saw something you might like.” She holds the bag out to me. “I had to get it.”

“What is it?”

But she just smiles.

I take the bag and peer inside, pulling out something that looks like a shoebox. I drop the bag to the floor.

Peeling open the lid, I see a pair of boots, kind of like hers, but hers have straps that let her foot peek through, whereas these are completely covered. There’s a heel, but the sole is rubber. I love the buckles and the zipper.

“Coco says that sometimes they give young women their first pair of heels at their quinceañera,” she tells me, “and you said you didn’t have one, and I never had a sweet sixteen, because they’re sooooo archaic—but maybe I would’ve liked to have one—maybe…” She pauses and then rejoins her original train of thought. “Anyway, I thought we could wear heels tonight.”

I glance at hers again and then mine, remembering the custom. She’s right. Sometimes, your quince is when you get your first pair. A symbol of being a woman, etc.

I’ve actually had heels. These wouldn’t be my first pair, but… I pick one up, examining it. I would wear these.

I smile to myself. She’s not bad.

“We might have to run at some point,” I point out.

It’s entirely possible.

She just looks at me, her bottom lip kind of sticking out. “But I want to wear heels.”

I laugh. I guess it’s pointless to argue.

She picks up the bag and digs inside, pulling out the jersey I didn’t see.

It’s a blue and black Rebel football one. I gape at her. “Where the hell did you get this?”

I grab for it, but she snatches it away. “You gotta wear the heels, though.”

I snatch it out of her hand and roll my eyes. “I’m going to break an ankle,” I grumble, taking the jersey and new shoes to the bed with the rest of my clothes. “But fine.”

I dress, and she lends me some makeup from her purse. Once my hair is dry, I pull it up into a high ponytail and tease it up, feeling like I’m putting on armor for war.

I pull on my new shoes and look down at myself, legs looking so much longer in jean shorts and heels. The blue on the jersey brings out my skin tone, and I’m excited for Hawke to see me done up a little. I loved how he looked at me at that pool party.

But…

Something’s off. There’s nothing exactly wrong, but it’s not my style. Dylan stands at my side, and I look at her, and she looks at me, and she says, “I feel like we should switch.”

Oh, thank God. Black is my color.

We giggle, whipping off our clothes. She gives me her tights and shirt, and I toss over the jean shorts—which are hers anyway. I pull out my hair, dab on a little more plum lipstick, and when we emerge, Hawke and Stoli are already waiting in the great room.

“Dylan, what the hell are you wearing?” Stoli barks.

She sashays past, pulling her hair up into a ponytail with the huge Weston football jersey hanging on her lean body.

But all I see now is Hawke, sitting on the couch and looking over his shoulder at me. His eyes trail from my new heels all the way up to my face.

I feel the tight shorts and the way the shirt grazes my stomach like it’s his fingers.

I stare at him, my hair hanging over both sides of my face. Heat rises in his eyes.

“Take it off!” Stoli yells at her.

“Nope,” she chirps. “It’ll be funny.”

We leave through the bakery and out the front door this time, the sun already set and High Street in full evening craze. The streetlights glow, cars drift past, and a line forms at the movie theater. Packed restaurants sit diners at the outside tables, and I look up, the stars like confetti across the sky.

Grudge Night.

It’s only six, and the sun won’t be up for twelve hours.

Twelve hours.

An ’82 El Camino drifts past us, and I know Hawke and Dylan don’t know who’s in the car when the passengers look at us and we look back at them, but they know those are Weston kids inside. They hold my eyes a little longer, one of them swiping his finger across his throat, smiling while he does it.

The Rebels are already here.

“Did you warn Hunter?” I hear Hawke ask Dylan.

Her reply is clipped. “He saw the message.”

I draw in a deep breath, feeling the balmy night in every pore, and the hot cement under my heels. The smell of flowers from the potted plants that decorate the storefronts fills the air, and I can hear my pulse in my ears.

“Let’s go,” Hawke says.

But then I hear a rumble, spotting a black car with rust around the edges of the doors and the paint worn through, revealing the old blue underneath.

I grab Hawke, stopping him. “1972 Dodge Charger,” I whisper.

He follows my gaze, seeing the classic vehicle crawl past us, the tinted windows hiding who’s inside.

The hair on my neck rises, and I turn, looking up at the roof of the hideout. A form stands there, their face hidden in the trees, but I make out the arms and the hood. I know they’re looking down at us.

“Marauders…” I say, remembering Hawke’s story.

But Hawke retorts. “That story isn’t true. It inspired, but it’s not accurate.”

“I think it might be,” I reply, turning back toward the street. “There’s a reason there’s bad blood between Pirates and Rebels. And something woke them up.”

The tower has new residents, and someone has noticed. It’s starting again.