Page 100 of Did They Break You

Van puts his hand over Ryann’s mouth as he turns to faux glare at her. But she twists under his arm and looks up at him, and he can’t stop his laugh.

“Ah, young love,” Sloane says. “They’ll probably have babies together.”

I widen my eyes. “They’ll what now?”

She glances at me as we contort our bodies to dodge another rowdy crowd of Tiger fans. “You too, Remi. You try to hide it but all that love you bury will burst forth one day and your kids will be spoiled as hell. And I’ll be the cool aunt still because I’ve got a beach house and you… don’t.” She cracks up and I can’t stop my lips from pulling up into a smile.

“I’ll have a mountain cabin and you won’t be invited if you keep cursing me with babies.” But I don’t mean it. I want them. Because she’s not wrong. I feel too much sometimes. Couldn’t I pour that into someone else?

“Before Remi can havebabies,” my cousin says, apparently ignoring everything else Sloane said, “she’d have to actually get laid.”

Ryann glances over her shoulder at me, her light brown eyes big and round as her lips curve up. “It’s not a bad idea, you know?”

Van groans low in this throat before he jerks his arm tighter around Ryann’s shoulders and I sense Sloane staring at me.

I glance at her and her brows are high, her lips pressed together like she’s trying not to laugh.

For some reason, I don’t blush, and I don’t feel uncomfortable. I just shake my head at Sloane in adon’t askgesture.

She mimes sealing her lips shut and throwing away the key, then links her arm through mine. A weightlessness seems to fill me at that close gesture, and being out under a fall sky with my friends, Cortland’s whereabouts locked down to a stadium we’re walking away from.

But Sloane glances down at my arm in hers, the smallest furrow to her brow. The lies I’ve told her seem so loud between us, even as neither of us speak a word about it.

The Veil seemshaunted.It’s all black and gray colors with orange accents and a smoky haze filling the space. It’s not open concept, and it looks all the more like an eerie church because of it. There are sectioned-off rooms with different themes, dark curtains dividing up booths in each one. It’s unlike any place I’ve been in and with the black marble flooring beneath my boots and an orange velvet booth seat underneath me, it feels like a place I belong. Part elegance and part horror, and we’re in a room that seems to be reserved for vampires, with blood painted on the tables and a photo of Bela Lugosi in a gilded frame on the wall behind my head.

We’re too many drinks in, an iced water now in front of me at the table after the last shot of tequila I did with the girls. My head feels hazy and The Veil is filling up with more and more people, laughter and squeals going off all around us but we can only partially see who comes in.

“So,” Sloane slurs at my side, one finger pointed at me and another at Ryann and Van, on her other side, “who’s paying tonight?”

I smile at her, the bleariness to her ocean blue eyes. Even half drunk with her hair sticking to her temples and her cheeks flushed, my best friend is gorgeous.

“Van, obviously,” Ryann says, her own eyes bright as she speaks very seriously to Sloane without checking how my cousin takes her words.

His brows are raised and his gaze meets mine, his elbows on the table and head resting against the back of his hands. “Obviously,” he mimics Ryann without looking away from me. Then he nudges his fingers up to run a hand over his shaved head.

I reach for my water, clenching my fingers around the cold glass.“Obviously,”I mouth back as Ryann and Sloane keep laughing together between us.

For a moment, as I bring the water up and drink it, ice hitting my teeth, my cousin just stares at me. I notice he hasn’t shaved recently and he looks good with a five o’clock shadow. But he seems to be lookingthroughme, and for one horrifying second, I wonder if he knows about Cortland. What we’re doing, what I’m hiding.

But then he grins at me, dimples popping in his handsome face, and relief spears through me like ice.

I turn my head away to clear my thoughts, and wish I hadn’t.

I see him but I know from this angle, they don’t. His tall frame is partially obscured by one of the many grey curtains hanging throughout the bar. There’s a beer in his hand but it’s still full and he doesn’t appear to be fully focused on the guy beside him. As the guy rambles on, occasionally tapping the back of his hand to Cortland’s chest, my nightmare’s eyes are up, focused on the TV screen mounted discreetly in the wall.

Laughter goes off around me and I’m sure I’m supposed to be in on the joke, but I angle myself back a little on my bench seat and try to get a view of the screen. Is it a game? Highlights from the one he just played?We’ve been here too damn long.

Sloane’s sharp elbow lodges against my ribs and I jerk toward her, trying to clear my expression.

“Take a shot with us!” Ryann is squealing as I settle my body back in gravity and get rid of this falling sensation in my stomach.

But I think I saw what was on the TV.

“Shot, shot, shot!” Van starts his chant and Sloane is divvying up the shots of what looks like tequila newly arrived at the table.

I smile at my cousin, then turn once more to steal a glance at the TV.

My body goes rigid.

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