Page 76 of The Worst Kind of Promise
I feel his hands shake me, hear his pitch rise with concern, all while blurry bodies continue gliding past me. Everyone’s faceless except forhim. And as he stares at me, unmoving, a crooked smile stretches his mouth inhumanly wide, those sharp fangs of his waiting for me to get close enough—waiting for the opportune moment to sink into the flesh of my jugular.
I can’t hear anything over the blood galloping in my ears, over the roaring pain that my body’s been clinging to this entire time. That night comes back in flashes, first starting with my intoxication, then with his hand on my thigh, then with the sickening noise of his skin against mine, and lastly with the ache between my legs like a string of barbed wire shredding my inner walls.
“Faye, what’s going on?”
Kit’s words sound like a foreign language.
I can’t…I can’t be here. I can’t do this again. I thought it was over. I thought I was free. I thought I wasbetter.
But I wasn’t really better, was I? I was running. Eventually my past was going to catch up to me.
I wish I could say that Kit’s voice was what brought me back to the land of the living. But it wasn’t. It was…his.
“Faye Hollings?”
My eyes strain to stay on him, to not water at the reminder of that night. Sweat besmirches every inch of my exposed skin as bile rises in my throat. I couldn’t say something if I tried. If I open my mouth, I’ll throw up.
That charming smile—the one that made him universally loved by everyone in our grade—is saccharine, the kind that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
“Saxon Thompson. From high school. Oh my God, it’s been like…what? At least a few years since we’ve seen each other,” he says with a radiant expression, looking exactly the same as I remember him. Conventionally attractive, well-dressed, with coiffed, brown hair and ice-blue eyes thatfreezeme.
Kit’s been clocking this entire interaction with tense shoulders, an untrusting glare, and a grizzly growl rumbling in his chest. But Saxon is as oblivious as he was in high school, only seeing whathewants to see, what will benefithim. Everything else simply doesn’t exist.
Saxon’s gaze has attached onto me like some kind of parasite, burrowing in even the tiniest of crevices. All he needs is a drop of my blood and that moldering rot can begin to spread through blackened tissue. Infection, illness, then death.
“How have you been? You look amazing.”
How can he say that? How can he act like he doesn’t remember? Unless he doesn’t. Unless that night was so inconsequential to him that heforgothe sexually assaulted someone he considered his best friend.
Kit steps the slightest bit in front of me, shielding me with his gargantuan body and sticking his hand out. “Kit Langley,” he greets, receiving a rather enthusiastic shake from Saxon.
Saxon’s smug little face lights up, yet it doesn’t make him look appealing like happiness does on other people. All those controlled wrinkles—manufactured to look genuine—make him look like the lowest life form there is.Repulsive.
“Oh, I know who you are. Big fan of the Reapers. Me and my boys are season ticket holders.”
Kit’s grin is as wide and false as Saxon’s. But unlike Saxon, Kit’s fist curls and uncurls, the surface of his knuckles stark white, stressing the delta of protruding veins on his hand.
My pleading eyes momentarily find his, and when he looks at me, the intensity in those whiskey-dark pools softens to the subtlest of glows. Even the tension pinched in his jaw falls away. He takes a fortifying breath.
“That’s nice,Paxton. So you live in Riverside then?”
Information. Information is good.
“It’s, uh,Saxon. And just visiting a friend, actually. I live up in Wyoming.”
Wyoming. That’s far enough away that I could never see him again—if I’m lucky. At least he’s just passing through.You’re okay, Faye. You’re safe.
“Well, you’ve wasted enough of Faye’s time, don’t you think? We should get going,” Kit hisses from behind a row of perfect teeth, camouflaging the snarl he probably wants to give Saxon instead.
Saxon’s about to say something, but Kit shoulders into him, whisking me away as quickly as possible. Once we get some good distance between us and him, the crowd swallows Saxon’s figure whole, not even leaving the tiniest remnant of him left that could confirm he was ever here in the first place. Kit picks me up in his arms bridal-style, and I interlace my arms around his neck, hiding my face in the cotton of his shirt.
As soon as we round another corner, we arrive at the narrow entrance of an abandoned alleyway, one shadowed by neighboring shop overhangs. He gently sets me down.
“Breathe, Princess. You’re okay. You’re safe,” Kit whispers, his voice a million shades softer than it was only moments ago.
I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to talk again. I know, that sounds a little dramatic. But I’ve never experienced something so scary in my life—not counting that night. I felt like I had to flee to protect myself, that he would hurt me in broad daylight. I don’t mean hurt like punch or kick me. I mean hurt like…touch…me. Even a platonic touch, like a hug or a handshake. Nonconsensual.
Kit’s eyes are attentive and responsive, his stare an impasse that I’m not quite sure how to navigate. His irises are the color of crushed, brown coneflowers, turning a hint darker with volcanic anger. “Who was that man?”
