Page 2 of No Way Back
“Oh shit!” He jolts to a stand, but I know he’s kidding.
I throw my panties at him, but he catches them with a singular hand, slipping one of my feet through a hole and then the other. I lift my hips up to let him dress me before taking his hand to sit up. “What did he want?”
I don’t bother trying to clean up; I know he won’t let me anyway. Demetri gets off knowing his cum will be dripping down my thighs between classes for the rest of the day.
“He said the entire carnival is off this year. City Hall won’t approve the permits after—” He doesn’t have to finish the sentence; we both know.
After I murdered a handful of asshole frat boys, a blackmailing son of a bitch emo-creep and he was forced to burn the entire corn maze down to hide the evidence.
I sigh, looking at the most good-looking specimen of a human imaginable. How I’d gotten lucky enough to call him the love of my life for the last year was beyond me.
“When you look at me like that, I wanna give you the world.” He cups my face in his hand, but I can’t help it when I get that anime twinkle in my eyes.
I just love him so fucking much.
“You already have,” I remind him.
Without him, I’d probably be either in prison or two hundred and forty milliequivalents full of potassium chloride, six feet under somewhere.
My phone vibrates on the floor, and Demetri’s left eyebrow cocks up. He knows who it is before he even looks at the caller ID. “It’s like she knows.” He hands me my phone.
“Shealwaysknows. She can sense these things.” I roll my eyes but not at Harkins—at my best friend for calling far too predictably. “Hi, Naya.”
“Heard the city shit on this year’s carnival.” She’s practically singing, she’s so thrilled.
“Did you have an alarm set or something?” I laugh, but the reality is, she probably did. She’s not a student or faculty, so coming to the Notre Dame Parochial College’s yearly Halloween carnival isn’t just out of the question for her, it’s borderline humiliating.
My gaze drifts to Demetri, stuffing himself back into his pants. My best friend’s squeal of excitement distracts me. “Well, since you’re free, we can do the prison thing!”
“Prison thing?” I’m trying to focus on what she’s saying, but it’s hard when he takes his time folding the edges of his sleeves so perfectly at his forearms.
The Death Star tattoo peeks out to greet me while Demetri palms my tits again.
“Mila, do you ever listen when I talk?” She huffs at me, but all I can do is laugh. “Don’t answer that, you asshole. I miss you. I haven’t seen you since graduation, and I don’t know if you remember, but Halloween used to beourthing, you know? Before themengot involved.”
I sigh, partially because my man won’t stop touching me and partly because my guilt is taking over. She’s right. Demetri and I have been so deeply entwined in each other’s bullshit since last Halloween, we’ve practically become conjoined at our openings, ass-to-mouthing all day long.
It’s hard when you meet the person who completes you. It feels like everyone else disappears, and all you need is them.
“Tell me again,” I plead.
“The haunted prison challenge.” She sighs exhaustedly. “I emailed you the waiver last week. Get it signed and send it back to me, ASAP.”
I look over to Demetri, who can read my thoughts before I voice them out loud. He shakes his head. “No.”
The smile spreads over my face. “I’ll send it now.”
2
Her ops are my ops
Harkins
She gives me those sultry eyes in the car, the ones I can’t deny no matter how much I want to, even when she has been playing the same band on the radio for six months straight. Camila has that way with me, and she doesn’t bother pretending like she doesn’t know. She thinks I’m annoyed that I’m being dragged to this haunted prison thing last minute, but the realityis, as long as I’m spending Halloween with her, nothing else matters.
We haven’t spoken about last Halloween. There was nothing to say then, nothing that we’d gone through together that needed to be dug up from its grave for reexamining. We went on with our lives, living the Norman Rockwell version of our painting, just grateful that from it, we gained each other. It changed her, though. I know because it changed me too. It started as an itch I couldn't pinpoint, an annoyance, a craving, the start of a vice, but then the feeling grew roots beneath my skin, spiked leaves of annoyance carrying the need through the network of my veins.
“So, eight hours locked in a maximum security prison?” I ask, my hands ten and twelve on the wheel while she scrolls through the details on her phone.
