Page 15 of Riot Rules
Alderman’s warning paralyses me. This is precisely what he would say if he knew how reckless I was being. I should stop this now. I should push Dash away and run back into the party. This madness leads nowhere good. But…fuck. It’sDash. He’s here, and he's real, and he’s fuckingkissingme.
I kiss him back. What else is a girl going to do, when the guy she’s been besotted with for the longest time kisses her so deep and so hard that she forgets the basic laws of the universe?
I can’t keep up with him. My back arches as he presses his chest right up against me, and my breath slips out in stuttered little gasps. The concept of having someone else’s tongue in my mouth has always been kind of repulsive, but I get it now. It’s the most intimate, dizzying, delicious thing I’ve ever experienced, and I can’t get enough. Dashiell strokes and explores my mouth with a mind-boggling confidence. I follow his lead, mimicking his movements, and it’s as natural as breathing. No clashing teeth. No awkward forehead bumps. No weird, unpleasant probing. It’s perfect.
I get carried away. My hands find their way to his chest—hard packed muscle under a butter-soft t-shirt, and my mind reels at thesolidnessof him. He feels like a constant. Like safety, and home, even though he is anything but. I suck his bottom lip into my mouth, my teeth biting down ever so slightly, and a low, surprised growl slips out of Dash’s mouth and into mine. In a flash, he’s pulling back, his hands gently removing mine from his chest, and he’s sliding away, down off the hood of the car.
What thefuck?I…I feel like I’ve just had a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. Dashiell’s sneakers hit the grass. He stands with his back to me for a second, his shoulders hitching up and down. He rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, the other planted firmly on his hip. He draws in a deep breath—I hear the pull and push of the air rushing in and out of him—before he finally faces me again.
Cold. Flat. Void.“And just like that, the mystery’s gone,” he says. Ducking down, bending at the waist, he rummages around in the tall grass and then stands erect with the vodka bottle in his hands. He holds it up, inspecting it, but even I can see from my stunned position on the hood of the car that it’s empty. “Fuckingperfect.” He launches the bottle over the fence this time, hurling it with all his might, and the thing spins before disappearing into the darkness, landing god only knows where.
I can’t move. I want very desperately to pop down off the car and sprint away from this hideous moment, but my traitorous limbs won’t comply. Half of me is still dumb on endorphins, still feeling his hands on my skin and in my hair, his tongue in my mouth, his frantic breath fanning my cheeks. The other half of me is mortified by the way he just brushed me off so easily.
And just like that, the mystery’s gone.The words ring in my ears. I’ll be hearing them on repeat until my thirty-fifth birthday. The past five minutes will officially go down in history as the very best and the very worst moments of my life.
Dash won’t look at me. He squints toward the house, like the structure’s a mirage rising out of the darkness and he’s trying to decide if it’s really there or not. “You’d better get down. There are certain things I can get away with and things you definitely can’t. If Pax sees you up there, the aftermath won’t be fun for you.”
Stiff with embarrassment, I slide off the hood, dropping down into the grass. I have to walk past him so I can get away. I put as much space between us as the car and the barbed wire fence will allow, but it’s not enough; Dash grabs my wrist.
“It’s not that I don’t think you’re hot.” His tone is colder than the grave. “We’re just not cut from the same cloth, Carina. There’s nothing to be done about it. Go on. You should go.”
The horrified expression on my face worsens. I must look pathetic, but it’s taking all of my energy not to cry. I have no hope of channeling the same cool disregard he’s treating me with, so I finally do the right thing and I follow Alderman’s most important rule. I wrench my wrist free from his grasp, and I run.
If only the Firebird was further away. At least then, I might fade into the dark, out of sight, and he might not get to witness me fumbling with the door handle with my numb, useless hands. He might not hear my choked-out gasp of misery when I finally get the damn door open and throw myself into the driver’s seat. And he might not hear my yelp of surprise when I realize that there’s someone sitting next to me.
“That didn’t look like it went well.”
“JesusfuckingChrist!” I hold a hand to my chest, considering a quick faint. My pulse thrums like my entire body is some sort of infected papercut. “Pres, you scared me!”
“I assume, after that little run-in, that you wanna go home?” she whispers.
I look at her askance—the disheveled fiery hair; the twin streaks of mascara down her cheeks; the graze on her upper arm, and the wretched look on her face—and my heart trips and tumbles down a flight of stairs. It lands with a sadflopin the footwell of the car, right between my wedges. “You look how I feel.” I fish the keys to the Firebird from my purse. I hold them, a terrible thought presenting itself to me. “Youdon’t wanna go back in there, do you?”
Presley laughs a touch manically. “God no. We need to get back to your room and break out the secret chocolate stash. I’m declaring this a state of emergency.”
I nod grimly as I start the car and throw it into reverse. “Couldn’t agree more.”
I hit the gas, spin the car, and burn out of there, not giving a shit that I’ve just torn up half of the field. I don’t look back to see if Dashiell’s still standing there by Pax’s Charger, pale-faced and sullen in the moonlight. I know he is. I can imagine the broody, arrogant look on his face just fine without—
“Carrie?”
“Yeah?”
Presley slides down in her seat, covering her face with both hands. “He knew my name. Presley Maria Witton-Chase. He said all four words. Out loud and everything.”
Oh, lord.
Beneath her hands, I think she’s grinning.
7
CARRIE
I’m not goingto go.
I tell myself I won’t, but when two a.m. the next night rolls around, I find myself getting out of bed, just like I do every Saturday.
It turns out the Dashiell who was so rude to me on the hood of that car and the Dashiell I watch in the orchestra room every weekend are two very different people in my head. The Dash who kissed me was brash and awful. He broke something inside me and it fuckinghurt. The Dash who plays piano in the dark is a silent ghost. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t mock. He stirs me to life the way he did outside the party, yes, but he has never rejected me afterwards. He simply plays. I simply listen. So Ihaveto go.
