Page 74 of Riot Act
“I’m notclean.”
He holds up the washcloth. “Yeah, you fucking are. Come on.” He holds out his hand.
“Where?”
“What, you think I’m gonna drag you down into the basement and murder you or something?”
“I didn’t know Riot House even had a basement.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty you don’t know about this place. Come on. Are you coming or what?”
I regard his outstretched hand with suspicion. “Okaaay.”
He sighs when I yank the sheet off the bed and wrap myself up in it before I’ll let him guide me out of the bedroom. It’s still risky as hell, being in the hallway in nothing but a sheet. It’d still be really obvious what we were just doing in his bedroom if Elodie or Wren appeared, given that Pax is still fucking naked, andhehasn’t cleaned himself up yet. I need not worry, though. In five short steps, he’s pulling me into a huge bathroom and closing the door behind us.
I’m amazed when I realize that there’s water thundering out of the faucets, filling the giant claw foot tub on the other side of room. The bathroom smells like lavender and thyme. Pax scrubs his hands over his shaved head, shrugging when he sees the look I’m giving him. “What?”
“Nothing. I just…wasn’t exactly expecting…this.”
He scowls. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m not gonna make you walk back up to the academy in the dark with my semen running down your legs, asshole. And I wasn’t exactly easy on you. You need to soak so you don’t seize up.”
I really don’t know what to say.
“There are towels there. Fuck it. When you’re done, come get me and I’ll drive you back up.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I’m not gonna be responsible if you end up like Mara fucking Bancroft,” he grumbles.
With that, he stalks out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
I bathe, and I soak, and the whole time my head is spinning.
He drives me home like he said he would. Admittedly, he’s deadly silent on the journey back up to Wolf Hall, but there are no sharp edges to the silence. He doesn’t say goodnight, and neither do I. The tires of the Charger spit up gravel as he peels out of the turning loop and burns away, down the driveway.
It isn’t until I’m climbing into my own bed, deliciously sore, my muscles melting off my bones, that I realize something:
At no point did he washmeoff ofhim.
And he wasstillwearing the friendship bracelet.
27
PRES
“We both know you’re not going to use that.” Laughter ripples across my skin in the dark. “Put down the knife. Let’s stop fucking around and be honest about what we want here.”
Rain hammers against the windowpanes of the library, casting the world on the other side of the glass into a streaky green and blue blur. The sky is an ominous gunmetal grey, suggesting a full-blown storm might be rolling in soon. On the beaten leather couches in front of the wall of windows, I watch my friends leaf through the heavy textbooks in their hands. We’ve been studying for hours, but I haven’t been able to concentrate. My mind has been split in two, pulling itself in opposite directions. One second, I’m thinking about Pax. About his hands on my naked body. How it felt to have him kiss me last night, and to slowly come undone with his breath hot on my skin. The next, I’m back in my bedroom down in Mountain Lakes, and I’m scared, and I can’t fucking breathe…
I’m trapped on such a rollercoaster, in heaven one second, cast down into hell the next, and I can’t regulate my emotions. This is how it’s been for weeks now. I’m used to the internal whiplash. I’m not okay with it. I am notokay. But I’m so accustomed to these memory reels playing on a constant loop, the channel jumping without warning from one event to the other, that I’ve gotten very good at hiding the maelstrom of emotion churning within me.
So good, in fact, that neither of my friends have noticed that there’s anything wrong with me at all. They’re not completely blind, though. “I like this new obsession with Doc Martin’s.” Elodie chews on the end of a pen, her gaze lasered in on my footwear. “They suit you,” she says. “Though, don’t you think it’s a little warm for all of those long-sleeved shirts you’ve been wearing recently?”
“Hmm?” I pretend to be engrossed in my physics textbook, but I’ve broken out in a prickling, cold sweat, waiting to see what other observations my friend has made. Did she notice the dressings on my wrists? They’ve been off for a while now. Remy and Dr. Raine have been really pleased with my progress, and the jagged wounds on the insides of my wrists are healing nicely. They’re still fresh as hell, though. Red and purple and angry. It’s taken a lot to keep them hidden away from the other students at Wolf Hall.
“The long sleeves. I know it’s raining but it isn’tcold, Pres. Aren’t you just dying to put a camisole on or something? I’m running with sweat over here. It’s so humid. I hope we do have a storm. This heat needs to break.”
On the other end of the couch, Carrie grins impishly down at her phone, which can only mean one thing: a new text from Dash. Not too long ago, things were very different. Elodie hadn’t even transferred to the academy. It was Carrie, and Mara, and me. We were all single. Carrie and I were both in love with Riot House boys but barely spoke about the feelings we were harboring. Dash was unobtainable, and Pax was fucking terrifying. Mara was obsessed with the idea of fucking Wren, but it was nothing more than that. She just wanted to say that she’d done it, brag a little, then move on. Her interest in boys was never an interest inthemas people. Not until our English teacher, of course.
