Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
“Listen to me—”
“I’m fine.”
“Maybe today—”
“If they were going to hurt me, they would’ve done it last night,” I retort.
“Dylan—”
But I just swing open the closet door. “I’m still in one piece. Not even a scratch.”
“Because they have you for two weeks!” she finally yells into my ear. “They’re not going to swallow you whole the first night.”
I pause, falling silent. Jesus. She really does sound concerned.
Her breath rushes into the phone, and I’m not sure if I should panic, too, because she’s hard to scare. If she’s worried, then maybe I should be.
But I also kind of want to laugh, as well. “Shivers,” I tease.
I take out a shirt from the closet and sniff it, seeing if it’s fresh. The scent of oranges and linen fills my nose, and I hang it back up, sifting through the rest.
“If you’re so worried about me,” I say, “why didn’t you come and get me last night?”
“Because Hawke and I were busy stopping Kade from coming to get you.” She lowers her voice to a mutter. “He makes everything worse.”
Something tightens in my chest. Kade wanted to come and get me? Why?
“What does he care if…”
But I trail off, realization hitting. He was happy to send me off to St. Matthew’s for two weeks, but not to Weston.
When he learned Hunter is here.
He doesn’t want us together. He never did. Not in the same room. Not in the same car. And certainly not alone. I used to think that he was jealous. Possessive. That someone liked me.
But when Hunter left, the distance between Kade and me only grew. I couldn’t make sense out of it.
“If I go back,” I say with a hard breath, “nothing changes.”
Plain and simple. All those self-help gurus telling us to ‘stay where we are if we don’t know where we’re going.’ Blah, blah, blah. Nope. Standing still is based on the belief that what I want will just land in my lap. It won’t. I have to keep moving.
“Are you on Knock Hill?” she asks.
“How’d you know?”
“Number zero-one?”
I stop shuffling hangers. Great. What is she going to tell me that I don’t want to know?
She clears her throat. “If you hear creaks in the attic, it’s a rocking chair tied to a tether,” she tells me. “The other end is tied to the tree between the houses. And then when the wind blows, the chair rocks.”
I race to the window, looking up and spotting the ratty old rope tied to a branch. The other end stretches for the house, disappearing through what I can only assume is the attic window.
I roll my eyes and back away. “Yeah, I heard the creaks. I was too smart for that.”
I knew they were messing with me.
“If you hear any other noises,” she says, “you should leave.”
I laugh under my breath, pulling out a pair of whitewash jeans and a baby tee. “Are these supposed to be her clothes, too?” I muse, putting Aro on speaker and setting the phone down on the desk as I hold up the jeans to my body. “Good thing the ’90s are back in style.”
“Dylan,” she interrupts. “Listen to me.”
“I’m listening.” Damn.
“I’m not much for stories, okay?” she goes on. “And I don’t believe in ghosts. But it’s the last place she slept. And it’s the one house on Knock Hill no one stays in overnight.”
“They don’t seem scared of much.”
“It’s not fear,” she replies. “It’s respect. That house is taken.”
My eyebrows dive for a moment, her words reminiscent of Hunter’s warning.
I inhale a deep breath and square my shoulders. “Bring me some underwear after school, please?”
She’s quiet for a minute, and I know she wants me to come home, but she knows I’ll be angry at myself if I do.
I think the worst thing I have to fear in Weston is free-flowing alcohol. Maybe some misogyny.
Finally, she asks, “You want the fun ones?”
I smile, thinking about the “buy five, get the sixth free” sale on sexy panties we caught before school started this year. “Surprise me,” I tell her and hang up.
No one will see them. I won’t get a boyfriend while I’m here.
But my cheeks warm, picturing Hunter watching me when I didn’t know he was in the room. Thank goodness I didn’t go too far, but he had to know what I was doing underneath the covers. Why didn’t he speak up?
I start to pull the sheet and comforter up the bed, but then I stop.
I’m not at home. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I drop the bedding, leaving it mussed, and take off for the bathroom, tying my hair up as I go.
The shower is surprisingly clean, despite the slightly yellowed grout between the tiles and the sheen on the fixtures gone. There’s no mold. No hair. No sprays of blood or guts from murder victims.