I grip her waist and lift her up. She feels so fucking good. I think I might lose my mind and carry her back to the SUV wherewe can be alone. My hands don’t move fast. I don’t even pretend to be decent. My palms skate over her hips, slow down at her ass. She squirms.
“What are you doing?” she hisses, but it’s a whisper. The way she’s looking at me over her shoulder tells me that she doesn’t hate the way my hands feel on her. That, in combination with the fact that she’s swaddled in my fucking sweatshirt has my dick at full attention in my jeans. As soon as I hand her off to Adam, I’m going to have to adjust so that no one notices exactly what Lilac does to me.
“Don’t fucking drop her,” I snap at Adam, and when his eyes meet mine, I see the confusion there. He barely helps her as she drops down on the other side, cheeks flushed. I know the blush she’s wearing has more to do with me and less to do with the fact that it’s chilly.
I vault over myself over the stupid fucking gate because there’s no going back now that Lilac is on the other side. I land next to her, which is right where I want to be.
“What’s going on with you two?” Adam asks tersely, and he’s not quiet about it, which makes the rest of the group look at us. I shrug, playing into it because I’m pissed off at him and whatever fuckery he’s planning with his parents. I may have promised him I wouldn’t date his sister when we were younger, but I’ll make him one more promise now. If he so much as politely asks her to meet with whoever this Vincent guy is, I’ll rip his head off before I throw him off the cliffs. Just to rub it in and make him question what’s going on between Lilac and me, I start brushing invisible dirt off her hoodie. I won’t lie either, I just want an excuse to touch her again.
She swats me and turns around to face me. She’s fucking pretty when she’s annoyed, and I love knowing that I’m the reason for her exasperation right now. In a different worldwhere she wasn’t off limits and I deserved her, I’d be her reason for everything.
Mina is already bickering with Lexi, and they’re being loud about it. I feel like I’m turning into Hayden, because my first thought isn’t to tell them to shut the fuck up. It’s to bash their heads together and set them up against a tree trunk. Ryan’s helping Lexi over the fence into Eric’s waiting arms, while Mina stubbornly scales the fence herself. I don’t give a fuck what’s going on between any of them. I just want them to shut the fuck up while they’re doing whatever they’re doing.
“So now what?” Tara asks, turning around in front of Eric silently asking him to brush the debris off of her. He doesn’t take the hint and crosses his arms across his chest. So she scoots over in front of Danny and says, “Can you get the little pricklies off of my back?” His eyes bug out like she just asked him to whip his dick out in front of all of us. I should have killed everyone here before the meetup and then we wouldn’t be here witnessing this shit.
I stare at the mansion as we all start walking closer. Up close, it’s worse. Cracked porch steps. Broken windows. The front door looks like it’s been kicked in and rehung a million times.
“There can’t be anyone living here, right?” Lilac asks, and I don’t mention what I noticed about the door because I feel like that will scare her. I’m probably overreacting. It was probably rehung as a safety measure to keep people out. Something about this place feels wrong, and it’s not because Lexi is chattering about all of the people who allegedly died here.
“Anyone actually planning to go inside?” Adam asks, and I know him well enough to know that he’s already over it. I’m actually surprised he’s come this far. I thought he’d probably try to talk to Lilac and then ditch the actual plans for tonight. He must really want her to hear him out on this whole arranged marriage thing. I feel sick just thinking about it.
No one in the group speaks up because, funnily enough, I don’t think any of them actually want to go in this damn place. We could have just stayed in the school parking lot and done all this shit.
“I mean, we came all this way,” Ryan mutters, and where the fuck is Tristan to swipe his legs out from under him when you need him to? I just want to get Lilac back to campus and start looking into Vincent Warshaw, so I need to know how many people I’m going to have to kill.
“We could, like, walk around it,” Lexi offers, already sounding nervous. And I want to,like, tell her she sounds like a moron, but Lilac places her hand on my chest like she instinctively knows what’s going through my head.
“Don’t,” she mouths the words to me and I can’t help but grin down at her. When I look up, Adam is glaring at me, and for the first time in a long time I don’t give a fuck what he thinks.
“Chicken,” Mina says under her breath.
Lexi glares. “Excuse me?”
“I said you’re a chicken,” Mina repeats, louder this time, flipping her hair. “I’m not afraid of some dusty old house.” It’s Tara who shrinks back, like she knows these two are going to get into it bad and it has nothing to do with going in the house or not.
“Mina,” Eric warns, but she’s already walking. Let her go, I don’t give a shit.
She stomps up the porch steps in her heeled boots, chin high like she’s the star of a horror movie. “I’ll go in. Since none of you have the guts.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Lexi says, voice tight. “You don’t know what’s in there.” I mean, this keen observation could have been made two hours ago before we all came up here. I could be in my room, eating pizza watching Lilac do her homework on the camera I had my good buddy Ramsey Blackwood install in herdorm room. It’s not to be creepy, I swear. I just…after everything we went through with someone targeting Hayden’s girlfriend, I needed to be sure I could keep an eye on her. I didn’t have the luxury Hayden and Tristan had of moving my girl into our house. She would have looked at me like I was insane, which now? It’s starting to seem like letting her think I lost my mind isn’t that bad of an idea.
Mina grins like she’s proud of herself. “I’m just following through on what you can’t, Lexi. Just like always.”
Mina grabs the doorknob and throws it open.
It creaks, of course it does, and then slams against the wall with a bang that makes all of us jump except for Danny. I don’t know if he’s in shock or what his deal is.
Mina disappears into the dark and none of us say anything. I think we’re just waiting to see if the mansion collapses on top of her or if she comes out screaming bloody murder.
A full minute passes.
Then two.
No sound. No movement.
“She’s probably hiding just to mess with us,” Eric says. “Classic horror movie bit.”
“Or she’s actually stuck somewhere. This house is dilapidated at best,” Ryan mutters, and Lexi gives him an exasperated sigh.
