Believe (True Believers #3)(13)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Good night, Phoenix.” For a second, she looked like she was going to say something else, but then she just went down the hall.

A minute later she reappeared with a blanket and a pillow. I stripped off my shirt and punched the pillow. She hovered in front of me for a second, then she gestured to my tattoo on my chest.

“It’s tragically beautiful,” she said, eyes on it, not my face.

Like her.

I didn’t say anything, just watching her, feeling a warning clanging loud and clear in my skull. If I had any f**king sense I would walk back to my cousins’ house, because a dark room and a girl who looked this vulnerable and pretty was dangerous.

Then she seemed to realize she was staring, because she spun on her heel and walked away, turning off the light on her way, leaving me alone in the dark. Lounging on the couch, I pulled my phone out and scrolled through it checking news headlines, the weather, social media, anything to attempt to distract my thoughts from Robin. I was too keyed up to sleep. Jail hadn’t been great for getting a solid eight hours I had felt like I had slept with one eye open most of the time, given that my cellmate was a crazy motherfucker with wide eyes and a twitch. So when I got to my cousins I had crashed for almost forty-eight hours.

But now I couldn’t. I was wide awake.

The cell phone was Riley’s old smartphone that he had dropped at a construction site, shattering the screen. It worked still, so I had borrowed a hundred bucks from him and reactivated my account. I was in like three hundred bucks easy to Tyler and Riley, and I owed them big time. Going through my contacts list, I deleted Angel. I didn’t want to hear from her ever again. Then I deleted another five people who hadn’t bothered to text or ask how I was the whole time I was away. If they didn’t give a shit, why should I?

It left my list pathetically small. But it was hard to make friends I could trust. We had moved every year or so most of my childhood, and I changed schools constantly depending on which block of the neighborhood our new apartment was in. My sophomore year in high school I didn’t even start until November because my mom kept forgetting to get my vaccines updated and the school wouldn’t admit me. I’d had a group of guys I’d hung out with until the last year or so, but with us all being out of school, some working, some not, and me spending time with Angel, we sort of lost touch. More of my contacts were girls than guys. Girls who wanted to be the one who got some sort of emotional reaction from me.

I was a challenge.

It was unintentional. I had a tight rein on my emotions. I had to.

I did have a text from Tyler. U ok, man?

I wasn’t used to having anyone notice I wasn’t there, that I hadn’t come home.

Yeah, thanks.

There was no way I was going to tell him where I was. Tyler had come home from dropping off Robin and had hinted that I was to stay the hell away from her. He would be pissed if he found out I had been texting and making plans with her while I was listening to his lecture. I wasn’t offended by his warning. He was right—I shouldn’t be talking to her.

But I couldn’t help it. Nor could I help standing up and going down the hall to see if her bedroom door was open.

Moving silently, I picked my way carefully through the dark, knowing if she woke up and saw me watching her in the dark she was going to think I was a f**king creeper. Maybe I was. Did creepers know they were creepers? I felt normal enough, but hell, maybe I wasn’t. If abnormal is your normal, you feel normal, right?

Her door was slightly ajar, and I pushed it open a little further so I could see her bed. There was a stream of moonlight coming from her window. She hadn’t closed her blinds. The light illuminated her curled up on her bed, on her side, her comforter wedged between her legs so that I could see the long shape of her calves and her thighs. She had changed into a tank top, and her hair spilled in dark layers across her white sheets.

Maybe part of me wanted her to wake up. Maybe I wanted to see fear in her eyes. Not because I wanted her to be afraid but because when someone is scared of you, you’re no longer vulnerable. They don’t have any power over you.

“What is it?” she whispered suddenly, surprising me.

She didn’t look awake. Even now, her eyes were still closed, and I wasn’t sure how she had known I was there. She definitely didn’t look afraid, and she clearly trusted me enough to keep her eyes closed.

Naive, that’s what she was.

It made me angry with her. What if I was there to hurt her? She’d be in serious trouble before she could even think to fight back. She needed to be smarter. Tomorrow I needed to talk to her about that.

“I can’t sleep,” I told her. “Sorry. I was just looking for company.” That was only half of the truth.

“Me either.”

“You look asleep.”

Her eyes finally opened, and her soft lips parted. “Am I talking in my sleep? Or dreaming then?”

I shook my head slowly. “No. I don’t think I would be the man of your dreams.” Then without waiting for permission or an invitation, I ignored the intent behind my words and went over to her bed.

She drew in her breath, startled, when I lay down next to her. How could I explain to her that I didn’t want to be alone? I couldn’t. So I just lay on my back and stilled my body so I wouldn’t scare her. “Do you mind?” I finally asked.

“No,” she whispered.

“Night.”

“Lift your head,” she said.

“What?” I turned and saw she had one of her pillows and she was offering it to me. I lifted my head and she tucked it behind me.

I looked away. God, this was so bad. Things were stirring in me, things that shouldn’t be.

Resolutely, I closed my eyes and counted backwards from one hundred. I got somewhere around fifteen when I lost consciousness.

Dreaming about Iggy, my mother’s latest piece-of-shit boyfriend, the knife in his hand when he threatened her, I felt the anxiety crawling up my spine, my fists clenching. When a hand touched my shoulder, I jerked awake and instinctively sat up, hand going out to grab the throat of my cellmate in warning to stay the f**k away from me.

Except I wasn’t in jail.

I was in Robin’s bed, and I was only inches from her throat with my outstretched hand. I dropped it quickly at the look of stunned horror on her face. “Sorry, sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry. I was dreaming. I thought I was still in jail.”

Her expression smoothed out. She was standing next to the bed, hair tumbling forward as she leaned over me.