Riot (Page 70)

“Who’s this one from?” I ask as I tear open the final gift. It doesn’t have a tag or a card, but it’s neatly wrapped in a plain dark purple paper, so I suspect it’s from one of the girls. When I glance at them, they both look just as curious as I do. I finish unwrapping a long poster-tube and open it up, pulling out a sturdy piece of paper and unrolling it.

A penciled image of myself stares back at me. She’s lying on her back with her hair lying in thick pools around her smooth face. The sky is dark and full of stars that the pale wall behind her tries to catch. She smiles at me, and the love in her eyes is so clear that my breath catches.

It’s a memory preserved on paper. And even though I’m smiling at myself now, I wasn’t smiling at myself when I was in that pool.

“Who drew this?” I ask, unable to tear my eyes from the sketch in front of me. When no one answers, I lift my gaze and demand to know, “Who brought this?”

“What is it?” Shawn asks, and I turn the sketch around for him to see. It steals everyone else’s breath just as it stole mine.

We all know who drew it.

“I just grabbed all the presents that were on the table,” Mike says.

“I thought it was one of yours,” Adam adds.

“Shit,” Shawn breathes.

I look back inside the tube—for a card or a note or anything—but there’s nothing else inside.

“Why would he do this?” I say to myself, angering when no one answers me. “Why the fuck would he do this?” I ask Rowan.

It’s been three weeks since he fucked me against a bathroom wall, four weeks since he yelled at me at his mom’s, over a fucking month since he told me he loved me, and now he sends me this drawing? Why, just to remind me of a time when I was actually fucking happy?

“Where does he live?” I snap, rolling the sketch back up and stuffing it into the tube.

“Dee,” Rowan says in that voice she sometimes uses to charm the viper inside me. “I think you should just—”

“Where. Does. He. Live?” I growl again, barely containing my calm. I’m saving my anger for Joel. Every fucking shred of it.

Again, no one answers me. They’re all sitting around me in a shell-shocked circle, staring at me like I’m a grenade with its pin pulled. I’m glancing at Rowan, at Leti, expecting them to tell me, and when they don’t, I look to Adam, Shawn, Mike. More looks, more silence. Betrayal courses through my veins like burning poison, and I’m about to tell every single one of them to go to hell, when Kit is the one who speaks.

“Adam and Shawn’s complex,” she says, and all eyes swing to her. “First floor . . . I can’t remember which number.”

I thank her and grab my keys off the counter with all intentions of busting down every single door on the first floor if that’s what it takes to find him.

I’m almost out the front door when Rowan shouts, “C!” I glance over my shoulder at her, and she gives me a worried but apologetic nod. “C. He’s in 1C.”

I close the door behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

OVER THE PAST few weeks, I’ve thought more than a few times about what I would say to Joel if I ran into him. I’d smile, I’d ask how he’s been, I’d exaggerate all of my good news, and I’d walk away first.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask when I burst into his apartment. I hold up the poster tube as evidence, and from his position on the couch, he stares at me like I just broke his door down—which I would have if it had been locked.

There’s a guitar on his lap and an amp at his feet. With no shoes, no shirt, and a single earbud dangling from his ear, he calls to my heart in a way that makes it want to open wide.

“Joel?” a girl asks, popping her head out of a room in the hallway.

And then the poster tube is flying right at his head.

“What the hell!” he barks, barely getting an arm up in time to prevent the tube from hitting him in the face. It bounces off of his forearm and ricochets onto the hardwood floor.

“What’s going on?” a second girl asks, poking her head out of the second room in the hall.

“Why the fuck would you send me that!” I shriek. I sound hysterical. I am hysterical. Two fucking girls? TWO?! “Is a slut going to pop out of the coat closet next? Should I not look in the fridge?!”

“Who are you calling a slut?” the first slut asks.

“YOU!” I shout down the hall. If I had more poster tubes, I’d be launching them like rapid-fire ammunition.

She takes a step toward me, I take a step toward her, and Joel steps between us. “What are you doing here?”

“Ruining your fucking orgy since you ruined my fucking birthday!”

He puts his hand on my arm, and I knock him away. Fully aware that we have an audience, I glare up at him—hating him for hurting me and hating myself for letting it happen—and then I turn on my heel to leave.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asks in a cold voice that snakes after me. “Be miserable forever so you could finally be fucking happy?”

My fists clench at my sides, and I whirl on him. “You think that’s what I wanted?” When he just stares at me, a silent affirmation, I shout, “I went to Mayhem to tell you I wanted to be with you, Joel! And you fucked me in a bathroom and left with some stupid bitch two seconds later!”

The angry mask dissolves from his face, revealing a slack expression. Shock. Confusion.