Текст книги "All It Takes"

Автор книги: Sadie Munroe

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Chapter 10

Ash

There are six sofas in the living room. Six. Seriously.

Why the fuck are there six sofas in the living room? Who the hell could ever need that many sofas? And how the hell did Star’s mom even manage to get them in here by herself? Because she must have done it somehow. Unless she had a load of friends that disappeared into the woodwork the day she died, she did this all on her own. And I just can’t wrap my head around it.

My extreme fucking bafflement must show on my face, because Star just kind of shrugs at me and goes, “Yeah . . . I have no idea.”

We found the first one by mistake when we were trying to carve a path through the piles of stuff. Then we found the second one. That’s when we started to wonder what we were up against, and started climbing on the piles and digging through shit to figure out what was underneath. The answer? Six goddamn sofas. I’m dumbfounded.

But now that I know they’re there, I can’t help but eye one of them, trying to figure out how comfortable it is by sight alone. They’re all piled high with stuff, but they seem to be okay, and even if they’re not, they’re still starting to look pretty tempting, especially since I’ve been sleeping in the backseat of my car for the past month. It’s not the end of the world—don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have the car than have nothing—but for the past week I’ve been sharing it with Bruiser. And while having my dog back is amazing, and the big lug is awesome in many different ways, he isn’t exactly what you would call small. He takes up almost as much space in the car as I do.

Also, he fucking snores.

“Well,” Star says, hands on her hips as she surveys the mess in front of us. The living room is now a maze of paths and mountains of stuff, so while we can navigate it, it isn’t exactly welcoming. “The way I see it, the sofas are good news and bad news.”

“So, par for the fucking course, then,” I say, because every time we seem to catch a break, we get blasted with another setback. I have no idea how we’re going to get this done by the end of the summer, if we ever get it done it all. We’ve only just gotten the backyard done, and all we’ve managed to do inside is carve out these paths and get the worst of the trash out of the living room. We haven’t even touched the kitchen yet, other than to snag utensils and steal canned goods when we can manage to reach them. We’re a month in and we’ve barely made any progress at all.

Long story short, we’re fucked.

I groan and scrub my hands through my hair. It’s fucking scorching in here. Again. It’s even worse than it was outside, and that’s saying something. “What’s the good news?” I ask, because we could really use some at this point.

“The good news is that this means the piles in here aren’t as high as we thought they were,” she says. And that makes sense. The sofas take up a lot of space so they push everything else up closer to the ceiling. Okay, that’s not so bad. That actually means there’s a lot less shit in here than I originally thought. That’s . . . something.

“And the bad news?” I ask, because I know it’s coming and I figure I might as well get it over with.

Star sighs and kind of rolls her neck. It’s like she’s trying to work the kinks out of it. It makes her hair dance around her shoulders and draws my eyes like a magnet to the glistening skin above the neckline of her shirt. Part of me—a huge fucking part of me—starts hoping that the heat will continue to rise and that she’ll strip down to her bikini top like she did the other day. I wince and tamp that thought down as fast as I can, before the heat pooling in my belly can turn into anything real.

Do not perv on Star, I remind myself for the thousandth time since I met her. She’s hot as hell, but she’s also your kind-of boss. And she’s the only person in this town willing to take a chance on your stupid ass. Don’t blow it.

She runs her hands through her hair, pulling it up off her damp neck and piling it up into a messy bun on the top of her head. Then she lets it go, and it falls like a black tidal wave down her back. I swallow. Hard.

“The bad news,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest as she surveys the mountain of stuff in front of us. “Is that there’s no way the sofas are going to fit in either of our cars, not unless we strap it to the roof and drive insanely carefully, and I can’t afford another Dumpster. Not yet, anyway. So I have no idea how we’re going to get them out of here.”

Shit.

She’s right.

We’ve been jockeying stuff to the dump between my car and her mom’s old station wagon ever since they hauled away the Dumpster when it filled up. And that had been nothing in comparison to this, it had only held the stuff from the backyard. This was a hell of a lot more. I have no idea how much the Dumpster cost her, but judging by the look on her face when she got the bill, well . . . we weren’t going to be getting another one any time soon.

Fuck.

I turn to her to ask what the plan is, but the instant I open my mouth the sound of a car horn fills the air, cutting me off. And it’s the loudest, longest fucking car horn I’ve ever heard, and I turn away from the sound with a wince. But as I do, something flashes through my memory, and I feel my body freeze. All at once, I’m back there, the night of the accident. And all I can hear is the sound of the guy I killed as he honked his car horn frantically. I can see it, hear it. It plays over and over in my mind. The sound. The lights. The pounding of my heart as I realize I’ve lost control of the car. The screech the tires make against the asphalt as I try to stop, but go careening toward him despite everything.

Shit.

I squeeze my eyes shut and shove the heel of my hand into my eye socket, trying to block it all out.

“Ash?” Star’s voice cuts through me like a knife and I pull in a deep breath and hold it until my chest starts to burn. Then I let it out slowly, trying to calm the beating of my heart. I drop my hand back to my side and open my eyes. She’s staring at me, her confusion plain on her face. But there’s more there. Shit, I think. I scared her.

“Ash?” she says again. “Are you okay?” She steps closer to me, lays a hand on my arm, and I force myself to nod, to focus on the feel of her skin against mine, clasping onto the feeling like an anchor to hold myself in the here and now.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding shakily. I hate what this does to me, the flashes I get. “Just…” I blow out a breath. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here, what I’m supposed to say. All I’ve ever been able to do is wait it out, and eventually the sounds and the images fade back into half-forgotten memory. I look down at her, and I realize with a jolt just how close she’s standing. She’s right in front of me, looking up at me with those big brown eyes of hers.

Fuck, I think. I could just reach out and touch her. Six inches. That’s all it would take. I could just lean forward, close the distance between us and kiss her. I’m moving before I know what I’m doing, and Star’s eyes flicker from mine down to my mouth and back up again.

And the car outside blasts its horn again and I jerk away.

“Jesus Christ,” I say, pulling back and trying to get my muscles to unclench before I get pulled under again. “What the hell is all that honking about?”

“I have no idea,” she says, stepping back. I let myself mourn the loss for an instant, then shake it off. I shouldn’t be kissing her, anyway. I shouldn’t even be thinking about it. She gives me one last once-over with her eyes, making sure I’m okay, and then turns away. I watch as she starts navigating the path we cleared to the front door, and then I follow. I want to find out what the hell is going on out there.

Star jerks open the front door and together we step out onto the porch. Bruiser, who decided that the single sofa we managed to get cleared off now belongs to him and has spent the last hour napping on it while Star and I surveyed the rest of the mess, is now hot at my heels. He’s sniffing the air, his ears folded low, like all of the survival instincts he picked up over the past five years are suddenly on red alert, and he’s waiting for an attack.

He might have the right idea, I realize when I lay eyes on the truck. I take an instinctive step back when I see it.

It’s this huge shit-kicker pickup, old and blue and rusty around the edges. It looks like it must belong to some kind of gigantic redneck that goes by the name Bubba.

Beside me, Star stands frozen, and all at once all the muscles in my body have tensed back up again and I feel like I’m about to head into a brawl. Beside me, Bruiser growls low in his throat, and I reach out and grab him by his collar, holding him back. Whatever is about to happen—and something is going to happen, of that I have no fucking doubt—I don’t want Bruiser to be the one to start it.

The truck’s passenger door swings open suddenly, and Bruiser barks at the movement and lunges forward. I look down and jerk him back before he can make a break for it. Then I look back up, and I freeze.

What the hell?

I watch as a plump brunette hops out of the cab of the pickup. She’s got a smile on her face so big that she looks like she could light up the night sky with it. There’s a slam and a figure emerges from the other side, rounding the nose of the truck and heading for the front path. It’s a dude, but he’s far from the bible-thumping, squirrel-shooting redneck I’d been picturing. This guy looks more like a Mormon or something. His dark hair is all neatly cut and styled, and he’s wearing a pair of khakis that I can see from here have been ironed. Not to mention the dress shirt he’s wearing that he’s actually tucked into the pressed khakis.

Who the hell are these people? I wonder. Beside me, Bruiser lets out another bark and I hiss at him to be quiet. I turn to Star, hoping she has some idea of what’s going on.

But what I see when I turn to look is not what I expected. At all.

Star . . . The only word that I can come up with to describe the look on her face is joyous. She looks like she just won the lottery, and she hasn’t had time to decide if she’s going to freak out and start screaming or if she’s going to start crying. She looks so happy. And it makes something inside me lurch.

I can’t believe how gorgeous she looks.

Before I can ask who these people are, she’s off the porch and racing toward the couple. The girl from the truck all but squeaks with joy, and opens her arms and catches Star as she barrels full-speed into a hug. The guy just stands there, hands in his pockets, smiling at the two girls. But his smile is fond. There’s affection there, and I try to make the thought of this straight-laced Mormon-looking dude and badass Star fit together in my brain. But as I’m twisting and turning this information over in my mind, I see Star’s hand shoot out, and watch as she grabs the guy by the front of his immaculately pressed shirt and yanks him into a reluctant group hug.

I . . . do not know what’s going on here. I glance down at Bruiser and find him staring up at me, his big puppy eyes full of confusion. His tail thumps once against the slats of the porch, as if to say Well?

Apparently Bruiser doesn’t know what to make of this, either.

Star

I can’t believe they’re actually here. What were they thinking? This is ridiculous. They drove through two states to get here. Who does that?

My friends are un-freaking-believable. I can’t believe how much I’ve missed them. I don’t think I even let myself feel it, until they were staring me right in the face.

I smile and shake my head as Autumn leans down and ruffles Bruiser’s ears. I can’t believe they’re here. I honestly feel like if I close my eyes or turn my head or even let them out of my sight for too long, Autumn and Roth will disappear.

I can’t remember ever being this happy, except for when I got into college. But that was different. That was my own achievement. That was happiness mixed with pride. This is something different. This is the friendship I’ve waited all my life for, a friendship big enough to make my chest hurt from their kindness.

This is what Ash felt when he found Bruiser. I just know it.

My smile is so big that my cheeks are starting to hurt, but I can’t stop. Bruiser is feeding off the energy, and is racing about like he’s having the time of his life, rushing back and forth along the length of the porch, stopping for pets and cuddles, before squirming away and racing off and back again.

Ash, on the other hand, seems kid of . . . wary.

“So . . . ” he says, shifting his weight from his heels to the balls of his feet and back again in an awkward little sway. He’s got his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans, as though he has no idea what he should do with them, so he’s just decided to take them out of the equation entirely. “How long are you guys staying?”

“Just for the weekend,” Autumn says, giving Bruiser one last pat before she pulls herself back upright. “It’s a really long drive, so we’re going to have to head back early Monday morning. We’re sorry we didn’t come sooner,” she says, turning to me. “But we figured the long weekend was the best time to do it.”

Holy crap. Is it almost the Fourth of July already? I can’t believe so much time has passed. It feels like the last time I blinked it was the beginning of June. The realization is like a pit in my stomach. It’s already been a month and it’s felt like days.

How much longer until I’m forced to say goodbye to Ash. And worse, how much longer will it actually feel?

Crap. I shake my head, trying to rid myself of those kinds of thoughts. My friends are here, and that is something to celebrate.

“What are you guys even doing here?” I ask. Because as happy as I am to see them, it isn’t like Avenue is a hopping vacation resort. “I mean, I’m happy you’re here, but it’s kind of boring. We can show you the lake, I guess, but . . . ”

“Ugh, we’re here to help you, Star,” Autumn groans out, and her words take a second to sink in.

“You mean—”

She motions something between a hand-flap and jazz-hands toward the house. “We’re here to help you clean out the house.”

“Holy shit. Seriously?”

For a moment, I’m sure it’s me that’s spoken. Those were the exact words that were floating about in my head. But it wasn’t me. It was Ash. I turn to him and his eyes are kind of bugged out of his face, and as I watch they dart between Autumn and Roth. “No, really. Are you serious?”

Autumn and Roth look at each other and sigh. I’m used to that, they do it to me all the time. But it’s kind of nice being on the outside when they do it. Watching them do the are-you-really-so-difficult look to someone else gives me a sick kind of delight.

They do their silent mind-meld talking thingy and whatever they’re duking it out over Roth loses. He gives Autumn a long-suffering look and she grins gleefully as he turns to Ash and holds out his hand. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Rothwell Harvey. And you are?”

“Rothwell,” Ash repeats, testing it out in his mouth like he’s uncertain what he’s saying is even a word. I know the feeling. Roth’s name is pompous as hell.

“Roth,” I say his name like the warning it is. And he glances over at me. No torturing Ash, I think at him, hoping that for once I’ll finally manage to get through to him like Autumn does.

His shoulders drop a little and he sighs and turns back to Ash. “You may call me Roth, as the girls do,” he says, and his voice is still proper enough to belong to an eighty-year-old judge from the Old South, but I’ll take it for what it is. Progress.

“Oh-kay,” Ash says, and holds out his own hand to shake Roth’s. It’s like watching some strange kind of bird mating dance. Full of posturing and awkward as hell, but impossible to look away from.

“And I’m Autumn,” my roommate interjects as soon as the boys’ hands drop, sticking her own in to grab Ash’s so fast, I’m wondering if she thinks he’s going to make a break for it.

Actually, now that I think about it, he kind of looks like he wants to make a break for it. I need to get things sorted out.

Fast.

I reach out and grab Ash’s arm so suddenly he actually jumps and turns to look at me, eyes wide with what the hell do you think you’re doing written all over his face. I glance over to my friends, at Autumn who’s still holding her hand out to Ash. “We’ll be right back,” I say, and Autumn just smiles and waggles her eyebrows at me as she drops her hand. “I saw that,” I hiss at her quietly, mentally reminding myself just how quiet and shy she used to be when we first met… I am starting to miss shy-Autumn. She gave me a lot less crap.

I see her mouth “I know” and grin at me as I turn and start pulling Ash across the yard. He walks after me obediently, but when I glance over my shoulder at him, I can see a million emotions playing across his face. Most of them are confusion.

As soon as we’re around the side of the house, out of sight of Roth and Autumn, I stop walking and turn to face him. “I’m so sorry about that,” I say. “I swear I didn’t mean to bombard you with my friends. I didn’t even know they were coming.” I can’t believe they showed up. No one, in my entire life, has been willing to drive across two states for me. Not even my own mother.

“No big,” Ash says, and as I watch he seems to almost shrink into himself, hands burrowing deep into his pockets again, shoulders hunched, head down. What the hell?

“What’s the matter?” I ask. Is he really that upset that they’re here?

“No . . . I mean, it’s nothing,” he says, but he’s shifting his weight from foot to foot and he isn’t looking at me. Something’s wrong. “Just let me know if you want me to get out of your hair or anything.”

Wait. What?

“What are you talking about?” I ask. My palms are starting to sweat and my heart is inching up in my chest like it’s about to make a break for it. What the hell is going on?

And why is some traitorous part of me acting like he’s breaking up with me? We’re friends. Barely. Co-workers. I should not be feeling like this.

“No, I mean, your friends are here. If you want me to take a hike so you can spend some time with them, it’s okay. I get it. I mean . . . ” He sighs and looks at some far-off spot just over my shoulder, like he can’t quite bring himself to look me in the eye. “I don’t want them to think, you know, any less of you or anything.”

I wipe my sweating palms against my shorts and stare at him. It takes me a minute, but finally something clicks in my brain and I get it.

Jesus.

“This is about the prison thing again, isn’t it?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. “What the hell, Ash?”

Finally he meets my eye, but his face is confused, like I’m the one who’s saying things that don’t make sense. Idiot, I think, but the voice in my head is unmistakably fond, and I can’t help but smile. I shake my head at him. “You’re an ass,” I say, and reach out and snag his arm again. “You’re not going anywhere.”

He doesn’t say anything as I drag him back over to Autumn and Roth, but when we come to a stop, I look over my shoulder at him and catch the secret smile tugging at his lips, even as he tries to hide it. I turn back to my friends and find Autumn looking back and forth between us like there’s a puzzle she’s trying to figure out. Roth, on the other hand, is kind of staring off into space, something he tends to do whenever he’s affronted with too many emotions and needs to tune himself out. I look at Autumn. She’s stopped looking back and forth between us and has now pinned me with a look that I can only hope to translate as you okay?

I nod, and let her see my smile.

“Okay,” Autumn says, breaking the silence clapping her hands together like she’s the ringleader of this particular circus. “Where do we start?”

Chapter 11

Star

Ash is a traitor. He’s a dirty, rotten, no good traitor and I hate him.

And his dog.

“Really, you guys,” I say as the others hover around the pantry door in the kitchen. “We should work on the living room. It needs the most work.” I don’t know why everyone’s so focused on the sleeping-in-the-shed thing. I know for a fact that Autumn used to go camping with her family. It’s the exact same thing. Almost. In fact, it’s better, because it has an actual roof and a door to protect me from the elements. Besides, the pantry can pretty much just stay the way it is when I’m trying to sell it. It may be over-full, but at least it’s the one place in the house that’s full of the stuff it’s supposed to be filled with. I think getting the towering piles of shame out of the living room is a little more urgent then getting the canned goods out of the pantry.

Unfortunately, I’ve been out-voted.

“Can you hear something, Roth?” Autumn says as she rips open a box of garbage bags, her voice too loud in the small space we’re working in. “Because I can’t.”

I hate her, too.

“No,” Roth replies, climbing over a pile of what I’m hoping is laundry and not anything mysterious and disgusting because I would still like to have friends at the end of this. “Not unless you’re talking about an ungrateful girl who doesn’t care that we’re trying to help her not live like a derelict.”

I let out a groan. Yeah. I hate him, too. Everyone. I’m just going to live in the shed and hate everyone from now on. That’s the best plan.

“Come on, you guys,” I try, for what feels like the millionth time. “It’s not so bad. And I really do need to get the living room cleaned out.”

“What you need,” Autumn says, ripping off a garbage bag from the roll and holding it out to me to take, “is a safe place to sleep. Preferably one that’s indoors. Now—” she nods toward the path Roth is carving in the kitchen “—we’re going to get the kitchen and the pantry cleaned out as best we can, because let’s be honest, we’re awesome but we’re not miracle workers. The pantry is small enough that we actually stand a chance of clearing it out so that you can sleep in there. Your mattress will fit. And you need a kitchen, Star. That’s just nonnegotiable. I can’t imagine what you guys have been eating while you’re here.”

“Diner food, mostly,” Ash supplies from behind me, and smirks at me when I turn around to glare at him.

“Traitor,” I say, and turn back to see Autumn’s disappointed look.

“Diner food? Really?”

“What?” I say, kicking myself for being so defensive. I’m a grownup. I’m allowed to eat what I want. “It’s good.” Lies. So many lies. The diner food is mediocre on a good day.

“Nothing is good enough to eat it every day,” she says, and reaches out to push me toward Roth. “Now go help. Your bedroom awaits.”

“I feel like you’re trying to turn me into Cinderella,” I tell her. “Making me sleep in the pantry. It won’t work. I won’t suddenly turn into a princess.”

“You have a better chance than if you’re sleeping in the shed,” she replies. “Now mush!” She jabs a finger toward the kitchen, where Roth is waiting.

Something inside me jerks, and I sigh and go to follow her orders without further complaint. She has that way about her. I climb over a pile of plastic take-out containers and join Roth in the kitchen. “She’s going to make an excellent RA,” I tell him. “The frosh are going to be following her around like ducklings within a week.”

“She learned from the best,” Roth says sagely, and grins down at me. “Now get to work, little duckling.”

Yeah, I think, shooting him one last glare before I reach down and start loading empty plastic grocery bags into my garbage bag. I hate them all.

***

By the end of the day, though, things aren’t so bad anymore. With Roth and Autumn around, we actually manage to get not only a path through the living and dining rooms cleared out, but we also made pretty good headway on the kitchen, the one area of the house I’d been most worried about. It really is a load off my shoulders, having them here.

Especially when it came to the refrigerator. The thing stood there, huge and overbearing that first day, like a modern-day monolith, foretelling my doom. When I head outside for a water break I say as much to Autumn and she throws her back and laughs like a hyena, loud enough for the boys to hear and to turn at us, questions in their eyes.

“Star, sweetie, I think your brain is melting,” she says, reaching up and wiping the back of her hand along her damp forehead. The heat inside the house is slowly killing all of us. “It’s just a fridge. Nothing to be scared of.” She turns to Roth and shakes her head like I’m being ridiculous.

I take a sip of my water, grateful to the tiny droplets that escape the side of my mouth to go trickling cool and wet down my neck, and raise my eyebrows at her. I can’t help the smile that comes through as I recap my bottle and set it aside on the porch railing. She doesn’t get it, I realize. She has no idea.

“Sweetie,” I say, mimicking her tone, “just what do you think happens to a fridge full of food for three months, in this heat, after the power company has turned off the juice?” I watch as seconds tick by, and my words slowly begin to sink in. Then Autumn whirls around and looks at me with eyes like dinner plates.

“Is that what that smell is?” she demands. “Oh. My. GOD.”

Laughter bubbles up from inside me so fast I can’t stop it, I just collapse back against the siding of the house and try to catch my breath. Looking up through my tangled hair I see Autumn flapping her hands, disgusted, and I realize she must be picturing what could be growing in the refrigerator and she can’t stand it.

From his position on the porch steps, Roth clears his throat and we both turn to look at him. “I think that we may have to find an alternate method of dealing with the refrigerator, if that’s the case,” he says, and pulls his phone out of his pocket and begins scrolling through it. “I’ll make a few calls. Excuse me.”

I sink down onto the porch, giggles still bubbling every time I take a breath, made even worse by the way Autumn is glaring at me. As I reach over and snag my water bottle off the porch railing and uncap it, Roth disappears around the side of the house, and Ash turns to look at me. “Uh . . . where is he going?” he asks, eyes wide.

Reaching up, I wipe tears from my eyes and grin at him, my cheeks staring to ache. He’s not the first one to try and fail to figure out the mystery that is Rothwell Harvey, and he won’t be the last. “Honestly?” I ask before taking a sip of water. “I have absolutely no idea.”

It really is a load off my shoulders, having them here.

Especially since, when I get up the next morning, the refrigerator’s gone. And, judging by the way Ash is side-eyeing Roth at every opportunity, he’s trying to figure out if he’s in the mob. It’s hilarious.

But honestly? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Not one bit.

Ash

You’re being an idiot, a part of my brain tells me, but it’s drowned out by the louder, much more fucking insistent part of my mind that’s going, He made an entire rotted-out fridge disappear like it never even existed. You think he couldn’t do that with a body?

One thing’s for certain. Star’s friend Roth? Creepy. As. Fuck. The guy looks like he’s in the running for the next Hannibal Lecter. The thought of hanging out with him doesn’t really appeal. I don’t know how Star does it.

And it must show on my face, because Star’s brow furrows when she looks up from the box of stuff she’s sorting through to look at me.

“What?” she asks.

I want to play it off, to act tough and like there’s nothing bothering me, because I’m probably just imagining things. But this isn’t just about me. If there’s something fucked up about Star’s buddy, then she has the right to know.

Grow some balls, I tell myself. It’s time to be a man.

“Not gonna lie . . . ” I say, trying to choose my words carefully. It’s not like I have a real shot with this girl, but I don’t want her to hate me, either. “Your friend kind of freaks me out a little.” There. That wasn’t so bad.

But she just tosses her head back, all long hair and gorgeous skin, and laughs. “Who, Roth?” she asks. “Why?”

I groan, and suddenly it’s all coming out like word puke. I can’t stop myself. “He doesn’t blink!” I say, gesturing to my own face with the dust cloth I’m clutching. “It’s like he’s one of those old-timey paintings. The creepy ones with the eyes that follow you wherever you go.”

“That’s what makes me so good at my job,” a voice says behind me.

Fuck.

I spin around and see Roth standing in the open doorway behind me. Creeper. He’s just standing there, staring at me with those freaky eyes, dunking the teabag in his mug over and over, like he’s some kind of Bond villain petting a cat. Then, without blinking once, he turns and walks away.

“Holy shit,” I say, and clutch my hand to my chest. My heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of there. “Holy shit.” Some things deserve repeating. This is one of them. “What the fuck is his job? Cutting people into little pieces and hiding them in the walls?” The dude is a psychopath.

But Star just laughs. “You get used to it,” she says. “He’s a Resident Advisor. He was in charge of our floor last year. It freaked everyone out so bad. No one on the floor dared do anything where he could see. Guy’s got feet like a cat. Autumn and I tried putting a bell on him last Christmas. It didn’t go well.”

Now I’m picturing probably-a-seriel-killer-Roth with a Santa hat and murder in his eyes. It’s scarring. “Oh god,” I say, scrubbing my hands over my face. “How are the two of you still alive?”

“They have nothing to worry about,” a voice says from behind me, and I just about keel over to see Roth standing behind me. Again. Jesus Christ. But he just calmly takes a sip from his mug and stares at me from above the rim.

“Uh, okay,” I say. “Can I ask why?” Just for my own self-preservation.

“Serial killers generally don’t kill outside their own sexual-preference group,” he says. “Therefore, Autumn and Star would be quite safe, if I had such urges.” He hasn’t blinked once during the entire time he’s been standing there. What the hell is wrong with this guy? My eyes burn as I try to keep an eye on him, but I, unlike Roth, have the urge to blink. Because I’m human. But luckily, before it gets too bad, he takes one last sip of tea and leaves the room. Distantly, I hear him talking to Autumn, and then there’s the sound of the screen door in the front swinging open and then slamming closed again. The metallic rattle echoes through the house, and then Roth’s words finally catch up to me.