Whisper (Novella) (3 page)

I hate when guys leave girls hanging . . . THERE IN THE CORNER.

That was the TellTale I sent to him after our chat as I sat on a flat rock that decorated the front of my stepdad's house, along with all the agave plants and Italian cypress trees. The sun rolled over the sky, the sound of a leaf blower coming from the backyard, where scared-of-bras Bret was hard at work.

I'd decided to get some fresh air, my laptop beside me so I could continue with my job search. But how could I concentrate when I was pissed at my secret admirer? What had his goal been in chatting with me, anyway? To wind me up and watch me go?

Well, mission accomplished, because my gears were still turning, whirring and stirring inside me from the images he'd conjured up with all that talk about unbuttoning my buttons and getting hard. Then again, didn't Micah have a reputation that went right along with what ThereInTheCorner had just done to me?

For some reason, though, my secret admirer's words weren't fitting my image of Micah, the town naughty boy. In spite of how I'd been sort of loved and left by ThereInTheCorner, the guy had actually seemed sensitive and sexy, the type who didn't outright undress women with his gaze but who longed and wanted and couldn't find the proper translation to use in the real world. Nothing he said had seemed like a game until the very end.

God, he was driving me crazy with questions. Just what kind of person was he? And what had happened to him to make him fall back into the shadows in reality, unable to tell someone he liked them in person?

Isolated
, I thought, knowing the story all too well. But
how
had he gotten that way?

The leaf blower turned off, leaving the atmosphere quiet except for the sound of a car winding down the manicured street and a door slamming over at Diana's house. She bopped down the driveway toward her Ford Mustang convertible, and she wasn't wearing the date clothes she'd been in earlier, having changed into a flowy flowered top with jeans and those baby-blue boots. Just as she spotted me and started to come over, my phone swished.

Someone wants to chat with you
.

But of course.

I ignored the TellTale summons for a record three seconds before I attacked my phone and read my secret admirer's message.

ThereInTheCorner:
If you want to see how interested I am, meet me at the Hellfire Club at 7 tonight. Show this to the gorilla at the door.

Maybe he'd left the chat earlier because he'd had to?
Hmm
.

Diana swooped down next to me to sit on the rock. “Wanna go shopping?”

“I'm supposed to be searching for my future.” I debated hiding the phone from her. “You know, job applications.”

“Here's an idea—walk the town with me and see if anyone's hiring. Sometimes they'll have signs in the windows. Aidan Falls isn't entirely caught up with the digital age.”

She had a point. This town had a Main Street with a vintage movie theater, a hardware store, and a diner, among other shops, but to tell the truth, this job hunt was the last thing on my mind.

“What's the Hellfire Club?” I asked.

She seemed taken aback by the question. “How'd you hear about that?”

“Secret Admirer asked me to meet him there. Is it a thing?”

“Yeah.” She blinked. “
Wow.
”

“What?”

“It's just that the Hellfire Club is this sort of urban legend. I've never been to it because I heard a bunch of nerds hang out there—some brain came up with the name because it's from comic books or something—but I've always been curious. Even nerds can throw a good party.”

I quickly looked up “Hellfire Club” on my laptop, then followed a search engine link. “This site says it's an ‘international social club for wealthy elites' in the Marvel Comics universe. But it's also the name for gentlemen's clubs in the 1700s in Britain.” I read a little more. “There were all kinds of illicit acts going on at these gatherings, but I'm not seeing anything here about crazy Hellfire times in Aidan Falls, Texas.”

Diana had been leaning over to read with me. “That's because this Hellfire Club is a secret, or at least supposed to be. Rumor has it the next one might be in the abandoned grain warehouse past the lake, but they only announce a party on the day they're having it, and they move the location every time the cops get wind of where everyone is getting together. The cops here are so damned tight-ass it's unbelievable.” Diana frowned. “Did Micah invite you to a Hellfire Club tonight?”

“Seems so.” I couldn't picture a cool dude like Micah hanging with people who read enough comic books or studied enough history to know what the old Hellfire Clubs were. He'd seemed more the hands-on type rather than all read-y.

It looked like Diana was thinking the same thing. “So you're going to go?”

Was she worried about me? Because it sounded like it. “I was thinking about it, especially if a lot of people are going to be there. Having others around sounds like it'd make for a safe situation to meet a stranger, don't you think?”

“Usually, yeah, but it's called the
Hellfire
Club.” She was still frowning. “Why didn't Micah just ask you out for a shake at the DQ instead?
I'm
even meeting my date tonight at a coffee house.”

I smiled at the hint of a real person underneath all the Diana bluster. It was sweet that she was being the cautious one now. “Who's the virgin today?”

She smiled back, but the concern didn't disappear from her expression. “Maybe I should go with you.”

“You've already got that hot date.”

“I can bring him, if he's up to it. Or if I see that he's a geek right off the bat, I can ditch him and meet you.”

“For the company of more geeks?”

“Hellfire geeks have
got
to be interesting. I heard that at one party, there was this orgy. How hilarious would that be? Nerds sexing it up.”

An orgy? I decided to take Diana with a grain of salt. “I think there's a person at the door who checks invitations, and your name isn't on it.”

“You want to do this on your own.” She stood, nodding. “Okay. I get it. But if you need backup . . .”

“I'll definitely let you know.”

Without another argument, Diana walked away, jangling her keys in her hand, but I stopped her.

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks.”

She halted, shrugged, then kept moving, crossing her arms over her chest. Maybe she didn't like touchy-feely moments like this had
almost
been between two neighbors who were kinda-sorta friends. Maybe we didn't know each other well enough for those types of moments yet.

The thought made that same bubble of loneliness surround me as she got in her car and drove off, the leaf blower revving up again in the backyard, drowning out my thoughts as I typed an answer to ThereInTheCorner.

NewGirl:
I'll be there.

***

The sun had already set over the grain warehouse, which was in the middle of a field and far back from the desolate country lane. With its gray facade and faded red paint on its attached tower, it looked like it might've been the center of something in its day, back when a major road had run close to it. Now, hard rock music and long, waving grass was its only company, along with the cars parked in the rear, sheltered from view.

I cut the engine on my old Mini Cooper Roadster and sat there for a few minutes longer, watching a kid with a cowboy hat, a long blue ponytail, and jeans so holey that only threads held them together mosey toward the building. He knocked at a door and it opened, then he disappeared inside.

What was I doing again? Oh, yes, diving into the real world. A half year of college hadn't prepared me for what was inside the Hellfire Club at
all
. And I wasn't just talking about the music and so-called illicit acts.

My secret admirer was in there.

My nerves had piled up during the day, pressing against me until I nearly screamed with anxiety right then. I was dying to know if my secret admirer was really Micah . . . and what it would feel like to be adored by someone who could say such passionate things to me. Even if I couldn't believe that my SA was that into me—did guys like him really exist?—the fantasy made me happy, even temporarily.

I blew out a breath and opened my door. After I shut it, I touched the webby leather bracelet I'd made, knowing I had everything I needed in there, including money if I needed it. I shoved my phone in my jeans pocket and adjusted the black, strapless fringe top I was wearing.

It showed just enough skin to keep me unseduce-able, if that was what truly got a guy like Micah going.

The air had taken on a little chill, so I walked to the building, avoiding patches of mud, then knocked on the door. A burly kid answered, and he seemed like the type who'd decided to work on his family's farm instead of going to college, although he was wearing a pair of glasses that marked him as a nerd.

I had to respect Aidan Falls for having geeky yet built bouncers.

I showed him the invitation that ThereInTheCorner had sent me on my phone, and the Hellfire farmer let me in. Did he have a knowing smile on his face, though?

Suddenly I was paranoid. If Micah wasn't my secret admirer, it could be anyone here . . .

I wandered into the main room, a flood of red light making me squint, and I stood still, trying to get used to the blaring rock music. As I took in the smell of musty rain, cigarette smoke, and old grain—was I only imagining that last part?—I saw planked floors, a staircase leading to a second level, hay bales, and even trucks with the tailgates open. Some of the red lights were coming from the vehicles, but there were strings of hellfire-colored bulbs floating everywhere. And the kids . . .

They were dancing hip-to-hip, swaying and drinking and smoking. Some were lounging in the flatbeds of the trucks, making out, laughing while the red flares of their cigarettes burned. But from the smell of it, cigarettes weren't the only things that'd been lit in here.

I looked around, but I didn't see Micah Wyatt. Instead, I felt gazes on me, the new girl.

The stranger, once again.

Pulse blasting, I decided to go to the upper floor to take a better look, so I climbed the stairs, feeling the creak of wood under the soles of my trendy club boots. As I peered down, I saw the blue-ponytail guy mingling with the other free spirits in here. These weren't just nerds: it seemed like every person who didn't conform in the entire county had gathered with their piercings and spiked hair and ragged clothes. Aidan Falls wasn't too far from Austin, so maybe that had something to do with the bohemian vibe, too.

After passing a girl with a shaved head and Betty Boop on her shirt, I arrived at the top of the stairs, the floor deserted, almost a haven. I let out the breath I'd been holding and leaned on a railing, not sure what to do next.

Thank God for the phone.

I took it out, realizing that my secret admirer might be waiting for me to tell him that I was here. And I did it in our special, strange way—via TellTale.

I've finally stepped out of the shadows, too.

I posted the words over a picture I'd taken of my opened bedroom door before I'd left the house. He would know that this meant I'd finally left my room—and my comfortable spot—behind, wouldn't he?

I waited. Waited some more. And just when I started thinking that Micah Wyatt might be laughing his ass off at me, knowing he'd gotten me to go where he wanted me to go and he'd won his game for the night, a TellTale swished over my screen from the ten-mile radius I'd set.

What if she doesn't like what she sees?

It was posted over a new picture that only faintly resembled the old one—a silhouette, nearly visible this time, but not quite. He'd given me a little more of himself, too.

The hint of a mouth with a full lower lip and a strong chin.

I tried to remember if that was Micah's mouth, but before I could decide, I heard a voice behind me.

A low, smooth whisper that sent delicious tingles over every inch of my skin as his breath warmed my ear.

“I didn't think you'd be here, Carley,” he said.

With a burst of curiosity and elation, I tried to spin around to see Micah. But when firm hands grasped my upper arms, the oxygen hitched in my lungs.

And it wasn't because I was scared.

Words. That was all my secret admirer had ever needed to undo me, but even so, I also began to fall apart at the feel of his hands on my arms.

One piece of me fell at a time: first my pride, which I'd been guarding ever since I'd been such a failure in school. Then my heart, which seemed to peek out of the shelter I'd stored it in. Then there was the hardened skin I'd decided to wear as a new girl in a new place, afraid everyone in Aidan Falls wouldn't accept me. That skin seemed to be thawing at the heat of his touch, his long fingers branding me.

Maybe I should've been afraid, mostly because we were in a darkened place and we were the only two people on the upper floor. Yet I
wasn't
frightened. Or maybe I was just that stupidly persuaded by a few ardent posts from a guy who seemed to want to connect with someone as badly as I did.

I talked over the music, turning my head enough for him to hear me. My long, straight hair blocked the sight of him. “Who could resist an invitation to some place with a name like the Hellfire Club? Of course I showed up.”

His mouth was still by my ear, sending a simmer of thrills through me. His deep, whispered words stirred my hair. “I wasn't sure you'd understand the message I sent about meeting me here.”

“My friend told me where the club might be meeting, so I didn't have to ask you.”

“Was this friend Diana Hill? She's sure resourceful.”

He knew Diana's last name? Micah had seen us together at the party last night, but I couldn't remember if she'd told him more than her first name.

My mind didn't stay on logical questions like that, though. Not when my secret admirer was standing behind me, feeling like he was just as tall as Micah. I could sense the electricity from his chest as he slightly pressed against my shoulder. Why hadn't I felt that kind of buzzing awareness at the party, when I'd been close to Micah?

Was the red lighting or the dare-me music in this place getting to me, making me more aroused than I'd been last night? Or was it because we were alone now, without a phone screen between us?

“Diana,” I said, hoping my voice was steady, “is more than resourceful. She seems to know everyone in Aidan Falls, even though I'm not sure how well they know her.”

“She has a hard time relating to people, that's all.”

How would Micah know that? Wasn't he new in town, too?

Impetuously, I started to face him, but he tightened his grip on my arms.

“I don't want you to turn around,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“Just talk to me, Carley. That's what I want right now, and I want you to want the same thing.”

Was
this a game? Then why did he sound so intense, like looking at him would devalue this moment?

God, he was killing me second by second. My curiosity was making my heart expand to twice its normal size, and the rest of my body . . . Well, it was doing its own kind of frustrated dance. Pitters and patters of lust were running over the lining of my belly, glimmers of need were spilling lower, between my legs. I was tight there—just as tight as I'd been earlier, when I'd tried to massage away the brutal need for him.

His knuckles were close to my breasts, and the devil in me told me to move just an inch, to feel the brush of his fingers against me.

“Okay?” he whispered. “Promise you won't turn around?”

I shivered at his request. “Okay.”

“Good.”

He leaned his forehead against the side of my head, and I closed my eyes, feeling his hair skim my cheek. The music pounded. I pounded. It was like he was fully taking me in, hardly believing I was here. Hell, I couldn't believe it myself. But I'd wanted to finally meet the real world that was outside my door here in Aidan Falls.

So what was he going to do next? What did I want him to do?

“Jesus.” He buried his face against me, and I could feel lips, his nose, the gentle force of his words. “I imagined you'd smell good, but I didn't think it'd be like . . . God, the morning, when you wake up and everything's pure.”

I tried to paint a picture of Micah in my mind, standing here and revealing his soul to me. It wouldn't come.

“I want you more than anything, Carley,” he said softly, just below the music.

My pulse sped up. There was something about him that bled into me, something I'd never felt with a guy before, and I couldn't stop my body from spiking to a fever that clouded my head.

“Why this way?” I asked breathlessly, still needing answers. My brain
was
still working . . . slightly. “Why couldn't you just walk up to me and say hello and meet me the old-fashioned way?”

“I told you during our chat.” He let go of one of my arms and skimmed a finger down my cheek.

The motion was so tender that I trembled again. “You said that you aren't so good at this stuff in real life. I'd have to disagree . . . Good God, what should I even call you? ThereInTheCorner?”

And I almost added, “Micah?” But the question caught in my throat as his finger trailed down my face and to my neck, strumming me there.

“Call me what you want to call me. For now.”

My voice returned, full of raspy need. “And after?”

“It'll be up to you. Everything's up to you, even how you want things to go before we get to an ‘after.'” His finger stilled on my neck. “But if you don't mind me saying so, I've always imagined slow with you, Carley. Nice and slow and beautiful.”

Oh, wow. The words. He knew how to choose them. If I hadn't wanted to see him before, I did now, but this was so overwhelmingly romantic and I was so swept up in this moment with the throb of music and the wispy thrill of his skin on mine that I couldn't break it.

So I talked, I slowed, I did what he asked me to.

“How did you even notice me?” I asked.

I could feel him smile against my head. “How could I not notice? The first time I saw you, you were at the gas station, filling up your car, and you had the loneliest look on your face. I felt that look, almost like it was a reflection of me. I didn't know you, but I wanted to protect you from feeling that way, wanted to stop you from feeling that way.”

“And that's why you sent the TellTales? Because you wanted to make me feel better?”

“Partly. But, most of all, I had to know you.”

Again, I reeled. But what about all the stuff Diana had told me about Micah's seduction games? This didn't sound like seduction as much as . . . Well, sincere confessions.

Second by second, doubts were nudging me harder, but it was in a quiet way that didn't make me panic or want to run.

If my secret admirer wasn't Micah, then who was it?

“How did you know I'd even see the TellTales?” I asked. “How did you know I had the app?”

“It was serendipity.” Still a whisper. Still a rough, deep, yet tender and poetic string of dreamlike talk that lulled me. “I saw that someone—you, Carley—had sent a TellTale about being invisible in a new town. You were somewhere within ten miles of me, and you'd posted the words over a picture of your car on the side of the route that runs toward your house. I already knew your name, had seen your car, so I used the information to try and get your attention.”

“You knew my name?”

He didn't answer. He only got braver, slipping his hands down my arms until he came to my elbows. He cupped them, nestling there, bringing me to a near moan. I bit my lip, trying to keep it back, but my body was taking over all my common sense.

“Who
are
you?” I asked.

He paused. “I'm a guy who can't believe he's here with you.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Maybe I could ask you who you are instead.”

I tensed in his arms.
Now
he was sounding like Micah—or, at least, who Micah was supposed to be. The game player.

“It sounds like you already know a lot about me,” I said.

“I've heard a few things.” He tentatively rubbed his thumbs into the crooks of my arms where I knew it was damp and as humid as the air had suddenly become in this red building. “For one thing, I know you went to college.”

No use avoiding that story. I'd posted about it on TellTale, and my secret admirer had probably pieced together just who Carley Rios really was from all my posts. “College wasn't for me.”

“It's not for everyone.”

“You, too?”

“I've got to work to pay my way. College wasn't in the cards.”

Hurt rose to the surface. “At least you didn't bomb out of any classes. I couldn't cut it there. How's that for a confession?”

He coasted his hands to my forearms, enveloping me in a hug that felt so good I reveled in it, sighing.

“I saw those TellTales, Carley, and you're not dumb. You might've hit a roadblock, but you'll get over it.”

He ran one of his thumbs over my bracelet as if he knew I'd created it, like he knew that I'd give anything to make an idea like this succeed and I'd show everyone that I didn't need college.

“I'm glad you have confidence in me,” I said. “My stepdad constantly makes me feel like such a moron, so I hear it all the time. And I'm pretty sure that he thinks I'm going to be a failure in whatever I do.” I laughed a little. “All I want to do is get away from him. You probably read those TellTales, too.”

“I saw them,” he whispered even more softly against my ear. “Just don't listen to him. He's a right bastard.”

“You know him?”

Now it was my secret admirer's turn to tense up, but then he loosened his hold on me. “Everyone knows Toby Taylor, Esquire. He's the Scrooge of the town.”

He was
very
up on Aidan Falls current events. How could he be Micah?

But I didn't care if he wasn't. Actually, I was relieved, because it'd made no sense that I'd felt next to nothing for the guy I'd met at the party last night. Sure, Micah Wyatt was hot, but I hadn't gotten interested because of his looks. Every time I'd seen a TellTale from my secret admirer, I'd fallen a little bit more for whoever was writing them. It was like every post was a flower I was folding between two sheets of wax paper, sustaining those precious words so I could go back to them again and again.

Whoever this was, I didn't want to leave his arms. I liked it here. It was the most comfortable place I'd been for a long time. Maybe ever.

“Why,” he asked, “did your mom marry your stepdad?”

“I don't know.” Every time he stroked his thumbs over my skin, I got more and more buzzed. “They'd been dating online for a year, so it wasn't a head-over-heels thing. I've even asked her what made her fall in love with him, and she says that he seems like a hard-case on the outside, but inside, he's really strong and supportive, and someday I'll come around to seeing it. She thinks I'm just bitter because she left my dad, but I think there's something to what she said—that she needs support. She used to be a hairdresser, but she actually considers herself to be an artist. My dad didn't think that was practical, and they'd fight about her wanting to quit her ‘real job' to explore her touchy-feely side. Things just got worse between them from there. I would've stayed with him, but he travels for work all the time, so I ended up moving with Mom to Aidan Falls. I can't afford to be on my own yet, but it sounds like you know that tale, too.”

“I get it. And I get that Toby Taylor allows her to work in that art studio for a living now,” he said. “She fell in love because he understands her.”

He seemed to sense that it was time for me to ask who he was again because he pulled me closer to him, my back to his chest. He was all muscle, tall and solid.

I gave a soft sound of pleasure, and I wasn't sure he heard it as much as felt it in the give of my body.

It seemed so right, being next to this person, talking with him about everything. It was as if we'd known each other a long time and tonight was meant to be, so when he pressed his mouth to my ear, I let it happen.

Meant to be . . .

“What about you?” I asked. “I don't know anything about you except . . .”

I trailed off as he kissed my ear, sending a quake down the center of me, splitting me apart until I ached and died for more.

“Except what?” he asked against me.

“Except I think that you've got things that bother you, too,” I said. “You just don't like to talk about them on your TellTales. Is there a reason you won't show yourself to me?”

“No. I told you that I like it this way.”

“And I do, too. For now.”

I'd echoed his earlier words.
For now
. They hinted at a future beyond this steamy, breath-stealing present.

Was
there a future?

It was his turn to sigh, and tremors filled me as he spoke.

“What do you want to know, Carley? Should we trade stories, and I'll tell you that I live with a big family where I've always faded into the background? Should I say that my single dad had a revolving door of girlfriends who brought along their own kids and usually left them behind? He's a nice guy with a good heart but should've never been a parent.”

Whoa.
I hadn't expected him to come so abruptly clean. And he went even further.

“I guess I should also tell you that I was just as much of a nonentity to everyone else, too. I might as well have been a ghost in school, for all it mattered. I was the guy in the jacket that swallowed him up as I sat by the rear window in class, never saying a word. Would you have seen me if you'd been there then, Carley?”

Probably not. In high school, I'd been popular. I'd had stars in my eyes and I'd thought I was going to conquer the world. When I found out that I didn't have that kind of future in me, it'd been a shock.

“Maybe I would've seen you, if I'd have been looking,” I said. “Why would you think I wouldn't want to see you now?”