Wrath - 4 (14 page)

“She’s not with me,” Adam protested weakly as the hands traced their way up his body and began doing something unspeakably pleasurable to the tips of his ears. And the woman disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the bar—there were plenty of other men drinking alone.

“What do you want?” Adam asked Kaia dul y, without turning around or pushing her away. He hated her … but he had never been able to push her away. “I was busy, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I noticed,” Kaia said. She let go of him—Adam tried to feel relief, but couldn’t—and pul ed up a stool next to his. “So, aren’t you going to thank me?”

“For what?” Now that she wasn’t touching him anymore, Adam’s feelings were uncomplicated. He just wanted her to go away.

“For rescuing you from”—Kaia looked off in the direction the older woman had disappeared—“that.”

“I can take care of myself, thanks.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Kaia, if you’ve got something to say, just say it. I don’t have time for your games.”

“Fine. You want the short but sweet version? You’re screwing up.”

Yeah, thanks for the news flash.

“Beating people up? Getting suspended? Walking around half-drunk al the time? It’s pathetic—you’ve got to get it together.”

“What do you care?” he growled, trying to push away her words before they could do any damage. Kaia never said anything without an ulterior motive.

She also never said anything that didn’t sound at least partly true. It’s why she was so deadly effective.

She shrugged.

“Good point. I don’t care. I’m just tel ing you what I see.You want to ruin your life, that’s your business. I’m just bringing it to your attention. Always good to make an informed decision.” She flagged down the bartender and ordered a seltzer with lime. Adam suddenly wondered what she was doing here, in this dead-end bar in the middle of the afternoon, but forced himself not to ask. With Kaia, curiosity was just another form of weakness.

“I’m ruining my life?” he said instead, pouring on the sarcasm. “That’s a good one. And I suppose you’re just here for the show? You had nothing to do with it?”

“Very mature, Adam, blaming me for al your problems.” She remained infuriatingly serene. Suddenly, she seemed to spot someone in the back of the bar, and she abruptly lifted her drink and stood up. “I’ve got better things to do than babysit you, Adam. Enjoy your beer.”

“Like I real y need someone like
you
looking out for me,” he spit out.

Kaia looked up and down the long, empty bar, then fixed Adam with a pitying stare.

“It looks to me like I’m al you’ve got.”

You can’t go home again
.

That was the line that swam into Beth’s mind as she crouched behind a car in the parking lot, furious at herself for hiding like a coward, unable to find the strength to stand and show herself. She’d left school in search of Claire, or Abbie, or anyone from older, easier days, needing the reassurance of familiar faces, people to whom she mattered.

She’d found them, al right. And that, it seemed, had been the biggest mistake of al .

“Can you believe her?” Claire asked. She was lounging against the side of her silver Oldsmobile, while Abbie and Leslie perched on the hood of a boxy green Volvo. They were taking advantage of the picture-perfect weather, stretching out in the sun, and Beth would have joined them—until she heard the words that made her duck behind a parked car instead. “That speech was so pathetic. It was so
her,
though—al the little Miss Perfect crap.”

“Come on, Claire, don’t be such a bitch,” Abbie said, in a chastising tone spoiled by the fact that she couldn’t choke back her laughter.

“What? Admit it: She thinks she’s better than everyone.”

“Wel …” Abbie and Leslie exchanged a glance. “Yeah,” Leslie al owed. “But that doesn’t mean—”

“Guys. Did you not see the way she was looking at us at the sleepover?”

“Like she couldn’t wait to get away from us,” Abbie mused.

“Like she was bored out of her mind,” Leslie added. “And we were supposed to be honored or something that she’d showed up in the first place.”

“It was kind of worth it, though, wasn’t it?” Abbie asked, tipping her head back to get a ful blast of sunshine. “I told you we’d get some good gossip out of her.”

“Okay, but is it real y worth putting up with Miss Priss for much longer, gossip or not?” Claire pointed out. “Al this fake smiling’s starting to hurt my face.”

“Give her a break, Claire. This is Beth we’re talking about—I mean, yeah, she’s kind of boring and pretentious, but she was your best friend,” Abbie reminded her.

Claire scowled. “
Was
. Note the tense. She’s the one who ditched us—and now we’re supposed to be grateful that she’s come sniffing around again? Like we’re some kind of last-resort rescue from total loserdom?”

“Okay, she’s not
that
bad,” Abbie argued. “It’s not like we weren’t friends with her … once.”

“She’s different now,” Claire said firmly. “You know she’s not one of us anymore. And I don’t care how many innocent little wide-eyed smiles she gives us—she knows it too.” Maybe she had to work on her delivery. Giving someone helpful advice probably wasn’t supposed to make them want to throw barware at you—but Adam had looked about ready to do just that. And the irony was, she’d actual y been sincere. For whatever reason, she was tired of watching his pitiful downward spiral; but, apparently, he didn’t want her help.

It was a good thing Kaia had better things to think about than the aberrant wave of consideration for her one-time mark. Reed was waiting.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, when she found him slouched in a booth at the back of the bar. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt and, with his river of black curly hair and deep brown eyes, he almost faded into the shadows. She hadn’t seen him—not this close, at least—since the day he’d run off from her house.

Her run-in with Powel had convinced her once and for al that if anyone in her life was a desperate perv, it was him. Reed had no motivation to torment her since she was sure he didn’t know about Powel . She’d been too careful.

“I’m not doing this, Kaia.” She loved the way it sounded when he said her name in his lazy, throaty voice. It sounded like honey—with a splash of tequila thrown in for flavoring.

“Doing what?” Kaia was good at acting the innocent, but in this case, she was honestly clueless. And she didn’t like it.

“You and your father—I’m not getting in the middle of that.”

“Of what? There is no ‘that.’ He barely knows I exist. And I try my best to forget he does.”

“I saw what you were doing.”

He spoke so slowly, as if each word did battle to escape from his brain. Usual y it was sexy. Now it was just maddening. “Using me, to piss him off. I’m not doing it.” Kaia laughed. Unlike the light tinkling giggle she usual y al owed herself, this was a ful -throated chuckle, a mix of relief and genuine amusement. She stopped abruptly when she noticed his expression—apparently, Reed didn’t like it when people laughed at him.

“Reed, did you see the look on my father’s face when he went back into the house? Did you hear what he said? He doesn’t care what I do. If I wanted to piss him off, I’d spil something on his white Alsatian carpeting. He couldn’t care less about my dating life.”

“I know what I heard,” Reed persisted.

His stubbornness, usual y so sexy, was going to ruin everything.

“You’ve seen too many movies. My father and I? It’s not like that. What you heard was the same fight my father and I have every time we speak—which is about once a month. I don’t care what he thinks of me, or who I’m with.” She didn’t say
please believe me
. Either he would or he wouldn’t. “My father has nothing to do with—with whatever is happening between us,” she swore. “Forget him. I have.”

Reed considered her for a moment. He pushed a hand through his unruly hair, then nodded. “Okay.”

“We’re good?” she asked, wrapping her hands around his.

He nodded again. “We’re good.”

She leaned across the table to kiss him, hovering there for as long as she could, tasting his lips and breathing in his deep, musky scent. Then she stood up and laid her cel phone and wal et down on the table, hoping she’d chosen a clean spot.

“In that case, I’m off to find what passes for a bathroom in this place.” She skimmed her fingers across his forehead—for no reason other than that she liked to touch him. “Don’t go away.”

Kaia had been gone for two minutes when her cel phone beeped. Reed could stil smel her perfume lingering in the air.

The phone beeped again. A second text message. And Kaia was nowhere in sight.

The phone was lying on the table, only a few inches away. It beeped a third time, insistent, as if it were cal ing to him.

Reed wasn’t usual y a curious person. He saw as much of the world as the world wanted him to see—no more, no less. Why examine something when you could just breathe it in and enjoy?

But Kaia was different.

She was complicated and surprising. He didn’t trust himself around her. And he didn’t trust her at al .

When the phone beeped a fourth time, he looked quickly back toward the bathroom. There was no sign of her, so he picked up the phone and flipped it open.

See you at 8.

Wear the black teddy I like.

Or nothing.

That’s even better. J

Reed had never been a big reader. And in English class—when he bothered to attend—he’d always ignored al the crap about levels and symbolism. But the message didn’t require much interpretation; it said exactly what it meant.

When Kaia got through with him this afternoon, she’d be meeting someone else.

And maybe Reed was better at interpretation than he’d thought, because he was suddenly convinced that this was someone Kaia had seen a lot. “J” had certainly seen plenty

—
all
—of her.

Reed wasn’t usual y a possessive person. A hookup wasn’t a marriage proposal. People didn’t belong to each other. He belonged only to himself—and his girls were the same.

But Kaia was different.

Or at least he’d thought she was.

Reed held the phone and brought his thumb toward the delete button—and then he stopped. The phone didn’t belong to him. And neither did Kaia.

He closed the phone, laying it back on the table next to her wal et.

And when Kaia came back from the bathroom, he was gone.

Beth didn’t have the nerve to confront them in person. It was easier, safer to pick up the phone and climb into bed, swaddling herself in the fuzzy pink comforter. But, even surrounded by al the things she loved—Snuffy the stuffed turtle, her copy of
The Wind in the Willows,
her trophy from the sixth-grade spel ing bee—she felt lost in hostile territory.

Claire picked up the phone after the fourth ring, just as Beth had begun to breathe an ounce easier and prepared herself to leave a message. “Claire, we need to talk,” she began, knowing that even if the other girl stil didn’t have cal er ID, she would recognize Beth’s voice. “Are you … mad at me?” It sounded so childish—but it was al she could come up with. She couldn’t reference what she’d heard in the parking lot.

“Why would I be mad at you, Bethie?” Claire asked, adopting the nickname she’d used when they were kids. “Have you
done
something? Feeling guilty?”

“You just seem … mad,” Beth said lamely, avoiding the question. Did she feel guilty? Had she trashed the friendship, or had they just drifted apart? What did it say that she could no longer remember?

“Beth, I’m kind of busy. Is there a point to this? Because otherwise—”

“I heard you in the parking lot,” Beth blurted. If Claire hung up, Beth might not have the nerve to cal back. And that would mean letting it go, returning their fake smiles and pretending she didn’t know what lay behind them. “You, Abbie, Leslie—I heard what you said. About me.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause. Then—“You were spying on us?”

“No, I was just—it doesn’t matter. I just …”

“What do you want me to say?” Claire asked irritably. “If you heard us, why are you even cal ing? What do you want from me?” It was a reasonable question, but for al her agonizing over this cal , Beth hadn’t thought to come up with an answer.

“I wanted—I thought we could be friends again.”

Claire laughed. “Just like that? Just because you decide, after al this time, you want to pick things up where we left off. You think it’s that easy?”

“Why not?” Beth whispered.

“Because where were you,
Bethie
? Where were you when Abbie broke her leg, or got her first boyfriend? Where were you when I almost failed precalc? When my parents got divorced—” Her voice, which had been rising steadily, suddenly broke off, and al Beth could hear were her labored breaths.

“I’m sorry,” Beth began. “I wish I hadn’t—”

“I don’t care if you’re sorry. Don’t you get that? And I don’t care anymore that you weren’t there—I got by without you. We al did. I don’t need you anymore. And I real y don’t care if you need me.”

Claire hung up.

Beth sat with the phone to her ear for a long time, just listening to the dial tone. That was it, then. Unless she wanted to back down and forgive Adam, she was on her own.

On her nightstand, sandwiched between a stack of CDs and an empty picture frame (that had, until recently, held a shot from the junior prom), sat a smal cardboard box. It was the size of a jewelry box, and inside it lay two yel ow pil s, each the size of one of her gold stud earrings.

She lifted the top and looked at the pil s, examining them more closely than she had before. She even took one out of the box, just to see how it would feel in the palm of her hand. It was light, like aspirin, and it looked just as harmless.

Kane had given them to her as a Christmas present. He’d thought they could make their New Year’s “ex-tra special”—a mistake almost as big as the one she’d made by inviting him into her life in the first place.

Stil , she’d pocketed the pil s, and kept them. For a rainy day? If so, this qualified, and she could certainly do with a jolt of happiness, chemical or not.