I ignore him as he climbs out of his car with a hoot, dragging his best friend, Kellen Doughty, and the girl they're always fighting over—Tina Flacco—behind him. I haven't seen the three of them at all this summer, but last I knew, she was sleeping with them both.
Good for her.
I doubt either of those football douches saves it just for Tina anyway.
“Whoa, look what the Cat dragged in,” Trevone says, flashing a white-toothed grin my direction, dropping his legs over the side of the pool and reaching for the joint. I take a long, hot drag, smoke burning my lungs as I hold it in as long as I can and then pass it over. “Miss Daybreak herself. Daddy let you out of his cage for the night?”
“Let's just say I picked the lock, shall we?” I tell him with a smile, leaning back and enjoying the warm summer air on my bare shoulders and arms, the silver bracelets on my left wrist tinkling. Raven-dark hair falls down my back in a silken wave as I look up at the stars, silver pinpricks of light in the navy wash of sky.
“Good deal,” Trevone says, taking two drags before giving the joint to Tina. He hops down in the pool and within seconds, the bonfire is climbing with orange and red fingers, digging its claws into the darkness and driving it back to the fringes of the yard.
More people arrive—big groups of them stuffed into cars, bringing coolers and kegs and unbridled laughter. I watch them all, part of the group but somehow still alone, sitting in my red satin halter top and leather pants, kicking the soles of my black heeled boots against the side of the pool.
For a while there, I almost forget who my dad is, laughing and drinking and smoking until my head feels like it's spinning.
“Well, somebody sure is havin' a good time,” Reba says, sitting down beside me, proper in all the places that I'm improper. Almost indecent, really.
Cat would so kill me for this …
Some people—ignorant people—think that having a dad named Cat is a little weird, especially considering his … chosen profession. But the guys call their president that for a reason. Cats are some of the most efficient hunters on the planet, taking down a wide variety of prey … and also, everyone knows that well-fed housecats kill for fun. Toy with their prey, play with it, torture it before they kill it.
That's my dad. That's Cat, president of Death by Daybreak MC.
And sometimes I think he's just as hard on his daughter as he is his enemies.
“A really fucking good time,” I say, leaning into her.
The acrid smell of smoke curls around the pair of us, me with my Jameson and Reba with her plain old Coca-Cola. We sit there for the longest time, until Johnny K. asks Reba to dance and she accepts, joining the crowd to the right of the pool and hitting the makeshift dance floor with moves that were probably outdated by the time this old house was built.
A few minutes later, Johnny R. gives up on trying to convert us all to records and old-school rock and sets up a playlist on his iPhone, leaving the DJ station to invite me to dance next. I abandon the now empty bottle of whiskey, run my tongue over my teeth to make sure there aren't any lipstick stains, and take his hand.
It's warm and sweaty and unsure. Joining Johnny R. in the empty dirt patch where my classmates grind and bump and grin and grope, I know I'm dancing with a boy instead of a man.
Flickers of a different party, a different moment, a different dance partner skitter around the edges of my mind, but I ignore them, letting the booze and the weed keep control of my brain and all the horrible things crawling around inside of it.
After a few songs, I push Johnny R. away and stumble over to the edge of the yard, where the black silhouettes of trees stand guard like silent ghosts. Putting my hand on the faded white paint of an apple tree trunk, I lean over and try to fight the sudden, overwhelming nausea spiraling through me. It doesn't help that on the ground near my boots, the plump corpses of rotten fruit litter the dirt like splotchy scabs.
The scuff of a rubber sole on the ground nearby draws my attention up and over to the black-on-black shimmer of a shadow hiding in the trees. As sick as I feel right now, my head still spinning with THC and alcohol, my hand drops to my boot and the hunting knife buried in a sheath behind the leather.
“Shouldn't mix pot and booze, Gidge,” a rough voice says, just beyond the orange-yellow pool of light cast by the bonfire. It dances through the dark, vertical bars of the forest, highlighting the dry brown sea of undergrowth.
