Page 80 of Rage
Monica drifts over near the end of the second game from the bar, or making her route look like it, and posts up next to me at the rail with her glass with a smile.
“You’re Amy, right?” Her voice sweet. Lethal. “Are you going Friday?”
“Friday?” Like I don’t know what she means.
“The party. At Saint’s house.” Her smile tilts, gentle as a box cutter. “You haven’t been there?” Her eyes flick to the wall and back, letting the silence finish the gut punch to my stomach. “I thought you’ve been over there. Anyway, literally everyone’s going. I assumed you knew.”
She’s been to his house? And he invited her to his party.
He didn’t mention his house on the rooftop the other night. It’s been four days of radio silence and now a party. I’m findingout under a pool lamp that he invited the same girl he fucked on the east stairwell but claims to want to fuck me.
“Of course,” I say, smooth enough to skate on. “Friday.”
“Cute,” she says, meaning nothing, meaning everything, and then drifts off toward the bar again with her phone already in her hand.
I set my cue down on the rail. Line it up parallel with the cushion. Precise. Like the table’s being graded.
When I look up, I find Saint watching me.
This time I let him see exactly nothing. The neutral face. The one my father built and Roman polished and no one on this campus has ever seen the inside of. Something flickers behind his eyes.
“Rose. I’m getting the next round. Come with me?”
Rose looks at me. Then, behind me. “Sure,” she says.
We walk to the bar. I feel him watching me the whole way, and the whole time I tell myself he doesn’t owe me anything. I was the one who fell for his bullshit. His lies. Despite all of Azriel’s warnings to stay away.
I have to keep reminding myself that Saint isn’t like the other assholes at this school. He’s worse, and he hasn’t hidden the fact that I’m Prey. I’m no different from Monica or the others these guys prey on.
If my past taught me anything, it was to survive.
Amy
We more or less closed the place down.
Last call comes and goes. The high-top girls peel off one by one. Monica ends up leaving last, with a glance at Saint that doesn’t get returned, and by the time the bartender starts stacking clean mugs, it’s just us. Rose and Garret argue about the side bet he definitely lost, Azriel collects jackets, and Saint heads out back without a backward glance.
I caught the exit in my peripheral vision a minute ago.
One second, he was at the wall. The next, he was walking toward the back. The whole time, he just observed. Like he was studying everyone.
We go out the back, through the fire door past the restrooms, because the front is a bottleneck of people waiting on rides, and Garret says the back alley cuts straight to the east gate.
The night hits clean and cold, that 1 a.m. air that smells like rain that hasn’t decided yet.
The alley is amber-lit and empty. Dumpster, fire escape, somebody’s bike chained to a drainpipe with more chain than bike.
“I’ll take you to your dorm,” Azriel says to me, unlocking his car. “It’s on my way.”
“It’s not on your way,” I say, even though I don’t know where he stays.
“It’s on my way if I take you.”
Rose snorts. Garret slings an arm around her shoulders, and the two of them drift ahead, their voices dropping into something private.
Then the mouth of the alley fills with the sound of a loud engine.
Twelve cylinders idling somewhere between a growl and a verdict. Headlights sweep the brick and the SVJ slides across the alley entrance like a checkmate, matte black drinking the amber light and giving nothing back.
