He rides his hands over my back, tracing out my curves while looking me dead in the eye.
Logan is testing me. He wants to see how far he can push it—see if he can score on homecoming even though he’ll deny it to his grave quite literally, but a part of me is dying to let him.
A dry laugh trembles through his chest as he takes me in.
“What?” I ask, pushing my hips into his and taking in a breath when I feel him tick to life beneath me.
“I’m going to explode if I can’t kiss you.” His linear dimple folds in on itself.
“Kiss me. I double dog dare you to.”
He shakes his head. “The way Gage is watching me, you’d think I was a criminal.”
“Criminal sounds fitting.” Marshall comes in and tucks his shoulder into Logan’s until he’s effectively taken his place. “Be gone—hose yourself down for goodness sake. The entire exchange was embarrassing to witness.” He lowers his gaze over mine and holds me out a polite distance as we sway to the music. “This is how you dance with a lady.”
“Are you OK with this?” Logan tries to cut in, but Marshall has completely blocked him out.
“One song,” I say it curt without losing the steely-eyed look I’m shooting Marshall.
Logan takes off, presumably to cool himself. That boy had us both drowning in some serious heat. I bet if you look up dirty dancing in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Logan thrusting those hips into mine. And, hot damn, that boy can thrust with the best of them.
“I heard you.” Marshall frowns into me, looking even more unbearably handsome. “This might be how one dances with a lady, but this”—he secures his body to mine and we rock to an intoxicating rhythm that has me gasping for air —“this is how I dance with my wife.” The word wife bites through me like a pleasure-filled explosion, and I collapse over Marshall, quaking uncontrollably.
“Oh God,” I croak as I latch onto him trembling to completion. “You’re worse than he is, you know that?” I say still glowing from the ecstasy of Marshall’s touch.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.” Damn. I can’t believe I let Marshall get to me like this. It’s like he’s a walking sex bomb that goes off every time we touch. This is bad, bad, bad. It is so not right to be hot for teacher.
“Hot for teacher?” He grits it through his teeth as if I said the exact words that had the power to reduce him to a primal level. Marshall’s eyes light up with flames, and sex exudes from his person in a viral—visceral—hormonal explosion.
“It’s an expression. It means—”
“I’m hopeful as to what it might mean.” He depresses a sexy-as-hell smile. “You realize if you dare lie with an Oliver, we’ll have to scrap your carnal knowledge and start from the beginning. Why play with boys, Skyla, when you can run with men?”
“You mean there’s more than one of you?”
“I can multiply if you like.” His eyes widen at the prospect as if it were the first time this strange arrangement came to mind.
“No thanks. I’d be at a loss where to put things.”
“We’ll figure it out—rather quickly.” He bows in as if he’s coming in for a kiss, and a hand slices between us.
Gage and those piercing blue eyes dig into me, pleading for me not to carry on with Marshall another living second.
“Come.” Marshall leads me off the dance floor with such an intense urgency, I’m almost positive he’s about to whisk me away to his egotistical ménage a trois.
We’ll save that dalliance for another hour. I’ve a spirit patiently waiting to do her part this evening. She’s in the ladies room. Don’t worry about Jock Strap. I think it’s about time I had a serious discussion with him regarding matters of the heart.
Don’t you dare crush his balls! I bleat as he propels me toward the restroom.
Marshall groans at my euphemism. You’ve twenty minutes to complete your mission then back to paradise she goes.
Paradise? My heart claps against my chest. Kate!
I make a mad dash into the restroom and scan each girl as they diligently reapply blush and lipstick. Carly Foster sits at the vanity drawing large black rings around her eyes. Honestly there are boys at school who have mastered the fine art of guyliner better than she has.
A lone girl stands behind an overgrown silk plant, swaying on her shiny white heels, and I carefully peer around the bush.
“Kate!” I squeal, locking my arms around her tight. She feels solid, and perfect, and real in every way. “You look amazing.” I take her by the hands and sweep a glance over her. She’s wearing a silver, formfitting gown with ruching up one side, and her face glows a powder-soft pink. Her eyes sparkle with a special brand of joy I haven’t seen in anyone but my father.
“Logan begged me to say hello to you.”
I take in a breath. Kate couldn’t have gutted me any more efficiently than she did with those very words. It annunciates the fact that the Logan I’m with is simply a piece of him trapped in a bubble of time. That another part, a very real part, is, in fact, in paradise, no longer living or breathing as we know it.
“Skyla.” Her forehead creases. “He was afraid it would bring you pain. Be aware he still very much loves you. He’s forever going on and on about how much you mean to him. How much you’ve done together.”
“We haven’t done anything together.” My vision blurs with tears.
“You will. He wanted me to tell you that he knows so much more now. We don’t exist in your time continuum, Skyla. He’s outside of time, and he can see—he has already experienced everything with you.”
“No.” I shake my head with a groan. “This can’t be happening.” For some reason being here with Kate, having this all-too-somber conversation, makes me ache for a boy who is seemingly in the next room.
“I can hear you.” She squeezes my hands. “In paradise we can all listen in this way. And, you’re right. Being in paradise is simply like being in the next room. Death isn’t scary or bad. It’s wonderful if you land in the right place, and although Logan misses you as terribly as you miss him, he wants to see you happy.” She reaches over and brushes my cheek with her fingers. Kate looks far more mature than I remember with her features locked in a constant stream of contentment. “He knows what happens, and he wants you to understand, he’s more than OK with it. I believe his exact words were, he felt good about it.”
I give a stunted nod like that of a child, sniffing back tears before I break into a full-blown ball. This entire conversation makes me crave Logan even more.
“Now.” She pulls her shoulders back and sharpens her gaze over the room. “Where are those bitches who played catch with my head?”
“Outside.” A sly smile brims on my lips. “What are we going to do?”
“I only want the few that are responsible, Chloe, Lex, and Michelle.”
“What about Nat? She really misses you.”
“We’ll save Nat for last.”
“Got it.” I lead Kate out into the hall. “Wait”—I pull her back a moment—“people are going to have a heart attack if they see you.”
“The only people who see me are those I reveal myself to. I won’t let anyone hear me but you. And only those girls that desecrated my grave will most certainly see me. Trust me, everyone else will think you’re the one scaring the crap out of them.”
She spurs on ahead, and I jog in my spiked FM’s just to keep up.
“Wait! That’s not a good thing.”
Kate moves with stealth dexterity in and out of the crowd. We spot the bitch squad at a table near the stage yakking it up with a couple of boys for East. Em is nowhere to be seen. Nat is too busy jamming her tongue down Pierce’s throat to notice any commotion.
“Stand behind me and say what I tell you.” Kate’s voice reverberates over the hum of the crowd, hollow and cold.
What she tells me? What the hell is she going to tell me?
It’s easy for Kate to scare the hell out of them.
It’s not like she has to face anybody come Monday.
Chloe’s face goes pale as a sheet as we fast approach them. Michelle is next with her mouth dropping open like a dark cave, and I half-expect a bat to fly out of it.
“What the hell?” Lex cranes her head around, unconcerned, until she spots our dear dead friend Kate and breaks out in a scream.
Figures it would be Lex freaking out like a six-year-old girl.
She runs up the stairs, and Michelle and Chloe follow suit.
Shit. The stage, Kate? Really? I’m all for humiliating the bitch squad, but not when I’m being set up as the puppet master. A part of me is wondering if Chloe is the true mastermind here and if any minute the tables are going to turn with Kate giving me the ultimate F.U. for hacking off her head to begin with.
“Ask them which one put my head in the trunk.” Kate doesn’t take her eyes off them.
The D.J. grinds the music to less than palpable levels, but the crowd stops all movement to witness the bizarre sight.
“Which one of you put my head in the trunk?” I shout.
A titter of laughter circles the room.
“I mean…” Shit. I knew this had humiliate Skyla written all over it. “Which one of you put Kate’s head in my trunk?” I belt it out loud and proud in the event someone in the back is straining to listen. I totally hate when I’m in the nosebleeds and have no idea what the hell is going on.
Michelle and Lex both start speaking at once with an entire choir of, “She made us do it.”
Kate cuts me a thin-lipped smile. “Tell them to face the crowd and apologize to me publically.”
“Face the crowd and apologize to Kate publicly,” I shout.
“We’re so sorry!” Lex can hardly get the words out.
Michelle has gone into lockdown mode and starts shivering like a dog.
“Tell Chloe I want a personal apology.” Kate glares right at her.
“Apologize, Chloe.”
Chloe’s face bleaches out, slowly morphing into a satisfying shade of green.
The sound of running water startles me as a stream of urine runs simultaneously down both Lexy and Michelle’s legs.
Dear God. Synchronized pissing? This is far better than I could have ever hoped for. Now if only Chloe would join in on the bladder malfunction.
Ms. Richards flies to the front of the stage. “Skyla!” she hisses. “All of you down, right this minute!”
Kate takes a step into Chloe. “You will apologize to me, and you will do it now.”
Something tells me I don’t have to repeat that one.
Chloe gags. Her entire torso bucks as a waterfall of vomit splashes from her mouth right onto Kate’s shiny white shoes.
Kate tilts her head back and explodes with a laugh that fills the entire auditorium. The crowd cowers, disgusted by Chloe’s addition to the bodily fluid parade. Kate turns to me in her slowly-dissolving state.
“Logan loves you, Skyla.” She bubbles with laughter. “He always will. You have everything with him. Trust my words. Things happen.”
She glances down at Natalie and waves, and Nat’s entire person solidifies like stone.
“Wait!” I snatch the air in an effort to hold her back, but she’s gone.
An entire bevy of school officials storm the front of the facility.
“Skyla,” Logan calls from the edge of the stage.
I take up his hand, and we run out the side door, all the way down the white sandy beaches of Paragon.
He’s still here with me. Right here, right now.
Sort of.
30
Chaste
The moon sprays its glitter over the ocean in a funnel of shimmering light, white and brilliant, providing a shock over the navy expanse.
Logan and I walk hand in hand down the powdered sand beach just outside of the resort unlucky enough to host the homecoming dance.
“Tandem urination?” Logan pulls me in and tries to hold back that sexy smile.
“Have I impressed you?” I slip my hands inside his jacket and warm myself against his back.
“Dangerously so.” He examines me as if he had a newfound clarity. “What happened in there?”
“It was Kate.” I tell him all about Marshall’s surprise and how Kate had a confidence about her that I had never seen before. “She mentioned you,” I say it quiet, hoping the words might disappear in the wind and we wouldn’t have to go there, but innately I know we do.
Logan latches onto me with that ultra-serious gaze, the one that alerts me to the fact things have taken a turn for the evening, and that we’ve already spent every last laugh on our way down here.
“Tell me everything.” He pulls us further along the beach a ways until the resort shrinks to the size of an ice cube, and my mind reverts to Gage. “He took off,” Logan says without hesitating. “Dudley took him outside and filled his head with who knows what. He texted a little while ago that he was heading home. He said he didn’t need to be here tonight.” Logan drills a hole in the ocean with his heated stare, and, for a moment, I’m not sure if he’s pissed, concerned, or elated. It could be any number of things, but, by and large, people who are already gone are hard to read.
We sit on the sand a few feet from the waves lapping up on shore. Logan takes off his jacket and wraps it around my shoulders. It holds his heat, his scent, and radiates his love over me as if it were a phantom version of himself.
“Kate said you wanted me to be happy. That you knew what happened, and that you were good with it—that we would experience everything together.” I can feel myself blush when I say it.
Logan lets out a controlled breath as if he had been holding it since that moment back at Marshall’s party when the whole world—the universe changed for us.
He wraps his arms around me and nuzzles into my neck a moment. Logan squints the beginnings of a painful smile while brushing the hair from my face.
“You know I want you to be happy.” His voice washes over me as faithful as the waves sizzling over the dewy sand.
“I am happy.” It comes out angry, hostile that Logan wants to turn the rest of our lives into one long goodbye. I don’t expand on the topic. Instead, I crush my lips to his. Logan tastes sweet like soda. He tries to shrink from my kiss, but I tip him backward onto the sand and lie over him with my knee strategically placed between his thighs. I have every intention of loving him with my body right here under the white-hot spotlight of the moon with the stars as our silent witnesses. I pluck his shirt free and run my hands up his heated flesh. My thigh rides over the growing bulge in his pants, and I encourage it, wait for it to bloom just for me.
Logan lets out a little laugh, trying to deflect my efforts. He plucks my wrists from his shirt and binds them together while turning his head away from my probing kisses.
“Skyla,” he says my name filled with sorrow, and a slow building rage brews in me. “I don’t want you to think we need to do this.”
“I never said that. I want this with you.”
“Here? In the sand? With no protection? Is that what you really want?” he says it tenderly with paternal undertones. “Skyla, I promise. I will love you just as much if we don’t get a chance to connect that way.”
The moon strains all of the color from the night and purifies us in sheets of pale blue, the hue of death and the Counts all rolled into one.
“I want you to remain chaste, Skyla.” He gives a slow blink. “For Gage.”
A choking sound emits from my throat in lieu of words.
“For Gage?” It comes out a little louder than anticipated.
“Yes,” he says it almost incredulously. “I don’t want you to waste—squander something so special on me. This is your life—yours and his. I’m stepping out of the picture.” Logan pauses to take in a frustrated breath. “I get it. I go. Trust me, I was blessed to have known you. The remainder of my life’s mission is to get that pendant back where it rightfully belongs—around your neck.” Logan loses himsel
f staring at the horizon. “It’s important, Skyla. It’s important to you and to me.”
“It’s more than just saving Marshall, isn’t it?” I find it hard to believe Logan would be so insistent to save our Sector friend.
“I don’t know.” He blows it out slow like maybe he does know and it’s just too damn depressing to think about. “There’s an urgency there I can’t really describe.” His brows dip into a V. “God, Skyla, I’d give you the world, the moon, and the sun on a platter if I could, but destiny has a different plan for me. From the moment we met, I knew we were meant to be together. I knew it, Skyla.” Logan fires up like an engine just waiting to push the pedal to the metal and see how far and fast he can go. “But now”—he dusts his gaze over the sand, somber as smoke from a funeral pyre—“I’ll be gone soon. I can feel it in my gut.” Logan swallows hard as he fights the tears from taking over. He tightens his lips before blowing out a breath. “I talked to Gage last night, and I told him the same thing.”
“You what?” Why does it feel like Logan is suddenly trying to run my life?
“He came to me and sort of let me know how he felt about you and me going to homecoming. He mentioned he was afraid you might be willing to do things you may not have otherwise done because of the time constraint I’m under.”
I lie back in the cool sand and stare up at the vanilla-laced stars. The fog has spread thin as a veil, swooping across the sky in broad, white sheets.
“So let me get this straight, you and Gage sat around last night, making decisions about who I should sleep with?”
Marshall and those erotic wanderings we experienced come to mind. I press my lips shut in the event I’m moved to babble.
“No,” he’s quick to protest. “I swear to you it was nothing like that. In fact, it was the opposite. Gage was insistent he would back off. That if you wanted to be with me in that way, it was your decision.”
“That’s better.” One point for Gage.
“But I’ll be honest, I told him I wasn’t gunning for your body—at least not now—not like this.”
The quiet hush of the ocean fills in the silence before another wave crashes to shore, violent and angry, the exact way I’m starting to feel.