Wynter's Horizon (22 page)

“Where are you off to?” He searched the fridge but gave me a pointed stare.

“I’ve decided maybe there’s more to vengeance than meets the eye. I’m going to pay a visit to a certain person. What are you looking for? Want to come?”

He inspected me then the open fridge. “We need some real food.”

“Beef jerky and mac and cheese not doing it?”

“Can we stop and get nachos?” I wasn’t sure that qualified as real food.

“Sure.”

He watched me for a few minutes before pulling a can of soda out. “You look mad.”

“I am.”

He slammed the fridge door shut. “Screw the nachos. Are we going to kill anybody?”

“We’re going to try not to.”

“Okay, I’m in anyway. Just let me grab my jacket.” He sounded elated.

***

I pulled the Jeep over on a side road before the guard gate, and we crossed onto the campus by the north side.

We skirted the path, and I waited for a while, sniffing the air. Judging from what she had told me, I had narrowed the dorm down to three. From there, it didn’t take long for his scent to hit me. And I knew he had an outside door. I peered in the window to find a sizable room, far bigger than hers—double bed, decorated with sports paraphernalia, a few pictures. It was a mess, clothes and bottles everywhere. He was studying at his desk. I had an image of her on his bed, and
my hands curled into fists. I blew my breath out.
Bugger!
This was not going to be easy. Stretching out my fingers, I shook them, and took another deep breath. .

Quinn nudged me. A pizza delivery guy was parked and heading to the main door. Quinn intercepted him. “What do you guys want?” His glasses slipped down his nose, his eyes terrified. He looked about seventeen. I took out a fifty.

“The pizzas and your hat.”

“What?” He was poised to run.

“You get a fifty. I get use of your stuff.”

He reached for the bill I held out, uncertainty written all over his face. “Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“For twenty more, you can keep it all,” he offered. Quinn laughed, probably thinking what I was thinking—if we wanted, we could just take it. He pulled out a twenty, and the guy disappeared.

“How do I look?”

“I need a new phone that takes pictures,” Quinn mused.

I laughed. “That good, huh?”

“Good enough.” I picked up the boxes and strolled down to the door, knocking lightly.

“Who is it?” Jason sounded annoyed. I had the intense urge to annihilate him. Lucky for him, there was a locked door between us.

“Pizza.”

“I didn’t order pizza.”

“I can’t get in the main doors. It’s for 101. Isn’t that next to you? Can I come in this way?” Quinn nodded his approval.

I heard a chair scrape and footsteps cross the room. “All right. Sure. Come on in.”

The lock clicked, and the door swung open. I flung the pizzas down and the hat off at the same time and shoved him backward.

The prat looked surprised. “What the hell?”

I threw him into the desk chair which, judging from Wynter’s story, was
the
chair.

“You son of a bitch! Old man, I’m going to kick your ass.” I held up a hand, trying to gain control of myself more than him.

I knew he couldn’t do anything to me but I, on the other hand, had to be careful. Death was not my goal, but I walked a fine line. “Not likely.” He rushed me, but I was so much quicker that he was back on his ass—on the floor now—before he made it a foot. I picked up his desk lamp. It was some kind of metal. “Stay put,” I ordered.

“Yeah, right.” He got up again as I twisted the base off the lamp and, holding the metal in my hand, crushed it into a small sphere.

He stopped, his eyes suddenly as large as golf balls. “Oh, my God.”

“This has nothing to do with God, and, if you even raise your voice to get help, I will do the same to your head.” He started backing up until he hit the bed.

“What the fuck. What the fuck.” I pushed him down to a sitting position.

“Calm down. I just have a message for you—one you’d better get. You come near her again, you look at her sideways, you say a word about her to anyone, even to comment on a jacket she’s wearing, and I will be back here so quick your head will spin. And after that, I’ll take it off.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he protested.

“Really? I beg to differ. I saw her after your little tryst the other night.”

“She wanted that. She’s a slut. You should have seen her.” I growled, lunging forward, and placed my hands on either side of him. He leaned as far back as he could. Inches separated us. The urge to crush his head was overwhelming. It would take only a minute.

I breathed out, “Don’t call her that. Or I’ll save coming back and twist your head off now.” I could hear Quinn laughing from the doorway, clearly enjoying the show.

“Play nice, Beck,” he called. He wouldn’t interfere unless he thought I needed help or lost control. I knew him. We had been working together for a long time.

“What the hell are you?” Jason choked out. I smelled his fear. I stood up and backed away.

“I’m a friend who cares what you are doing to her. She feels bad for you. She thinks there’s something redeemable about you. She does what you ask because she’s a good soul. Me, I’m not so good. I have no trouble playing nasty—or killing.” I shrugged. “Remember that.”

“I can’t not see her. We have class together.”

“Well, if she wants you around, that’s okay. But don’t get near her, and if you mumble a word about her, about what you did, I will be here.”

Tired of observing, Quinn smiled at me and sauntered in. Pouncing on the pizza, he happily munched a slice as he walked around the room, poking in drawers and lifting up pictures. The closet door was ajar, clothes hanging out and on the door handle. Quinn nudged it open with his foot. Sitting there were two shopping bags, one pink and the other maroon with Macy’s written on it.

“Is that Wynter’s?” Jason opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “Don’t lie.” I rolled the metal ball that was once his lamp base through my fingers. He gaped like a flounder.

“Yes.”

Quinn grabbed the bags and another slice of pizza.

“Okay. We’re going to go now. Remember, I don’t want to come back, and you don’t want me to.”

Quinn snapped his fingers and pointed. The distinct sound of boots clicking on the hallway floors reverberated, a girl, from the spacing between the clicks.

“Just so you know, my eyesight and hearing are excellent. In fact, right now I bet that’s your little girlfriend traipsing down the hall. So, you be careful and have a good night.” I turned toward the door and then stopped, grabbing the chair and slamming it against
the wall. It splintered into pieces.

I tossed the metal ball to him and pulled the outside door closed behind us.

Chapter Forty-Three

Wynter—Away

I stayed in bed for three days, claiming the stomach flu. I hid under the covers until the threat of mid-terms finally won out. I dragged myself through days of studying and tests, staying in my room and only emerging for meals and my runs. I didn’t see Jason at all, and the rumor mill was surprisingly quiet. But I spent more time thinking about Beck than Jason anyway—trying to make sense of what had happened, and what that meant for me.

***

My parents took Julia and me away for spring break. It wasn’t wild like the typical spring breaks so notorious in college, but it was warm and sunny, and I’d had enough of college for once. Not until we were there, covered in sun block and sipping fruity island concoctions, did Julia finally pressure me for info. She hadn’t asked me at school, but I had seen her and Annie watching me as we sat at meals, understanding, I think, that I was barely holding it together enough to get through mid-terms.

Lying on the beach, hundreds of miles away, it now seemed so surreal, as if the weekend had been a horrible dream. I worried that talking about it would conjure up that crazy fear, but what I really felt was regret over how things had turned out with Beck. I told Julia the highlights, glossing over the details of hooking up with Jason, which made my cheeks flush and wish a hole would open up so I could drop into it.

“So, forget about idiot slime Jason. What happened with Beck?” Julia asked as she signaled the waiter for another colada. Beck hadn’t called, not that I had expected him to after I had bolted screaming from his house. A few days later, I’d found a box of the things I had left at Jason’s sitting outside my door, no note or anything, but I knew who put them there.

“I don’t know,” I answered, picking up my book. She wasn’t so easily put off.

“Come on, Wyn. I know you better than that. Did he ask you to do something weird? You know, sex like?”

I gulped. Bizarre. It had always been Jason who pushed me, asking me to do more than I wanted and, for whatever reasons, I’d gone along. In the process, I’d lost me. Ironically, Beck had understood, accepted me without question. I wondered how to explain that.

“No. He’s just different.” I put the book back down. Different? Was that the right word? I didn’t know what he was, not really.

Her new drink delivered, Julia took a good long swallow and seemed to put some thought into it. “Is he gay? With the other one?”

I almost choked, imagining what Quinn would think of that.

“Uh, no.”

“Okay. Did they want a threesome?”

I stifled a smile. Quinn would really get a kick out of that, too.

“No.” This was getting harder.

“What?” I could tell she was getting impatient.

“He’s just different. Older than us, not American.”

“So?”

“Well, what if I told you he had pictures of … weird things? That he lied to me about his job.”

“Huh. Does he do bad things?”

“Uh, no, well … I don’t know.”

“Mm. Does he do drugs? Like bad ones? Sell them?”

“No.” But then how could I be sure? He had lied to me.

“Okay. Is he mean? Did he hit you?”

“No. No.” I thought of him holding me as I sobbed. I pictured his face as he stood in the doorway, telephone in hand, telling me he’d called a cab, then across the table from me at The Galleon, laughing as I told some stupid childhood story. Julia pulled her sun hat off, waving it in her face to get a breeze.

“Well, I don’t know, Wyn. I won’t know if you don’t tell me, but it seems to me, unless he’s dangerous to you or an ass like Jason, that if you like him you should just go for it. Who cares that he’s different?
Everybody’s different; everybody’s damaged..” Julia was forever a realist. Her mom had divorced when Julia was only nine, and Julia had grown up quick, taking care of herself while her mom worked to make ends meet.
Dusting herself off, she picked up my book from the corner of my chaise. “When did you become a Stephen King fan?”

“Uh … well … I always liked his stuff,” I stuttered.

“Seriously?”

I grabbed it back, flipping it over to the front cover.
“Yeah. It’s good.” I didn’t want to admit I was doing research. ‘Mostly human’ stuck in my head.

“Okay. Just don’t become some supernatural groupie.” She ran off into the ocean, diving head first into an oncoming wave. I thought about what she had said as I chased after her. I floated on my back, letting the waves drift me along, and wondered why life had to be so complicated. The easiest answer was to forget about Beck, avoid Jason, return to school, graduate in three months, and get the hell out, move on.

The last night of our vacation, I stood on our balcony while Julia packed her things, watching the night sky melt into the ocean, the darkness of the sky against the black of the water broken only by the stars and the white caps of waves tumbling to shore. I thought of Beck, of what he had said that night on his deck about the explorers, and I wondered what he was doing now. I breathed in the salt air, and knew I was screwed. Forgetting had never been easy for me.

Chapter Forty-Four

Beck—The Truth

I smelled her before I saw her. That familiar mix of baby powder, cinnamon, and vanilla wafted
through the air and had me whipping my head around, searching to see beyond the corner of the house. Quinn paused in his dissertation on women to follow my gaze, a small smile crossing his lips.

She came around the
side and stopped a few feet away. Wearing jeans and a cream-colored tank top, she made a stunning picture. The shirt showed off her golden skin and accented her eyes, and her hair was blonder than I had ever seen it. She looked nervous but held her ground and her gaze, looking back at me steadily.

“Why me?” Her tone demanded an answer. I wasn’t sure I had one. Was this the time to tell her where we’d really met?

“Well…” I hesitated, searching for the right words.

“I mean, why did you lie to me and what do you mean by ‘mostly human’”

Quinn choked back a laugh and then exited the porch hastily.