Unwritten (Woodlands 5)

Adam jerks his head. “Come on.”

I close my eyes. How do these embarrassing things happen to me? Better yet, why?

I came to Davis’s show tonight to hide, and ended up making a big scene. “Sure,” I agree sullenly. My new silk shirt sticks to my back, and my panties are now wet because of beer rather than something else.

“What happened to your arm?” Davis asks as we follow Adam down a dark hall past the restrooms. “And where are your glasses?”

“Broke them,” I mumble.

“And you drove here?”

“I held them to my face and left them in the car.” It sounds as dumb as it felt when I was doing it.

“That’s inventive,” Adam remarks. His lips are twitching as if he’s trying not to laugh.

Davis groans. “Or stupid.”

“Thanks, Davis. I love you, too,” I snap.

Adam releases that laugh he was holding. “You guys sound like siblings.”

He stops at the last door and unlocks it. Inside, he throws on the lights and that’s when the danger of this situation hits me.

It was dark in the bar, lit only by colored strobe lights that concealed more than they revealed. I don’t want a bright light illuminating every dark cranny—or in my case, bruise and cut.

“Come on in…” Adam’s voice trails off as he stares at me. “Fuck me. Who did that to you?”

I stick my tongue in the corner of my mouth, feeling the cut and tasting the copper of the blood, and desperately wishing I were home. Was it possible to run away? “Does it look that bad?”

Davis spins me around. He takes one look at me and jumps to a conclusion. “Marrow.”

There’s no sneaking home now. I drag my palm down my face. “Let’s go in and I’ll tell you about it.”

* * *

For only being twenty-four, my life has held a multitude of humiliations. I ate a worm in kindergarten because some punk in fourth grade told me it was a piece of candy. It was as gross as you can imagine. When I was fifteen, I went for an entire period with my skirt tucked into the back of my tights until a teacher, not even one of my damned friends, pulled it out for me. On my first day of college, I tripped over a nonexistent wrinkle in the tile and spilled a Venti Frappuccino all over the cutest guy in my dorm.

Then there was the time I attracted the unwanted attention of some psycho stalker and had to tell everyone in my life about him—along with an innumerable amount of police officers, detectives, investigators, and judges—so I could be safe again. And tonight? I’m sitting in a dingy office with a fat lip that I caused myself, watching my brother pace and rant while a tatted and pierced god glowers at me.

“Here,” says Adam, handing me a towel. The tattoos on his arms meld together in one bold but blurry black shape. He takes a step back, away from me and out of Davis warpath.

“Thanks.” The ice cubes scrape against each other as I lift the damp towel to my lip. Sighing, I sink onto the cushions of the sketchy leather sofa, cracked in places and sticky in others. The first contact I’ve had with a hot guy in a long time is when I have a busted lip and my brother is railing on me for my stupidity. How unoriginal.

Also, why I can’t berate him for drinking.

“I can’t believe you didn’t call me.” Pace, pace, pace. “What kind of friends just leave you at your house alone?” Stop and turn. “I swear to God, next time I get my hands on that motherfucker, I’m going to kill him. I don’t care how long I spend in jail.” Pace, pace, pace. “Why didn’t the alarms go off?” Stop. Glare. Turn. Commence pacing.

“You probably don’t need stitches,” Adam observes.

I tongue the cut. “No, I don’t think so.”

I squint, trying to bring Adam’s face into focus. Damn my far-sightedness. Davis’s big, blurry head appears in my line of sight instead.

“You being straight with us? That you hit your face on the side of your car?” he demands.

“Unfortunately, yes.” It’s humiliating, but the truth. “I thought I heard something.” I still believe I did. A dark shadow slunk around the side of the house, and it wasn’t a dog, like Penny suggested, or a shadow, which is what Gail insisted. “I was startled, bumped into Gail, and twisted my ankle on a rock. When I tried to right myself, I stumbled into the car, cutting my elbow on the handle.” I raise my elbow up. “I’ve a bruise, I think, but the cut stopped bleeding.”

“And the face?”