A phone call comes in through the Bluetooth and Brantley answers, hitting the green button on the steering wheel.
“Fucker. You’re lucky Tillie’s pregnant.”
Brantley laughs, just as Eli’s voice comes in. It’s then that I realize all their cars are wired together somehow, or they’re on a group call.
“I don’t give a fuck, and that’s all I’ve got,” Bishop says, laughing in the background.
“You know!” Tillie yells and my gaze shoots to Brantley, who rolls his eyes while an easy smile is etched on his face. I don’t know why, but something heavy drops in my gut at the way he responds to her. So easy. I bet if she dropped her towel or rubbed all over him, he would have had sex with her.
I drag my attention away from him and back out the window, wallowing in my self-pity. I have an itch in my mind that needs to be scratched. What happened the time that he said he almost slept with her? Did he touch her? She touch him? Did they go further than we did?
Probably. I may be a virgin, but I’m no prude. I’ve watched porn in the dark corners of my room when no one was home and finished myself off when I needed to. I knew what it felt like to orgasm on my own, but even then, the biggest orgasm I ever gave myself doesn’t come close to how I felt beneath the palm of Brantley’s hand, and even more so, on his tongue.
“Saint?” Brantley interrupts my thoughts and I turn to face him.
“Yes?”
There’s music playing again now, so the call must have been disconnected. “What are you overthinking about now?” Breaking Benjamin singing “The Dark of You” is playing softly in the back.
I could be honest. I could also ask him what happened between him and Tillie and risk exposing my, what I’m guessing, is jealousy. But I don’t. “Just trying to remember if I watered the plants.” Before he can read the lie that slid off my tongue way too easily, I turn back to the window. “Where are we going?”
“It’s Halloween this weekend. We have one last party to throw out at the cabin. We’re getting there a day early to make sure everything is set up.”
“A party? For your birthday?” I ask, knowing he was born on Halloween. It’s not something he has ever celebrated. At least not that I knew of.
“Yeah sort of, but not for my birthday. It’s just our Halloween party. It rolls all weekend.”
“Sounds… fun.”
He doesn’t answer as he continues to drive us down the main highway, right until we take a turn off before another, and another, until we’re all rolling down a long, gravel road.
“Funny story…” Brantley smirks. “See that?” He points to an area just off the road. It looks like a small shoulder. Nothing surrounds the road but forest and meadows.
“Yeah?”
“We ran Madison out of her car right there. The first time we all blocked her in and started her game. It was all riddles and tricks and mindfucks. We had to fuck with her to see if she’d break…” I don’t say anything, resting my forehead on the window and allowing the condensation to drip over my skin.
“Sounds awful…”
“It was, but it was fun.”
“Is that what you like?” I snap slightly, and before I can take the words back, he’s already glaring at me. I wince. Gosh, I’m being hormonal.
“All right, that’s it. You still on your period or something?”
My teeth clamp closed. Wait. What’s the date? I do the math in my head. “No. I finished this morning.”
“Speaking of. You’re on the pill. Why?”
“Yes, because I suffered from chronic period pain, so the doctor put me on the pill to control when I would get it. You know this, you signed off on it.”
His fingers dive into his hair, his hoodie sitting around his thick neck. “Why do you have fewer tattoos than the rest of them?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Because I have more piercings.”
I curl my leg beneath my butt so I can turn more. “Your nipples, one ear, tongue…” I pause. “Five?”
He smirks. “Eleven.”
The car rolls to a stop and I turn to see where we are. The lights illuminating the traditional style cabin lure you in, the porch wrapping around the entire structure. Nothing surrounds us but trees, a full horseshoe driveway, and from what I can see behind the house, someone has been clearing the paddock.
“They’ve made a race circuit at the back, you know, for all the hooligans that are being bred.”
“Like you?” I raise an eyebrow, pushing open my door and climbing out. The cool air bites over my exposed flesh and I reach into the car, grabbing Brantley’s hoodie that’s in the back seat, shoving it on.
I shut my door and wait for him to round the car.