Nightfall (Devil's Night 4)

I flinched, remembering minutes ago when he’d told me to come to him.

He saw it as me taking Aydin’s side.

> I saw it as me standing on my own. “Will…”

“After everything you’ve done to us, you hesitated!” he yelled, his face twisted in anger.

Everyone surrounded us, standing silently, and I felt the heat of their eyes like I was a mouse and they were snakes circling me.

“What are you talking about?” Damon asked him. “What do you mean ‘to us’? What did she do?”

I stared at Will, shaking my head slowly, begging him. Not here. Please, not here. Not now.

He straightened and drifted backward a couple of steps, finally having me trapped exactly where I deserved and savoring this moment.

“She’s the reason we all went to jail seven years ago,” he told them.

Emory

Seven Years Ago

-A few months after the attack on Martin Scott-

“Hey,” Thea called out, entering our room.

I looked up from my desk, seeing her whip off her Mia Wallace wig and toss it on our futon couch with the adrenaline needle she’d made me plaster to her chest earlier tonight. Her boyfriend was supposed to complete her Pulp Fiction theme by going as Vincent Vega, but they got in a fight an hour before, and I let her go to the party alone.

Like a jerk.

“Hey,” I said, smiling at her makeup smeared everywhere. “Have fun?”

Judging from the lipstick across her cheek, Vincent must’ve found her and they made up.

But she just shrugged. “Eh, I don’t remember.”

I snorted as she skipped over to me, the beer on her breath hitting my nose. “But I thought of you.” She held out a small jack-o’-lantern, already carved with a toothless happy face. “I stole it from in front of a frat house on my way home.”

I laughed, taking it. “Thank you.”

Man, I lucked out with roommates.

I shook my head, setting the pumpkin on my desk. After I’d graduated last spring, I convinced Martin to use my college fund to put Grand-Mère in the nicest home money could buy because I didn’t need it. With a scholarship thanks to my stunning designs around Thunder Bay, showcasing how you can make a ruin still functional while keeping its character, I didn’t need my college fund. What I didn’t cover with the scholarship, I got in loans. Screw it.

I had wanted to handle her myself, but he had power of attorney over her care, and that wasn’t changing. He agreed when I outlined the perks of having the house to himself finally, plus the respect and admiration of people thinking he paid for her first-class care out of his modest, civil servant salary.

I called her every day, and I hadn’t spoken to him since I’d left after graduation. I interned in San Francisco for the summer, snuck into town in late July to visit her, and then promptly left again to move into my dorm.

“You should’ve come,” Thea said. “For once, just say…‘yes’.” And then she moaned loudly. “Yes, yes, yes!”

There were no shortages of parties and fun at Berkeley, but in the two months since school had started, adjusting to a new set of people and new surroundings proved harder than I thought it would be.

Which was stupid, because I didn’t think anyone would agree I’d particularly adjusted to Thunder Bay, either, and I grew up there.

I was kind of homesick.

“I ruin the fun,” I told her with a half-smile. “Trust me.”

I took out a pack of matches from my drawer and lit the tealight still inside the pumpkin, the warm glow peeking out of his eyes and mouth. We weren’t supposed to be lighting anything in the dorms, but they’d never know.