“Thank you.” I craned my neck to look into the back seat. Then I turned toward Bishop again, leaning over to press another kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. For everything.”
His expression softened a little, and he turned his head to gaze into my eyes. “For you, Coralee? Anything.”
I kissed each of them goodnight, then slid out of the car and made my way inside the house. I had no idea if Mom was awake or not, but I didn’t bother trying to fix my clothes or makeup or get the smell of sex off me before I stepped inside.
Honestly, I didn’t much care if she saw me like this.
Bishop might’ve teasingly told me I looked freshly fucked, and I was sure he was right.
But I also felt completely loved.
Twenty-One
With Mom back home, the small house felt cramped and uncomfortable. Not because she took up that much space, but because of all the unspoken words crowding the air around us, stifling me and making it feel hard to breathe.
She said nothing about the car that sat out front in the driveway on Monday morning, where the boys sat waiting patiently for me. I said nothing about who she’d spent the Christmas holiday with.
The silence seemed to be our white flag.
I wouldn’t argue with her about her affair, and she wouldn’t argue with me about the company I was keeping.
It was an arrangement that suited me well enough, especially since I wasn’t planning on telling her about what we’d found out about Luke Carmine over the winter break. The less my mom knew at this point, the better. Things would come together when they came together.
If they came together.
The first day back at Slateview felt like settling into a well-worn routine. There was something almost comforting in the familiarity of it as we pulled into the parking lot, hopping out of the convertible, and headed into the school building together—the four of us in a tight group.
To be honest, I was mostly taken off guard by the fact that an entire semester had already come and gone, and now, in the last half of the school year, I was finding myself more comfortable than I’d ever imagined I could be when I’d first arrived here.
This place, these people, were all starting to feel like… home.
For most of the day, I found myself in a lingering state of sentimentality. I stuck close to my boys in the hallways, and we sat with Jessica and Liam at lunch, joking around like we were old friends and I hadn’t just come into the picture mere months ago.
But as we finished eating, I noticed a shift in Bishop’s demeanor, tension gathering in his shoulders. I glanced at him quizzically, and he shook his head, flicking his gaze toward Jessica and Liam. This was something he obviously didn’t want to talk about in front of them.
I waited, my stomach tightening with nerves, until the two of them cleared away their trays. As soon as they headed for the door, Liam’s arm wrapped around Jessica, I turned to Bish. His face was set with hard lines.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We’re going to talk to Eli after school.” He glanced at the other two, who nodded their agreement. They’d obviously consulted about this already. “He’s the closest person we’ve got to Luke, so he’s the best source for answers we’ve got. And he’s got no one else here in his corner. It’s the perfect time, perfect place. No one will say or do anything about it. I can have Misael walk you home if you don’t want to stick around—”
“No. I want to,” I said immediately. “I want to be a part of this.”
Bishop looked down at me, and I could tell he probably would have preferred it if I said I’d just go home. But after a brief hesitation, he nodded.
“Okay. Meet us around back. The spot where we first met you when you came to school.”
I remembere
d it. The little alley just off the side of the cafeteria. I nodded.
“You got it.”
The rest of the school day was a blur. Teachers were hard at work trying to get everyone amped up and ready for the semester, but I couldn’t focus on a single thing they said.
Finally, last period came and went. I decided to leave my textbooks in my locker, since I was fairly certain that school supplies wouldn’t be needed for whatever was about to go down between the boys and Eli.
I hung out in one of the bathrooms for a few minutes before heading out to where Bishop told me to meet him and the boys, waiting for the hallways to clear out. By then, most of the students had left school grounds. There were a few after-school programs, but almost no one stuck around on campus after classes got out. Besides, no one would give me shit about what I was doing even if they were around; since I’d been taken in by the Lost Boys, I could essentially do what I wanted without interference.