Again, no answer. I called Arvo. He could track her down and tell her to pick up her goddamned phone. But he didn’t answer either.
What the fuck was happening?
Was I some fucking afterthought to the Kings while I was abroad?
I stormed away from the booth and paced down the dock.
I couldn’t help but let my mind wander to dark places. I knew what I tended to do when a girl was away. I mean, before Biba, the idea of fidelity was laughable. I got my dick wet with a couple of girls a day. If a girl got clingy, I made a point of letting her walk in on some other chick sucking me off—preferably a friend of hers, so that she knew what was what.
Which begged the question: what was stopping Biba from hopping on fresh meat in my absence?
As soon as I’d entertained the notion, it was all I could think about. Biba bent over the desk in my room, her jeans pulled down to her thighs while Theo Brant railed her from behind. I heard her moaning his name. I saw that pompous little shit grabbing her tits, slapping her ass, and then grinning like a shitbird as he blew his load all over my room and my girl.
As a scenario, it might be unlikely. But I’d conjured it, and it wasn’t going away. The idea was living rent-free in my mind.
And it was going to drive me crazy.
CHAPTER 18
BIBA
There was no reason under heaven or earth that I should’ve felt guilty about what happened with Arvo. The only injured party was Zephyr, and he was not exactly an unblemished innocent. Besides, the pool was not the first time I’d gotten up close and personal with Arvo Hurley. I’d done far more with him and Sol in the Kings’ Hall while Zephyr watched us and then joined in. He’d arranged that whole sordid affair.
So why did I feel guilty about the pool?
It had been a cycle of guilt from the moment I fled Arvo’s grasp a week ago. No sooner had I returned to my room and, shall we say, relieved my frustration than I rolled over, picked up my phone, and realized I’d missed two calls from an unknown number in Morocco.
Whoever could that have been?
I hadn’t tried contacting Zeph back because I’d felt terrible for reasons I couldn’t articulate. He’d called again two days later, and again, I hadn’t picked up, which made me feel even worse.
I couldn’t talk to Zephyr because I felt guilty, and I felt guilty for not talking to Zeph.
It fed on itself.
So there I was. More alone than ever. I was avoiding Arvo and his toadies like the plague. Meanwhile, Theo was avoiding me. Sol was avoiding the world, and I couldn’t make myself answer Zephyr’s calls.
Even Amelia was canceling our shifts. She said I needed to focus on my studies. I needed an actual human interaction in my life. Anything to feel like an ordinary girl again. Then it hit me. . . .
“Oh, wow. If it ain’t the lady of the manor.”
Buffy Worthington. My first Stormcloud roomie for all of 72 hours. We hadn’t ended on the best of terms. I had a bowl of urine poured over my head in our room, and I could never be sure whether Buffy had helped arrange it.
At the time, it’d seemed likely she was in on it, so I’d said some unkind things. With the benefit of hindsight, I was probably unfair to her.
Anyway, I felt doubly bad for her. She’d been one of the kids who’d discovered Gail’s body; she’d run to tell me. That was months ago, and I hadn’t spoken to her since. So that night, a week after my aborted tryst with Arvo, I’d knocked on her door, desperately seeking a confidante.
“Mind if I come in?” I asked sweetly.
Buffy screwed up her face, but it was hard for her to seem stern with those chipmunk cheeks and porcelain doll curls.
“Take a load off, hon,” she replied nonchalantly.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
We settled on opposite beds, and Buffy reached behind her bed to pull out an unlabeled bottle containing dark amber liquid.
“What,” I guffawed, “is that?”