LILAH
My first fewweeks in the mountain house passed quickly. I’d packed “my shit,” as Rafe had called it, and driven back up into the mountains with the Bastards on my tail and a knot of anxiety in my stomach.
I’d gotten settled in the room they’d given me when I first stumbled onto the place and spent the next month trying to lie low, working my one job at Burger Haven while trying to find at least one more. It wasn’t that I was itching to get back to a sixty-hour work week, but while the jerks who were now my roommates had been vague about when it would safe for me to return to my apartment, I knew I couldn’t stay at the house forever.
Not that I wanted to.
In the privacy of my own mind, I was willing to admit it wasn’t all bad. The house was luxe, sealed tight against the elements, the fire raging pretty much 24/7 in the living room fireplace. The bed in my room felt like what I imagined a bed in a five-star hotel would feel like, the covers soft and puffy with down, the pillows like clouds.
The view from the wall of glass in my room belonged on a postcard — trees surrounding the clearing around the house, snow melting now that it was April — and the floors were always warm even when I walked barefoot.
The fridge was packed to the brim with good food, the kind of healthy organic food I could never afford to buy, delivered by a burly guy the Bastards called Carter (first or last name?), who came once a week to clean the house and organize the kitchen. I’d gotten used to having steel-cut oatmeal with organic raspberries and real maple syrup for breakfast, big salads prepared ahead of time by Carter for lunch, sometimes with his homemade soup. Dinner was usually cooked by one of the Bastards, who annoyingly were all decent cooks, although Jude was definitely the best.
And then there was the sauna and hot tub, the basement a quiet place to retreat to when the whole situation got to be too much, when I wanted to run, and worse, when I realized I’d stopped wanting to run.
“Hey.”
My eyes flew open at the sound of Nolan’s voice, shaking me from my reverie in the hot tub.
I peered at him through the steam and tried not to stare at his sculpted chest, on full display over his swim trunks, and the V leading to his dick. “Hey.”
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
“Um… sure.” It threw me, Nolan showing up while I was in the hot tub. I’d assumed our first run-in outside the sauna — the one where Jude’s white tank top had been plastered to my tits — had left him with a feeling of disgust, because after that the guys left me alone when I was in the sauna or hot tub.
But here Nolan was, in all his muscled glory, dark hair a little long and grazing his ears, the perpetual shadow of scruff along his jawline.
He slipped into the water across from me with a sigh and I shifted on the bench. I’d stopped being afraid the guys were going to assault me at random moments, but that didn’t mean I trusted them. Most days, I still carried my knife in the pocket of my jeans or hoodie, even in the house.
I looked away as he rolled his shoulders. My body had started to do weird things — traitorous things — around the Bastards.
I looked back a moment too soon, just in time to watch him run a wet hand through his hair. It stood up in a way that was somehow both adorable and sexy and that made me want to beat it out of there stat.
“Sorry to horn in on your hot tub time,” he said. “My muscles are tight from today.”
“Today?” I’d gotten used to the way he, Jude, and Rafe disappeared at random intervals. Sometimes they took gear with them, gear that gave hints about their activities: belays and crampons for ice climbing, the hang gliders I’d seen in the equipment room, helmets for the snowmobiles parked in the underground garage.
Other times, they left carrying Kevlar and wearing scary-looking military gear.
They never told me where they were going, what they were doing, or why they were doing it. They just armed the alarm, told me to text if there was trouble, and left in one of the vehicles, of which there were several.
“We hit Dead Man’s Peak today.” His eyes were changeable, sometimes blue, sometimes green, but through the steam coming off the hot tub they looked more green.
“What’s Dead Man’s Peak?” This was fine. I could talk about random shit with Nolan. He kept me in meds, checked my blood pressure and heart rate when I was tired, and was generally considerate and nonthreatening.
“Mountain on the east side of the preserve,” he said. “It’s rough in the summer — not a lot of toe or fingerholds — but it’s fucking terrifying when it’s covered with ice like it is now.”
“Why do you do it?” I asked, sinking lower in the water. “If it’s terrifying, I mean.”
His eyes met mine. “Ever feel like if you stop moving, you’ll die?”
My heart seemed to skip a beat as he held my gaze. “All the time.”
Just keep moving. Just keep going. One foot in front of the other.
They’d been like mantras since that night at Brandon Miller’s party, from the moment I’d realized the Bastards had texted my pics to practically the entire school, through the meeting with my guidance counselor and my mom, through the days of prayer I’d been forced to recite in the closet as penance for my sin, and through what came after, when I couldn’t take it anymore.
Moving was the only thing that had kept me alive right up until my body, my psyche, had just stopped.