I took the pill and swallowed.
“I’m going to make you some tea first, try and warm you up from the inside,” Nolan said, working the socks over my feet. Some part of my brain knew it was weird, Nolan Hale of all people doing something as intimate as putting on my socks, but I was too cold, too scared, to think too long about it. “Then I need to look at your hands.”
I nodded and sank back into the sofa. I couldn’t feel the dry socks on my feet but I could sense the absence of my cold wet socks and shoes. I was slowly warming up and drying off, the heat of the fire and the comforter around my shouldersbeginning to penetrate the cold that had sunk its teeth into my bones.
The whole place was inviting, built with wood and muted black slate and filled with furniture that was warm and cozy even though it looked like it had all cost a fortune.
Nolan stood, crossed the room, and started moving around the gourmet kitchen, boiling water and pulling boxes of tea down from the cabinets. My brain was short-circuiting trying to make sense of the fact that somehow I’d gone from working at the Dive to being chased through the woods to sitting in the house owned by Rafe Maddox, Nolan Hale, and Jude Carrington.
The fucking Blackwell Bastards.
Nolan carried a steaming mug around the enormous island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the great room and my face heated as I realized I was staring at his muscular chest, bare thanks to the sweatshirt he’d given me.
His torso had been a blank canvas in high school, but now it was inked with tattoos, a montage of images I couldn’t quite make out bleeding into a declaration across his chest: DO NO HARM.
And there was more: one of those symbols doctors used — snakes entwined on a staff, wings behind them — on his right bicep, and a weird skeletal frog on his left forearm.
Once upon a time, I’d thought Nolan was cute, he and Jude the more tolerable of the threesome who had ruled our school. But in the years since I left high school, he’d become a monster in my mind.
They all had.
Now I was face-to-face with the fact that Nolan Hale might be a monster, but he was a hot one, with inked skin, thick dark hair, the kind of symmetrical features sported by fashion models, and a chiseled bod that said “athlete" more than "gym bro.”
Clearly my body was rebooting.
He sat a couple feet away from me on the couch and held out the mug. “This should warm you up. Then I’ll take a look at your hands.”
I stared at the mug, suddenly sixteen again, the past roaring in my ears like an oncoming train.
“I promise it’s just tea,” he said.
“Like your promises mean anything.” I was relieved to hear the familiar bite in my voice. I’d needed help when I’d banged on their door, but that didn’t mean I was weak.
Not anymore.
He frowned and nodded but I took the tea because I was still cold and needed to get back on my feet if I wanted to get away from him, if I wanted to get away from all of them.
And I definitely did.
I sipped at the hot tea — chamomile, I thought, and maybe lemon — and sighed as it worked its way into my body, then sat up straighter when I heard the door open at the front of the house.
“It’s okay,” Nolan said, reading my fear. “It’s just Rafe and Jude.”
Heavy footsteps sounded on the wood floor and a second later Rafe and Jude walked into the living room. They were huge, their broad shoulders obvious even under the bulky parkas they’d thrown on to step outside.
The rifles they’d grabbed from the hall closet hung from their hands, and I remembered hearing that they’d joined the military after high school, had become Navy SEALs (or maybe it was Army Rangers), been deployed somewhere there had been fighting.
They looked like what they were — dangerous men, the kind you didn’t fuck with, not that I needed their military history and the weapons to know that.
I shrunk back instinctively and they slowed their steps, like they could read my body language.
“What’s the word?” Nolan asked.
“Gone,” Jude said. I hated myself for noticing that he’d gotten even hotter in the six years since they’d graduated from Blackwell High. Back then Jude had been lean and swim-team muscular, with a narrow waist and the kind of quiet, broody energy that made all the girls weak in the knees.
Now he was bigger and broader, his fair hair shaved short and close to his skull. His dark eyes were sharp as they studied me, and I had a flash of memory: Jude in high school, his blond hair falling over his forehead as he drew in the notebook he’d carried everywhere, slamming it shut when I got close enough to try and look during AP Euro.
“Any idea who they were?” Nolan asked.