Evanescent (24 page)

Wes leans back and folds his arms. I know
what he’s waiting for—the big denial.

“So tell me, Coop.” Wes doesn’t take his
eyes off mine, neither one of us blinks. “Who was this mystery girl
you were shacking up with under daddy’s supervision? Are you going
to try to tell me it was Pearl? You expect me to believe you’ve got
dead Spectators giving you blowjobs now? Who was it?”

“It was Laken.”

Wesley

A trail of smoke fills the air as an order
of fajitas hisses its way past us.

I just sit and stare at Cooper almost-dead
Flanders as he glares over at me an inordinate amount of time.

It was Laken.

I just asked the fucker who the girl was in
his bed, and he copped to it being my girlfriend without missing a
beat. Either something’s not right, or Flanders has a death wish
I’ll be more than happy to make come true.

I shake my head. “Rattle out your excuses
because we both know damn well you’ve got ‘em.”

Grayson and Laken come back just in the nick
of time.

Great. I bet Coop will be sweating out one
excuse after the next until we get a chance to continue our
conversation. I’m sure he’ll think he’s bulletproof. Doesn’t
matter. I think it’s time I arrange a happy accident for
Flanders—send a couple girls his way he won’t be able to resist,
then have them bite his balls off. Serves him right for thinking
about Laken, and God forbid touching her. The thought makes me
insane.

“Everything okay?” Laken picks up on the
tension and scoots in next to me—probably to read my mind.

The food arrives and I give a depleted sigh
as we start in on our meals.

I lied. I didn’t go to Coop’s looking for
Laken. I went to Coop’s looking to accuse him of letting Laken suck
off his neck. Little did I know this was a nightly occurrence.
Hattie Tobias said Laken hasn’t slept in her bed in
weeks
.
What the fuck?

After I left Coop’s, I panicked and tried to
call her—to
find
her, and that’s when Kres reared her wicked
head. She offered to comfort me in ways that were far from
emotional, but I turned her down cold. Grayson was just covering
her own corrupt tracks when she tried to rat me out for something I
didn’t do. Not that I didn’t rat her out in the end, but that’s
what a night like tonight is for, spilling greasy secrets, watching
each other slip in the mess.

Coop pays the bill before I can whip out my
wallet, and we rise from the booth, thankful this nightmare is
over.

“Good stuff.” Coop stretches like a bear.
“I’ll take you home, Grayson.” He ushers her out with his hand over
her shoulder and gives Laken a high-five as they pass one
another.

Her face smooths out in horror as they let
off.

He told her.

She knows.

It’s cold as hell, but Laken agrees to drive
to Charity with me. We exchanged small talk on the way over, mostly
about how the evening went, and I’m shocked she didn’t try to
force-feed me a mountain of bullshit.

The stars are cleverly hidden beneath a wash
of pink fog. The lake shines like a silver platter under the harsh
glare of the moon. I lay a blanket over the ground, and we sit on
the shore with my jacket wrapped around the two of us. I hold her
hand off and on, terrified I won’t be able to control my thoughts,
that I’ll spill everything I know about her and Coop, and she won’t
have a chance to tell me a single lie. Deep down inside, I wish
Laken would lie to me. I want to soak in all the dishonesty she’s
willing to sling my way just to keep this relationship going. The
desperate hours have arrived. Our relationship was on life support
all along, and I was the last to know.

“I want you to tell me something,” I say,
pulling her in by the waist.

We’re going to have to go there. If she and
Cooper are as close as I’m afraid they are, then we’re going to
have to dig up the casket of our love and look inside no matter how
hideous the results might be. I’m sure he’ll call her in a few
hours, and they’ll have a teleconference over what an idiot I am.
Or worse, they’ll gloss over it in bed before they detonate over
one another.

“Tell you what?” She rocks into me.

The pale wash of moonlight strips all the
color from her face, from her hair. It leaves those pale eyes of
hers glowing like that of a cat, and I want to lie her back in the
sand and show her exactly how much I love her right here without
another word soiling what I thought was so pure.

“I love you,” I whisper.

“I love you, too.” She wraps her arms around
my waist safely away from my skin. It makes me wonder why she
didn’t dip under my sweater like she usually does. It’s cold out,
certainly my skin would warm her hands.

Yesterday I trusted her like God himself,
and now her every move is suspect.

“Laken—” I brush my cheek against hers. Her
skin is so soft, it makes her feel impractically young, as if in
some way she’s too naïve, too sweet and innocent to carry out such
a malfeasance against my heart. I look over at her. My entire
person is filled with an inexplicable sorrow as if innately I know
the truth will certainly not set me free.

“What’s going on with you and Coop?” The
words ooze from me like a bloodlet. “Why were you with him last
night?” I stop shy of asking what they were doing, if she wanted
it. An image of their bodies locked together pops through my mind,
and I try to shake it away. I’m sure my darkest nightmares will
show me a replay regardless if I want it or not.

The water whispers against the shore and
fills the silence left in the wake of my question. Cooper is a
disease that broke out over our relationship. He’s tearing up the
fabric of who we are, shredding us to pieces, and I didn’t even
know it.

Laken takes in a breath as if I’ve caught
her off guard, and for a moment I wonder if Coop had filled her in
on what happened after all.

Her cheeks darken in this dim light. I can
tell she’s flustered by the way her fingers have spastically twined
themselves around a loose thread on her sweater.

“Okay.” She swallows hard.

Tears glimmer in her eyes, and my heart
drops. Shit. She’s not even going to deny it. I don’t know why I
thought both she and Coop were going to try to pull off the world’s
best snow job. I don’t know why I thought I was worth a lie or
two—that the safekeeping of our so-called relationship was somehow
worth the trouble.

“Are you ready to hear this?” She shoots the
words out like daggers, and a ball of acid rips through my insides.
The last thing I expected was Laken to be pissed at me.

“Yes,” I say it low, trying to defuse the
situation.

“You never believe a damn thing I say,” she
snaps. Her head ticks to the side as if she were readying for a
showdown. If a shouting match is what she’s hoping for, she’ll be
sorely disappointed. Not one part of me feels like fighting with
Laken tonight or ever.

“What do you want me to believe?” I say it
calm, sedate, and it only seems to piss her off more.

She takes a breath and holds it before
bouncing to her left and gaping at me incredulously.

“Are we in Kansas again?” I shake my head.
“Is that what this is about?” I can feel my blood pressure spike
out of nowhere. I try to deny myself the right to an argument, but
my emotions want to duke it out all the way back to her fictitious
town.

“Forget it. You think I’m stupid.” She tries
to get up, and I gently pull her back. I wrap my arms around Laken
until she molds into me, and her perfume swims around me in
laps.

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Laken. I never
said that. I would never even think it.”

“You think I fell from a
tree
.”

“You did.”

“Look.” She lets out a sigh. “I don’t know
what Coop told you or how you even found out I went over there.”
She lies back in the sand and looks up at me with her eyes wide,
her lips slightly downturned. “I’m going to tell you something
else, and I’m pretty sure you won’t believe me.”

“Try me.” Because God knows I want to
believe her more than I believe I’ll take my next breath.

“Okay.” She swallows hard, wiping the tears
from her cheeks.

The moist slick reflects the moonlight and
illuminates her features. Laken’s beauty outshines the moon and the
lake. She’s a marvel that I plan on spending my entire life
sketching. I dream of transposing her image to canvas in both oil
and acrylic, charcoal and pastel. I’m hoping to surprise her with a
stipple drawing of herself for Christmas. But I don’t know if
she’ll want me around if I don’t buy into her fairytale
musings.

Laken gets up on her elbows and gives an
exasperated sigh as if she’s sorry she has to deal with me.

“You know who Hattie Tobias is, right?” She
nods throwing me completely off track.

“What?” Did she just change the subject?

She averts her eyes as if she expected
nothing less than ignorance on my part.

“She’s my new roommate. She’s been here for
weeks.” A half-moon dimple presses into her cheek as she glares at
me with disappointment.

Funny—Hattie said that Laken hadn’t slept in
her dorm for weeks.

“Anyway”—she shakes her head—“I think
there’s something very wrong with her. Like in a not human kind of
way.”

My heart thumps. Laken was worried and
didn’t bring me her concerns.

“She’s just weird,” she continues. “I can’t
explain it. It’s almost as if I just know.” She sits up. “So I told
Coop. He said he’d look into it as long as I collected some DNA, so
I did.” She glances down a moment. “When you left last night, I
went downstairs to sleep with Jen and bumped into Coop. That’s when
I told him I had what he needed. He said his dad was home, and he
could run the tests that night. I probably should have just let him
take the samples, but Jen wasn’t in her room, and I was freaked out
about being in the basement alone, so I asked if I could go with
him.”

“So what were the test results?” I don’t
know if I’m playing along or genuinely inquiring. At this point it
feels like both.

“His dad said it was more complicated than
he thought, and he might not know for days.”

I nod into her, waiting for her to finish.
Laken didn’t come home last night. I’ll know she’s lying if she
says she did.

“I fell asleep at his house, Wes.” She
brings the sleeves of her jacket up over her mouth and sniffs away
the tears. “I know you probably hate me.” She shakes her head. “But
I have to know if Hattie Tobias is something I should fear…if they
sent her.”

A chill runs through me. She still believes
in “them.” She’s on a loop with her story, a hamster wheel of
deception spun out from her own imagination, and she can’t find her
way off the contraption.

“You don’t believe me.” She closes her eyes
in defeat. Laken lowers her head until her hair sweeps down over
her features like a curtain. She wants to let me into her world,
and I’ve put up my own shield of disbelief. And why the hell does
Flanders believe her, anyway? Obviously to land her in his bed. I’m
not going to call her out on the private blood draws. I’m not ready
to go there yet.

“I believe you, Laken. I believe you were
terrified of Hattie, for whatever reason. I believe that Coop told
you he could help you get to the bottom of this. Have you done this
before? Spent the night at Cooper’s house?”

She shakes her head a little too
aggressively.

“So you’ve been sleeping in the room with
Hattie all along?”

“I’ve been with Jen.” Her eyes dart over the
water when she says it. “Wes, I swear I love
you
. I want our
relationship. I want
us
.” She takes up both my hands and
shakes her head. “Please, Wes, really hear what I’m saying.” Her
voice trembles as she draws herself to her knees. “You are my
everything.” Laken pierces me with a primal intensity. “Let me in.
Let me love you completely.”

Our eyes lock as if we were enemies at a
standstill.

“Do you believe you’re Laken Stewart?”

A moment of silence slices by as deep as the
ocean.

“Yes.” She doesn’t bother to deny it.

Shit. My eyes close involuntarily. What the
hell am I supposed to do with that?

“Do you think you could still love me like
this?” she whispers. “Broken?”

I pull her in and topple us down to the soft
blanket, my face buried in her hair.

“I’ll always love you, Laken. You can never
change that. No matter what happens.”

She finds my lips with hers, and I cave. I
press in with a heated kiss that only moments before I was afraid
we would never experience again. My body pulsates like one giant
heartbeat as I massage my tongue over hers—I roam her mouth like it
were its own universe that I’m greedy to explore. I want to believe
everything Laken tells me—but I’m not sure I can.