BLOOD FOR BLOOD ─ paul lahote

[ 004 ] who is in control?

"But Kit sort of disappeared on me a couple months back for, like, maybe three days," Sage told Violet, slanting Kit an accusatory glare and prodding her with a playful shove that barely made Kit budge. "Started getting real chummy with Paul and his weird crew about then, too—"

"They're not that bad," Kit muttered, dropping her eyes to the ground, rubbing her elbow apprehensively.

Sage scoffed. "Yeah, right. That's why you all got matching cult tattoos."

A lightning bolt of shock strikes down Violet's spine. Eyes narrowing, honing in on the strange mark branded in dark blue ink resting just above the defined muscle of the top of Kit's arm, Violet plucks the cigarette out of her mouth, flicking cherry ash onto the ground. Little embers glowered back at her. Before, she'd noticed the same tattoo on the other boys, since all of them were half-naked with only a pair of black sweatpants on. Other than that, she didn't think much of it, too caught up in the reunion with her old friends to question the strange markings.

"It's not a cult tattoo," Kit groaned.

Violet raised a brow. "Explain."

Kit lets out a nervous laugh. "It's really not a big deal. I mean—"

"That's exactly what someone engaging in cult activity would say!" Sage sneered.

"Oh my God, no, I swear, it's, like, a Quileute tribe thing," Kit cried, rubbing her tattoo in discomfort.

Lips pursed into a flat line, Violet's silent, evaluative gaze was unwavering, shards of ice into the girl's skull, but Kit couldn't meet her eyes. A nagging feeling scratched at the back of her mind. Something in the air didn't settle right. Kit wasn't telling them everything, that was for sure. For the first time in the history of their friendship, Violet thought that it could be possible that one of them wasn't telling the whole truth, that they were keeping secrets from each other now. But who was she to call Kit out when she was doing exactly the same? Who was she to judge Kit for harbouring something she wasn't ready to shed light on when Violet had her own locked-up darkness festering inside, when she had already decided, resolutely, that she wasn't going to tell Sage or Kit about the fire, about the boys she'd almost killed and the people she'd endangered in the last four years?

—THEY'D LOOK AT YOU DIFFERENT IF THEY KNEW WHAT YOU'D DONE—

"Tell me about the boys," Violet mouthed around her cigarette. She tips her head back and lets the vindictive wind dig its talons into her cheek. Smoke billows from her lips, emptying into the grey sky. "Why'd you start hanging with them in the first place?"

From the neck up, Kit flushed beet red.

"It's that Jared kid," Sage mused, taking a drag of her cigarette. Smoke poured from her mouth and nose in messy plumes as she spoke. "He started paying more and more attention to her when he started hanging with her brother earlier this summer."

"And you like him," Violet said, smirking at Kit.

"Jared's nice," Kit said, a soft smile touching her lips, rocking side-to-side on her skateboard, fingers lacing and unlacing and lacing and unlacing. "He listens when I talk about the stuff I like that most people usually get tired of hearing be talk about again and again. Plus, he acts like he's genuinely interested—"

"Because he is," Sage interjected a smug grin eating her features.

"—in hearing about dinosaurs and stars and skateboarding. And, I mean, I like hanging around him. But he gets a little annoying, though, sometimes," Kit said, hurriedly. "Like, he'll say things that make me think he knows that I like him like that—which is totally impossible because I've never said or done anything—but then he'll act like it's no biggie—"