Chapter 24
If there were ever a reason to get excited at a time like this, it would be one thing.
My eighteenth birthday party.
With only two weeks to spare, I submerged myself in plans and preparations for what was to become the greatest party Alistair had ever seen. Birthdays held a certain legacy between Daddy and I, simply because he loved spoiling me and I loved being spoiled. My parties were huge, spectacular events that were always the centre of attention.
And I never passed an opportunity to receive attention.
Screw staying under the radar – I didn't have time to mope around and pretend to be sad about Trevor's death. Still, I did give some time to the police in order to sort things out and wheedle my way out of the 'suspects' list. All it took were a few faux alibis and generous donation to our fellow troops back in Afghanistan in the Alistair Police Department's name.
Generosity was my middle name.
Becca and Yuri and I wandered all over New York for the best of the best – an internationally renowned DJ on hire, state of the art sound system, a complete lighting crew, and all the balloons in the world. Daddy's credit card and Tamara's family savings came in very handy, indeed.
"What about a smoke machine?" Yuri hollered from the deep, dark recesses of the party warehouse we had hunted down.
"Overkill!" yelled Becca.
"No way."
"Yeah!"
"And you don't think a male stripper inside a birthday cake would be an overkill?"
"Not if it was Channing Tatum himself."
"Okay, well, you're in charge of that."
"Channing Tatum is never an overkill, and you know it!"
"What kind of smoke machine?" I yelled back, too focused on picking the right disco ball to join in with their banter. The other shoppers looked mildly annoyed at the disturbance we were creating. I couldn't have cared less.
This party would be legendary. It had to be.
We spent hours in that warehouse and had only managed to find a quarter of what was on my list. I was beginning to grow frustrated. What with all the successful – and not so successful – kills I had managed to pull off in this boring little town, a party was just what I needed to celebrate them all and make my own unique mark on Alistair. The details had to be perfect. Everything had to be magnificent.
The entire town was coming, after all.
We took a break and did a little personal shopping of our own, loading Yuri's car up with even more baggage. I had yet to decide on a theme – and there was always a theme – but the dress code was what it usually was: skimpy dresses, bone-breaking high hells, and accessories to match. The intricacies would be decided later on, and my own dress had yet to be picked.
It had to be stunning. So stunning that no other outfit could compare.
After exhausting ourselves to the bone, we limped into a stylish little pub, a pub with a very good reputation and very loose restrictions when it came to underage drinking. Eli, having dropped out of school, used it as one of our regular meet-ups whenever we weren't locked away in his room having the time of our lives. He was particular about not going anywhere too crowded, and tried to minimize recognition. He was hiding, always hiding. I guess it was just part of his character – after all, he has been involved in things that would definitely send his ass to jail.
"My diet can go straight to hell. I want fries," Becca moaned. "A big, fat, greasy bowl of deep fried shit. And lots, lots, lots, lots of ketchup."
"Can you double that, please, Renee?" I when I didn't move from my position Yuri gave me the brightest, most convincing smile she could. "Pleeeease? Come on."
A muscle inside my cheek jumped, but I did what I was told, not liking it one bit. Since when did they order me around?
The bartender was a portly man who didn't seem very convinced by my new fake ID, but had seen enough of them to turn a blind eye and pour me a Bloody Mary. Leaving my friends to their plates of cellulite, I leaned against the counter and tipped my head back, the alcohol tasting thick and heady in my mouth. The place was practically empty at this time of day, but I knew that as soon as the sun begun to set people would begin filing in.
At least, those who were still brave enough to stay in town.
Many well-known faces in Alistair had moved almost immediately after the mutilation of Trevor Dakota, seeing it as proof that it was no longer safe for them to live here. That much was true, though as far as the media knew the entire thing was still a phenomena. How could somebody have gotten away with not only killing a boy, but also completely disconnecting his arms and legs, at the back of a stadium so filled with people and cameras?
Left to my own thoughts and musings, I stretched my fingers and felt each individual bone crack, and I sighed in satisfaction, feeling the very Earth shift and align beneath my feet in the exact way I wanted it. While they had been given no face, people were afraid of me. And they had good reason to be – if gossip ever died down, I could merely kill another victim and watched as a fresh flood of paranoia swept the place. My party would secure my popularity, as well. In fact, I would probably reach a level of popularity in which no one had ever reached before, and give me the social power I've worked so hard at getting. Alistair would really, in all meaning of the word, be mine.
I was happy. The possessive, spine-tingling feeling making its way through my system could only be described as happiness. I turned my head to the side, intent on watching the sun.
And nearly choked on my tongue.
He was here.
How could I have not noticed before? I would have scolded myself for not being observant, if I hadn't been so mesmerised by the shape of his broad shoulders. The copper in his hair. The tension in his neck as he tipped his head back, just as I had before, and swallowed a gulp of beer.
My fingers curled into my thighs. There was only one thing – one thing in the entire world – that could have made my day better.
Nathan.
I didn't even think about it. Didn't even have to think about sashaying my way towards him and taking up the empty seat facing his way. A dark smile curled its way into my lips. This was too good to be true.
"So what brings you here?" I asked, my voice sounding deep and husky in a way that it hadn't been in a long time.
His head snapped up immediately. He didn't look as well pressed and groomed as he normally did – his hair stayed limp and flat instead of being its usual mess, and there were bags under his eyes. My sharp eyes didn't miss a single detail, from the waxy colour of his skin to the slight intoxicated feel of his gaze.
God, those eyes.
He managed a small smile, genuinely surprised to see me. "Oh, hey. What're you doing here?"
"I thought I asked you first." Even conversation with him was intoxicating. I could only imagine what it felt like to do a lot more. His hands flexed and held tighter to the bottle in his hand.
I could hear the tapping of his shoes against the table's leg. He seemed restless, and troubled, and about a million things at once. But still, he managed to make small talk just as effortlessly as he did sober. "I'm a college student, Renee. Pubs and I go together like..."
"Peanut butter and jelly?" I offered.
"Sonny and Cher. But that works, too."
I laughed. "Sonny and Cher?"
"You don't like that one? Let me try again – pubs and I are go together like lemon and tequila."
"Didn't know you liked to drink."
All amusement faded from his face then. Something in him changed. He gave a look filled with such mixed emotions that it took me a long time to process only a swift glance. "I don't," he muttered bitterly, staring down at the barrel of his drink. He seemed disgusted, and it seemed to be aimed at himself. "This is... this isn't a regular thing for me. Don't think that it is. I just needed time to myself for a little bit."
My heart began to thud louder, faster. Did he not want me to have a bad impression of him? If so, what did that mean?
"It's the middle of the afternoon," I observed, watching for a reaction. What was he doing here at this time of day? Shouldn't he have classes to go to? A girlfriend to entertain?
"No shit." His response was brief, and lacked any real emotion.
My curiosity grew. Nathan was hard to read on a usual day, but seeing him like this? I was lost.
Completely, utterly lost.
I tilted my head to the side, trying to catch his gaze once more. "Everything alright at home?"
He scoffed. "Just peachy. Jess and I are peachy." Frustration swelled inside me, but I had it under control. No way would I lose my composure with Nathan. Not when this opportunity was the best I would ever be given.
My voice remained utterly gentle. "You can tell me anything, Nathan. I won't bite."
He looked up, and soon I was no longer holding his gaze. He was holding mine. I was utterly captivated by him. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, his mouth quivered. "I don't know what to do, Renee... She's... I'm afraid. I'm afraid of turning into him."
My eyebrows knotted together, and leaned closer to him, wanting to hear every word out of his mouth. This entire situation was so bizarre, so unexpected, that my insatiable thirst to know everything was dying to come bursting out. "Into who?"
"I need another one," he muttered, staggering to his feet, slamming down his empty glass.
"Woah." I stood up also, catching the crook of his elbow before he stumbled to the floor. He must have been drunker than I thought – Nathan would never normally act like this. The Nathan I knew was always happy and joking and smiling.
Or did I even know the real Nathan at all?
"Slow down."
"I need another one," he repeated, this time firm. I couldn't argue with him, even if I had dared to.
"Stay where you are. I'll get you another beer. How many have you had today?" I asked softly, leaning him against me. His presence was almost too much, and I was glad he couldn't feel the shiver that ran through me. Something awful must have happened to him and Jess, indeed.
And I was going to found out what. I would use his drunken state to my advantage.
"Seven. Or more." He listened to me and sat back down, furiously scrubbing his face. There were so many things I wanted to do – I wanted to comfort him, embrace him, whisper in his ear...
But first, I had to get rid of my friends.
They remained where I had left them, craning their heads curiously to see whom I had been talking to, then quickly looking away once they spotted me coming closer. Becca raised her carefully plucked eyebrows, tracing the edge of her bowl. "Who you talking to?"
"A family friend," I answered smoothly.
"Family friend or family friend?" Yuri asked suggestively, leaning on her elbows.
I rolled my eyes, pretending to fiddle with my pocket. My forced my face into a worried expression. Becca and Yuri noticed instantly. "Hey, do you guys remember where I last put my credit card?"
"What? Is it missing?"
"Yeah..." I stood still for a moment, thinking. A moment later, before they begun to panic, I turned to Yuri. "I think I may have left it at the warehouse."
She stood up and grabbed her purse, just as I thought she would. "No problem. We'll go look for it – stay here and have another drink."
But Becca, sucking a strawberry off of the rim of her glass, objected. "Aw, what-"
"Let's go." She grabbed hold of her arm and led her to the exit, throwing a "Don't panic! We'll find it!" over her shoulder.
As soon as they were out of sight, I ordered two more flasks of beer and carried them to our table, where Nathan had sat motionless, his head buried in his hands, the whole time.
Excitement raced through me, and I was unable to contain it. Jessabel. This – what he was going through – had something to do with Jessabel. I was almost certain that they had a fall-out, and if they did, I was more than ready to come swooping in.
Nathan was mine. All I had to do now was keep him talking.
"Here you go." I nudged the flask over to his side, pushing my breasts up against the table as I did so. Whether he noticed or not, I couldn't say. Nate gulped it down like a newborn drinking milk.
I watched his throat bob greedily. Everything the man did turned me on.
"You're miserable," I noted. "Why?"
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Is it that obvious?"
I snorted. "It was obvious from the first moment I saw you."
He sighed. "Look, you don't have to stay. Go back to your friends."
He wasn't letting up, but I refused to give up and walk away. I was predator, and he was prey. My prey. "I don't mind. Did you get my invitation?"
"Invitation for what?" he asked, reaching for his second flask.
"My party. You swore you would come."
"I did?" he wondered absently. His blue eyes now looked sad, and I feared that I had lost him. Nate was off in his own little world. "I met Jessabel at a party. My party. Did you know that?"
An angry flash of jealous ripped through me. I stayed silent.
"Well, no. No I didn't meet her at a party, per se. But we did spend our first night together at a party..." he payed me no attention, and watched as he swirled his flask around and round. "It was glorious."
Stay still. Don't shout. Don't throw his glass against the window. Don't think about him and Jessabel – together. Don't.
And now he was frowning, the flush in his cheeks glowing brighter as the alcohol took affect. His mumbling grew softer and softer, and I could barely catch his next words. "...We didn't use protection then. We never use protection. I guess this is all my fault, then."
The world stood still.
"What?"
"Hmm?" he hummed. He looked up with his bleary eyes, somehow piercing through in a way that Eli never could.
What did he just say? What did he mean by that?
I stood up as suddenly as I had frozen in my seat. I'd had enough of this. I'd had enough of him moping around the way he was. I was angry and hot and frustrated, and I knew that I would do something terrible if we were to stay in that cosy little corner. I would do something that I would regret.
Taking the half-empty glass from him, I inhaled it in several gulps, before setting it back down and grabbing hold of his arm. "We're going."
"What?" he asked, getting up to his feet. He was either too drunk to protest, or he was the trustworthy kind. "Where?"
I stopped for a moment. Where were we going?
Home.
To his home. A plan formed its way inside my brain, and before I knew it I was pulling Nathan out of the pub, leaning his strong body against me as he stumbled. He felt so lean and muscled, and held a certain power that made me weak. I allowed myself one moment of weakness and buried my face in his sleeve, drinking in that chocolate spice scent.
He burst into laughter. "Are you smelling me? That's so weird."
I ignored him. "Give me your keys. I'm driving you home."
"Rene- Oh." He relaxed, giving me a lazy smile. "Gee, thanks. That's my car over there – wait, can you even drive?"
"I am an excellent driver," I lied, leading him to the vehicle he was pointing at.
He gave me directions to his apartment, not knowing that I had already been there once before. And all at once, I was hit with déjà vu. It almost felt as if he were driving me home from the police station again, but now the roles had been reversed. He had become the damsel in distress. And I was the one taking him back to his precious Jessabel.
We'll see.
I eased into the driveway of is apartment block, keeping an eye out for twitching curtains or a sliver of blonde hair. But I was only disappointed. Either way, whether she was home or not, she would still see the end result.
"Thank you again," Nathan sighed, clicking his seat belt off and stretching out his legs. "And we'll come to your party for sure. Just depends on what type of party it is. Will there be catering-?"
I chose that moment to strike.
I pounced like a well-trained panther, slithering my fingers around his neck and forcing myself into his lap. Before he could open his mouth, before he could do anything, I kissed him as aggressively and greedily as I'd always dreamed of doing. When the shock wore off he fought against me, trying to restrain where my hands were going and fighting in vain to disconnect our mouths.
But I was strong. I practically pried his mouth open with mine, tangling our tongues together and finally tasting him. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop myself from wrapping around him, from furiously unbuttoning his jeans. My hands shook. My mind was shaken. I moaned at the feeling of losing control, of losing everything to Nathan. He crawled his way into my bloodstream, into my lungs, until he suffocated me in every way possible. My heartbeat became a name.
Na-than, Na-than, Na-than, Na-than...
But he eventually managed to shove me off of him, but not before I could smear my lipstick all over his shirt, leaving a stain that could only suggest one thing. He was shaking also, but the shock and horror in his wide eyes suggested that it was for entirely different reasons. My thundering heart and rushing blood and pounding ears distracted me so much that he managed to slither underneath me and open the door.
He and I didn't speak for what felt like years. I watched him back away from me, slowly, looking rumpled and messy and wild. Finally he swallowed, before scrubbing his lips with the back of his hand. Little did he know that his action only smudged my lipstick all over his chin.
"You- you... leave. Go. I don't know what you're trying to pull, but I want you gone before Jessabel comes back. Shit!" Was he having a nervous breakdown? It seemed to me like he was – he begun pacing back and forth, fiddling with his collar and shirt and looking like he wanted to shred open his skin. "God. This is what Alfred would have... he would have done exactly this. I'm gonna be a father, and this is what I do? This is what I do to her- Oh God. Go. Go home!"
Feeling calmer than I'd ever felt before, I exited his car and walked all the way home, feeling the burn of his tongue in my mouth.
***
Nathan's favourite colour was blue.
He also loved The Smiths, and had bought every Nirvana album released. He drew silly cartoons all over the sides of his textbooks, sketched building structures, read four-hundred paged crime novels, pocketed mint wrappers, and kept lists for all sorts of things – groceries, overdue bills, receipts, and a variety of things he wished to buy Jessabel for Christmas.
Everything that had come with the bag I had stolen – his iPod, his architecture notes, his assortment of knick-knacks – became my secret treasures. His blue polo shirt had become my personal pillowcase. With what little I had taken from his apartment, I finally began the process of piecing together the real Nathan, someone whom I did not have easy access to. That day had triggered something in me. I needed to know everything about him – everything. For example, the way he highlighted sentences rather than fold the edge of the pages. He didn't like home brand sweets, and instead bought original, authentic brands. He used a photo of himself and Jessabel as a bookmark, and the books he read generally involved assassins, mysterious murders and shootings.
That lead me to wonder how he would feel about actual murder.
Would it excite him as much as it excited me? I hoped it would. My imagination spun out of control, picturing the both of us as the 21st century Bonnie and Clyde. We could kill, and we could steal, and we could cheat our way to anything we wanted. I could give him the world.
I could give him me.
And whether I liked it or not, I was powerless. Nathan had taken residence inside the inner corners of my mind, the corners of my body. I couldn't wash him off. Wherever I went, whomever I was with, my mind would always go back to him. His face and the taste of his mouth and the heat of his skin...
How could I have even compared him to Trevor? Nathan was nothing short of a God. And my heartbeat just simply wouldn't stay steady at the thought of him. He was in me, all over me, control my every thought and movement.
Na-than, Na-than, Na-than, Na-than...
I flicked through the same pages and notes over a dozen times, simply because there were so many interpretations I could make. Ever organised, I found myself making copious notes on the worn-out pages of Genesis.
"What are you reading?" Daddy asked curiously one day, surprised by the sight of me so engrossed in a book. I normally wasn't the reading type, but this wasn't an ordinary book. This was a book that Nathan had read and touched and smelled...
I showed him the front cover and let him read for himself.
His eyebrows shot up. "Kill Shot? Something tells me that's not in your summer reading list."
"No," I agreed lightly. "But who says you can't read a good book these days?"
He reached over and kissed the top of my head, before moving to the kitchen.
On impulse, I swiveled around just before he left the room. "Daddy?"
"Yes?" he asked, expression soft and relaxed.
"How long has it been since Gwen came over?"
He paused in the middle of the doorway, thinking over the weeks. "Hmm. A little over a fortnight, I think. You're right, that has been too long. I'll give her a call and see if she wants to have dinner with us."
My answering smile could have lit up all of New York with plenty of electricity to spare. I didn't even have to directly ask Daddy for what I wanted – him and I were that in sync.
Gwen would invite Jessabel, and Jessabel never left to go anywhere without Nathan. If I had it my way, Jess's head would never leave my mantelpiece.
And I was absolutely confident in the fact that Nathan wouldn't remember a thing. He would have been too drunk, especially since I had slipped a thing or two into his drink. Not enough to render him unconscious, but enough for him to forget what had happened between us the following morning.
That kiss, that day, was my little secret.
As soon as he left, I took Nathan's bag from underneath the couch once more, taking immense delight in exploring what was inside. It was like I couldn't stop. Soon enough I would want more than just a little duffel bag, and until then I would be ready. I would be ready for the surprises that would be in my way.
Nathan had become my obsession.
***