Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3)

by Penelope Douglas

Will. And Winter. Will and Winter.

“Call or text Banks,” she instructed, ignoring my tantrum. “She’s worried about you.”

Every man I knew or grew up with drank. You held your liquor and you got shit done. Women were the lightweights, which was why I never let Banks drink.

I met Will at the beginning of high school, and he’d played around with drugs for as long as I’d known him. Weed, X, pills, coke . . .

We didn’t do drugs. We were the drugs.

“Keep me in this perspective.” I stared down, towering over her. “At any time I could snap you in half and shut you up for good. You need me. I don’t need you. We’re not friends.”

“I look like her,” I heard Rika say. “Don’t I? That’s why you’ve always hated me.”

I hate all of you. Hate all of who? Their little group I was once a part of? Women? People, in general? Who knew? And she didn’t ask.

“Sometimes,” I nearly whisper. “And sometimes I mean exactly what I say.” I looked up at her. “So trust me when I say you’ll never escape me. None of you will.”

You won’t change me. I’ll change you.

“I want to capitalize on the momentum. The Crists are having an engagement party for Michael and Erika in a week. You’ll go with Ari and bring the other two, as well. They’re your family now, too, and their reputation needs repair.”

IM SO EXCITED FOR THIS

It would give me one more reason to hate her and to hurt her. It was all the fun I was going to have in this marriage to her sister.

I’d done so much more than what I went to prison for—and far worse. Winter had no clue how bad this could get.

CHAPTER 5

I’d been attending and living at Penoir, a school for the blind in Canada, for over five years now, and while I enjoyed it there, comfortable around others who had to live life like I did, I wanted to come home. I wanted to learn to live here again and cope with being who I was now in an average environment.

I wondered if my parents might’ve kept me around if I had been the only one instead of tucking me away at some distant school for others to deal with.

“I think . . . they’re confused. We kind of look alike.” “Do we?” I replied. “Are you hot?”

The truth was, I hadn’t heard his name in six years. It was never spoken in my house, not since the day I found him sitting in the fountain and ended up covered in blood. Everyone said it was an accident, but he’d scared me that day. He made me fall.

Something about the way she just took my bag into her space and reaffirmed that we’d be together this afternoon, too, kind of comforted me. Like I had a place.

Thank u rika

It was to be expected, I guess. I was the only visually impaired student, and I was the mayor’s daughter. Some people were curious, while others were just unaware or flustered about how to interact with me. I supposed the learning curve applied to us all.

And it wasn’t coming from the person holding my hand, either.

no female voices.

I shook my head. I was going to kill them. Whoever they were, I was going to kill them. I wanted to scream—to demand they open the damn door and let me out—but it would just entertain the boys behind me even more.

I didn’t know why I was surprised. The guys in this town . . .

“Guys, come on, leave her alone. Get her out of here!” someone barked from farther away. “Oh, come on, Will . . .”

Thank god for will wtf

“I wasn’t on her,” I heard Will say, but his voice faded away anyway.

My stomach dipped. No, no, no . . .

And any hope that he’d forgotten about me was now gone, too. He knew exactly who I was.

Ari was probably the one who’d stuffed me in the damn locker room in the first place. Or she had her friends do it. How else did she know where I was?

Especially not anymore. She’d gotten used to life as an only child while I was away and obviously liked it.

But no one answered her—at least not verbally. It was in times like these when I realized how aware people were of my disability. Answering with nods or other gestures I couldn’t see.

He was bold. A lot bolder than I remembered, and I wasn’t used to it.

“It won’t be like that with us.”

I tightened my jaw. Yeah, no shit. There is no “us.”

“I was Winter’s first kiss, ladies,” he told everyone, though we had another guy at our table. “I was eleven. She was eight.”

“I wonder how many guys have kissed you since. But then, I guess I don’t really care, because I was first, and that’s all that matters.”

Where we left off? He nearly killed me when we were kids. There was no moving forward.

While he hurt me years ago, and there was no doubt he was now ten times the asshole I knew back then, a small part of me liked that he didn’t tread softly around me. He didn’t coddle me. He didn’t ignore me.

“He’s not supposed to come near you,” Arion said, and I guessed she was talking to me.

“Don’t tell the administration or Mom or Dad. The basketball team needs him, and I’m not having him get in trouble because you can’t deal.”

Wtf is wrong with her!!!!

Uncontrollable. That was the boy I remembered.

It still pissed me off that my own sister’s first instinct was to protect the basketball player, though.

Maybe that’s why Damon treated me like I wasn’t made of glass. Maybe he knew. I thought back to the boy in the fountain, bloody, with a silent tear streaming down his face, because something—or many things—happened to him that he didn’t want to talk about, and now he was nearly a man who would never cry again and only made other people bleed. I hated him, and I would never forgive him, but maybe we had that one thing in common. We had to change to survive.

CHAPTER 6

No one would hire me. I tried to stay positive, especially since I needed out of here more than ever, but it was getting harder and harder to not feel stupid for leaving college.

Damon hadn’t been back since the wedding days ago, but it was only a matter of time.

But I knew the ulterior motive behind the gesture. Drivers reported our comings and goings to the ones who paid them, so Gabriel and Damon were aware of our every move.

But this news of Gabriel’s offer was like a slap in the face. Another reminder that I was destitute and couldn’t have the things I’d been accustomed to.

Because of him. This was Damon’s idea.

He liked it. I was probably the only person who knew that he loved it, in fact. He’d watched me. I’d danced ...