Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3)

by Penelope Douglas

There is a reason that all things are as they are.

“Why are you sitting in there?” And then I add, “Can I come in, too?” I didn’t mean to say it, but I got excited. It looks fun, and something inside me just wants him to feel better.

“I will fuck women who aren’t you, but you can’t fuck men who aren’t me, because no one else can father my kids. Duh,” he added snidely. “I will come and go as I please, and I expect you to be dressed and ready on the rare occasion we need to play the couple in public. You may not be the happiest wife, Arion, but I’m told this is why God invented Saks and Xanax.”

ever the asshole, i see (and i still love him)

I knew I was fucked up. I just didn’t care. As long as I was happy, I didn’t explain myself to anyone.

at least he’s self aware

“We’re connected. It’s spiritual and shit.” I let out a little grin he couldn’t see. “I fucking hate you.” Idiot. Will, Michael, and Kai were my friends, and I’d walk through fire for any one of them. Will was the only one, though, who I was sure would walk through fire for me.

bromance of the century

Six years ago, his little girl and I changed each other, and while I couldn’t change her back, I could certainly give her some new memories of me. Now, that . . . I could do. It was settled, then.

People assumed I behaved strictly on impulse, when actually, it required quite a bit of strategy to be this fucked up.

“Checkmate,” I said. He stared at the board, scowling like he wasn’t sure how that had just happened. “Seven moves . . .” he mumbled. Yeah. Not ten.

that was hot ngl

Winter and Rika were both so similar, and not just in their looks. They were both defiant. Both liked a little danger. And both fought back.

and now we know why he hated rika sm

a small part of me still felt like she’d been . . . I don’t know . . . Used. I didn’t know why I gave a shit, though. Michael and Kai had shared a woman before. I just didn’t want to think about it with Erika.

why? bc she reminds him of winter?

“Because pain in the body quiets the pain in the head. It feels good, like a kill switch for your brain.

“Acting like that time with her wasn’t the only fucking time I didn’t hate fucking.”

“Oh, why stop when you were doing so well?” he taunted. “Damon,” I murmured, trying to pull my hand away. “Mmm,” he affirmed. “Missed you, kid.”

“What are you listening to?” a deep voice asked. I had a moment to process whose voice it was before the earbud was plucked out of my ear. Damon. They’d been talking about him. He’d been staring at me in the lunchroom.

don’t ask me why it makes me giddy that he likes her sm

I could feel his eyes on my face, watching me, and there was a mixture of dread and anger inside me, but also anticipation. Excitement. 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 didn’t act nervous or scared of me or treat me like I was fragile. Maybe he thought I was an easier target, or maybe he didn’t scare as easily as some. Whatever it was, part of me kind of liked it.

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.

This was Damon’s idea. No one else cared if I continued my dancing except him. He liked it. I was probably the only person who knew that he loved it, in fact. He’d watched me.

“Whisper it like I did your name the morning they found me in your bed and arrested me, Winter.

How I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated him, but how I loved what I felt with him more than I loved anything I felt with anyone else, either.

All I knew was that I didn’t like the taunts directed at her when the guys noticed her. No, scratch that. I didn’t like anyone else taunting her. And I really didn’t like another man coming to her rescue, even if it was Will.

“Hey!” I heard Will bark as we walked. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, come here!” I looked over, seeing him grab a kid by the shirt and stop him as he headed through the driveway, trying to leave. I instantly recognized him. Misha, his little cousin. Grandson of a state senator but looked more like the prodigy of Sid and Nancy. “What the hell are you doing here?” Will asked him. “You’re, like, twelve.” “And?” Smart-ass kid. Will faltered a moment and then laughed under his breath. “Yeah, you’re right. Never mind. Drink responsibly.”

“Arion, can you help me find the snow village in the basement?” Snow village? That voice. I closed my eyes, the little hairs on my neck rising. Winter. She was home, after all. “What? Now?” Arion whined. “Have Mom help you when she gets back.” Get the fuck out of the pool and get her what she wants.

But even as my aggravation with Arion Ashby rose, the skin on my back warmed, knowing Winter was right there behind me. And even if I tried, I couldn’t think of anything else right now. What was I about to do to her sister just to get that same, exact feeling?

She was barefoot, in jeans and a ribbed white tank top, a little stretched out and worn like she just did not care, but her face was clean of makeup, lips a natural dark pink, and the barest remnants of curl left in her blond ponytail as it draped past her shoulders. She was perfect.

“You teach your daughter to hide in everyone else’s world,” I shot back, “and I’ll teach mine everyone else exists in hers.

and he did…he very well did

“Your parents are bad,” he explained. “Your sister lacks any depth to be interesting, and I hate my house. It’s so dark there.” He paused, then continued. “It all fucking disappeared when you were dancing, though. It made the world prettier. I liked it.” “So, what?” I argued. “You wanna lock me in your basement to dance for you on command? Is that it?” But instead of the creepy, monotone, and calm response I’d been getting, his chest shook with a quiet laugh. “Can I hide there with you?” he asked.

So I stayed in there, the boy’s heartbeat drumming in my ear, and after a few moments, everything had calmed. My tears stopped, my breathing got slower and more steady, and I couldn’t hear my parents anymore. Just his heart, pumping heavy and fast and in a constant, perfect pace like a metronome, unchanging. At some point I dropped my hand from my mouth, my arms hanging limply at my sides, but he never let me go. And the beating in his chest lulled me until my eyes grew too heavy to keep open anymore. Exhaustion took over, and before I knew it, I was lost in it. In his warmth. In his arms. In the thunder of his heartbeat.

I almost smiled. It was the Christmas village. Two boxes of components. How did

“The way . . . the way I was with you . . .” I started, “I—” “You raised me,” she said, raising her eyes. “And who knows what would’ve happened to me if I’d stayed with my mother.”

“I like who I am,” she told me. “I don’t hate you for anything.”

She didn’t trust me, and she might not choose me. But she was still with me. Even just a bit. That was something.

progress🥹

She doesn’t touch him. And he doesn’t touch her.

In that moment, I wanted to grab him and her and Banks and put us all on an island, because they would never not belong to me.

i can’t even lie, i love how possessive he is

My smile froze, remembering the beating I let him give me last year because I knew I deserved it. I’d knelt there, letting him hit me again and again, because I wanted to feel worse on the outside than I did on the inside, and for so many moments, I just wanted him to kill me. Just kill me, because I can’t take it back, and I can’t move on. I’d almost killed him. And I wanted him to hate me so hard he would fucking murder me, and then maybe, after his anger was spent, he’d love me again.

“You were my heroin once upon a time,”

His breathing turned shallow, and I knew he was remembering all the shit we got up to back in the day. We had some fun. Even without girls.

“This is what you really missed, isn’t it?” He jerked his head back, trying to head butt me. “Don’t fucking talk about that,” he growled. “I was drunk.” “All three times?” I teased, smiling. “Michael and Kai don’t know how close we got, do they?”

no thoughts in my head, just “gay”

Michael and Kai thought she was just a one-night stand to you, but I knew better.” He raised his eyes, meeting mine. “They didn’t see the way you would look at her at school, during lunch and in passing in the hallways. And how no one—no one,” he reemphasized the words, “fucked with her behind her back after what you did to any guy who disrespected her,

“I can’t stop going down this road I’m on,” he nearly whispered, his eyes watering. “My family is done with me. Michael has Rika. Kai has Banks. You were a lie.” He faltered, dropping his gaze. “She was a lie.”

🥲

I wanted to tell him that I never would’ve hurt him. That I didn’t know what Trevor was doing, and it wasn’t supposed to go down like that, because out of all three of my friends, Will was the one I would always save first. That my pride and anger wouldn’t let me retreat, and that if he had been pulled to the ocean’s bottom, out of my reach, I would’ve followed him. I would’ve fucking followed him and rotted down there, close to wherever he was, because nothing I would’ve acquired after that—my inheritance or my vengeance on Winter—would’ve been worthwhile without him.

“Fuck you,” he sneered, pulling his mouth away. I grinned and flicked his lip with my tongue. “Only if you want to.”

gay!

Thirteen years ago he was hiding from his mother in a fountain, and after what happened in his room tonight and what Isa had told me, he was still hiding. Trying to feel everything through everyone else as he stood back and watched.

funny that she doesn’t wanna understand him but she just read him to filth

“Why did you come back?” I asked. “I wanted to see if you’d dance again.”

His hand was a bit bigger than mine, and his fingers were long and sculpted but so chilled. So cold. He took both of my hands and led me to him. To his face. “What do you see?” he asked, placing my hands on him and releasing me.

“My parents don’t like me to draw attention to myself.”

“You could never not draw attention,” he finally said. “And it has nothing to do with you being blind.”

I’d tried not to think about my parents’ fight that night, but I couldn’t not think about him. How his arms, heat, and pulse in my ear made it all go away.

Fastening the strap of the half helmet under my chin, I held on to his arm as he helped me climb on behind him. It was a little chilly, and the wind might be too brisk. I brushed the back of his head with my hand, feeling that he wasn’t wearing a helmet at all.

we don’t know it yet but the fact that emory witnessed this…love🤍

“This is black,” he said. “Fear, falling, release. Excitement, risk, danger.”

“I won’t let you go ag—” He stopped and evened out his voice. “I won’t let you go,” he said.

i’m obsessed w how obsessed he is