Nightfall (Devil's Night, #4)

by Penelope Douglas

She leaned her head on my arm, yawning. “He’s scary,” she said. I shook my head, sweeping her into my arms and carrying her up the stairs. “He’s a joke.” I hugged her close as she wrapped her arms around my neck. “I’m your man now. He’ll have to get through me.”

“You’re going to remember this, Will Grayson,” she said, sounding all tough. “I blew your mind tonight. Even if for just a minute.” She turned over, giving me her back, and I smiled, smoothing the hair off her face and neck. You’ve been blowing my mind for forever.

She was incredible, and I hated that no one saw how beautiful she was except me. I’d been dying in that bus and fucking happy for it. Her body moved in slow, steady breaths, and I watched her lips meet, so softly time and again with each breath. “I love you,” I murmured.

That was the only reason she’d come in Michael Crist’s place. She thought only she’d be able to bring Will home. My stomach coiled and jealousy rolled through me, making my heart pound. It is my place to save him. Not hers.

She’d come for him. I hadn’t. She was better for him.

“He hasn’t smiled since I’ve been here,” I said. “Not the same way anyway. He hasn’t laughed or played or cracked a joke.” “He never does.” I nodded, Aydin and I holding each other’s eyes. “I did that to him,” I told him. “I killed him.”

“That’s what you said last night as you were climbing into your bed,” he pointed out. “Everything is real today. Am I less real at night? Is that why you’re pulling away this morning?” Yes. I swallowed over the pain in my throat.

“Who’s doing that to your body?” he demanded. I tensed, taking a step back. “You have bruises everywhere.” His eyes trailed up to my brow and the small cut I’d covered with makeup. “Is it your brother?”

We couldn’t be together. Maybe someday. Not today.

“I’d hurt anyone for you. Who the hell is it?”

“Let go of me.” I glared at him. “Go have fun with your friends. They’re all you really have, so hang on to them. I don’t love you, and I don’t want you.”

“We’re just too different.” I backed away some more. “You thought this was serious? You’ve been on half the girls in the graduating class! If I knew that you thought last night was something more, I never would’ve come to Homecoming.” He bared his teeth. “Stop it,” he bit out. “You hear me? Stop it. Last night was it for me. I don’t want anyone else but you.”

God, I loved him. This hurt. I had to get out of here.

I couldn’t be someone he had to take care of. Someone pathetic who would just bring a shit ton of baggage on him that he’d get sick of dealing with.

Tears spring to my eyes again, but I blink them away, nausea rolling through me. I did what I had to do, right? I might’ve even saved him from a worse fate. But no matter how often I tell myself that, I still don’t feel it. I need to face him and come clean. This is eating a hole through me, and if he hasn’t come for me yet, then he doesn’t know, and he should. I can’t do this anymore.

I folded the tie slowly and stuck it in the Ziploc bag, followed by my Cove Ride-All-Day bracelet from last night, and the collapsed, empty box of Milk Duds he got me at the movie theater. Squishing the air out of the bag, I sealed it, tears hanging at the corner of my eyes as I dropped it into an empty coffee can and capped it, setting the whole thing in the two-foot-deep hole. I couldn’t keep him close, but I couldn’t throw him away, either. Maybe someday I’d dig up my little time capsule and be able to laugh at how little any of it meant anymore.

But now I understood something I never did. Nothing made sense. Martin, my home, the terror . . . It just was, and sometimes you were just that person to whom things happened.

And maybe I liked that. With sobriety came clarity, and I’d had time to think about my past, and I was embarrassed. I wanted everyone to trust me. To depend on me.

She was the only person I’d ever felt completely safe with. The only person I never feared disappointing because the only thing she expected of me was to be there. Why couldn’t I love her? She got along with my friends. She made me laugh, and her presence was always a comfort. Always. She fit in my life.

Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw the girl who made me want to be better. More.

I saw Emmy Scott. Alex was like Damon. They loved me. They indulged my dark side. They were too forgiving and too enabling.

They kept me from being lonely, but Emory taught me that not everything I wanted was going to come easy. That there were things I was going to have to fight for and there was pain in the world that my shallow lifestyle in h...

When I closed my eyes, I saw a girl with glasses too big for her face, and I heard the sweetest, most timid voice asking me if I still wanted to hold her. I could still feel her cradled in my arms.

I’d loved Emory since the moment I laid eyes on her when I was fourteen.

I could still see her—sitting on her bike outside the chain-link fence surrounding the school parking lot as she watched my friends and me on our skateboards that summer.

I hated that she was alone. She was always alone, and she shouldn’t have been, because she should’ve been with me.

love you, Will,” she said in a quiet voice. I froze, my hand paused on her temple as I stared down at her.

She sniffled. “I warned you I wasn’t a happy person, and there were so many reasons I didn’t want to let you in, but . . .” She trailed off, trying to find her words. “The only time I ever loved my life was when I was with you.”

“I was always your Em,” she whispered. “No matter what I said or what I did or all the ways I let life win over the years . . . That night, I knew. I was in love with you.”

“You can leave, and I’ll survive. I always do,” she told me. “I just wanted you to know that.”

Everything ached in my chest, and I blinked away the burn in my eyes. “I told you I loved you last night,” I said. “You didn’t even hear me, did you?” She stepped up to me. “Don’t ruin it. Just remember it being good. Please.”

“You gonna stop now?” he demanded. “I’m not in the fucking mood tonight, and neither is she. We’ve been through hell, and not everything is about you.” “Is it ever?” I opened my eyes, looking at him through the blur. I wasn’t the leader. I wasn’t the brains. I wasn’t the passion. My friends wouldn’t be any less strong without me.

“Bad shit happened,” he whispered. “And I can’t talk about it, but you’re my best friend, so don’t ever forget it.”

Rising up off the mat, she licked her lips and gazed at me with resolve. “I’ll always want you,” she said quietly.

I went months without touching it, deliberately avoiding the village so I didn’t have to see it, and eventually, I’d forced the finish, getting it done without the chandeliers I’d dreamed about, because it would’ve been too painful to remember him every time I looked at it. I didn’t want to build or design. I didn’t want to do anything because of him. Nothing else mattered as I mourned the loss.

A chandelier sat crashed on the floor, and I shot my eyes up to the ceiling, but I couldn’t see well in the darkness.

I drifted into the ballroom, seeing the chandelier hanging high above, its lights illuminated and casting a soft glow over the floor.

No one was going to tell me how to feel. Not anymore. No one could make me feel anything I didn’t allow. I was in control. And I was ready for an adventure.

I wasn’t getting out of this situation. And I couldn’t kill him. I had to survive, and just like last night when I told Damon that there was a tear in the membrane, I realized as the hours passed that it wasn’t going away.

Pulling out the earbuds, I looked up and saw Will on top of his lunch table. His friends sat or stood, looking up at him and laughing as he started dancing to some pop eighties or nineties tune, stripping off his school jacket as his shirt and tie hung on him like a god.

Hang around more and maybe you’ll find out. The smile slowly fell, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. This was for me. Needles pricked my throat, watching him dance and loving the smile on his face.

What I didn’t know then was that the damage we would do to each other was only just beginning.

“I peed my pants one night at dinner,” she said. “I was fifteen.”

“I realized he was sick, and nothing was going to be good enough,” she told us as Aydin bandaged her foot, “so I stopped trying. My clothes would be wrinkled and my hair not brushed, because if he was going to hit me anyway, then . . .” She met Aydin’s gaze. “Then fuck him.”

“The thought left me as quickly as it came,” she added, “because I wanted you, and deep down I held so tightly to the hope of you. I needed that.” She raised her gaze again. “But now, I wonder if I was right. Here I am, covered in bruises again. Maybe your world is just as bad as mine.”

That was my girl, scarred, tattered soul, and all. She was beautiful.

“There’s someone for you, too, you know?” I teased him, forcing a smile. “I never said there wasn’t.” He blew smoke out of his mouth, flicking his cigarette off the cliff. “There’s someone for me. I’ll have her and my kids someday, but I’m not letting her fuck me up—or someone mess Michael and Kai up—the way Emory Scott messed up your head.”

Tears pooled in my eyes. “I’m fucked up,” I choked out.

“I know.” He nodded. “But if you come in here, I’m not fixing you.”

He wasn’t taking it like he had been since I’d been here. This was Will.