I didn’t answer, but I didn’t really have to.

He started loosening another lug nut.

“And if he doesn’t,” he went on, “it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you, just like Cera. It just means he’s confused and a little scared. That’s all it is.”

Caleb was lying to himself, and he knew it. He turned the tire iron harder, the muscles in his arms hardening with each push. I saw the side of his temple where a vein was beginning to bulge, and the way his jaw clenched tightly as he ground his teeth. He knew deep down that Cera may not have loved him as much as he thought she did, but he struggled with not allowing himself to believe it every single day of his life.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” he asked as he dismounted the bad tire and dropped it on its side. “Go shower with your fiancé. Watch TV, hell, I don’t care much, just anything but hanging around out here with me.” He looked at me from a bent-over position in front of where the tire used to be and then grinned. “Unless you want to be Grace’s replacement? I have no fucking problem putting your little ass up on that hood and licking your pussy until the sun comes up.”

My eyes popped wide open. I swallowed hard. I stood up and dusted off the back of my shorts.

Normally, I would be offended by that, but Caleb was harmless, and I knew that sex and his extreme personality was his way of coping with the way his life turned out. I mean, sure, it wasn’t that Caleb wouldn’t do something like that even with Elias just feet away, but he was still harmless. I just shook my head and rolled my eyes at him.

He smiled and nodded toward the room where Elias was and said, “Get outta here.”

I smiled back and walked away.

Elias was still in the shower when I walked into the room, glad he thought to leave the outside door cracked so it wouldn’t lock me out.

I sat down on the bed and looked at the cigarette-stained phone on the nightstand.

I picked it up, placed the receiver to my ear and punched in my parents’ number.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Where the hell are you, Brayelle?” she said harshly into my ear. “I’ve been calling you! Where’s your phone? The police are everywhere looking for you! You need to come home. Now. Where are you? We’ll come get you. Tell me where you are.” I wondered if she’d stop talking long enough to catch her breath.

“It doesn’t matter where I am.”

My mom pulled her mouth away from the phone and said to my dad, “It’s Brayelle. No, no, I’m talking to her. Just wait.” And then her voice was loud again. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? What have you done? Did you or that guy have a hand in that girl’s death? Tell me the truth. You killed her, didn’t you? It’s just like that girl and that boy, Mitchell, said. You were fighting with her that night. You shoved her off that cliff because of Elias Kline. Didn’t you?” She was all but screaming into the phone.

“You believe that, don’t you?” I asked calmly, but my heart was slowly breaking every second that went by that my mother was treating me like a criminal, having no faith in me whatsoever.

My dad grabbed the phone from her. I heard her voice fade quickly and then her arguing with him.

“Brayelle, it’s Dad. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to come home and you need to face what you did.”

“Face what I did?” I mocked and bit my bottom lip. “I-I guess I should’ve known that both of you would accuse me.”

“We’re not accusing you,” my dad said sternly. “We just—”

“—not accusing me?” I snapped cutting him off. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. Neither one of you have asked how I am. Neither of you have asked me if it was an accident.”

“Well, if it was an accident, then why did you run?” my dad asked.

“Because I was stupid and I was scared.”

“Brayelle, only the guilty run.”

My heart broke completely when he said that. I felt like I wanted to cry, but I had already cried so much that I had no tears left. I sucked in a sharp breath, rounded my chin, and said, “Dad, I just want you and Mom to know that I love you very much. And I love Rian and please tell her that for me. I know I wasn’t the best kid growing up, and I gave you both a lot of hell and for that I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more like Rian.”

“Honey, why are you saying these things?” My dad’s tone began to change, and maybe he really was starting to worry about where this was heading, but I wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Just tell Mom and Rian that I love them.”

“Brayelle?” He sounded genuinely worried. But it was too late for that.

I hung up.

Elias

I stepped the rest of the way out of the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as Bray set the phone back down.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Who were you talking to?”

“No one,” she said. “Well, I was talking to myself. Rehearsing. I was going to call my mom and dad, a-and maybe my sister, but I changed my mind.”

I nodded and draped the towel over the back of my neck. I had heard everything she said to her parents on the phone, but she didn’t want me to know, and I thought it was better that I just pretended not to know.

Her conversation put a knot in my chest. The things she had said to them sounded like good-bye, the kind of good-bye that always ends badly. I thought about that painting that had been our life together, the black-and-white one that continuously filled with colors as each event unfolded and made us who we were. But that painting had become something so dark that Bosch couldn’t touch it.

“Caleb said he would eat me out on the hood of Tate’s Jeep,” she said.

I didn’t know whether to go outside and beat the shit out of him or just continue to stand there, dumbfounded by her swift change of mood.

Ultimately, I opted for beating for the shit out of Caleb.

I turned on my heel and went for the door, still only dressed in my boxers, but Bray was behind me in a flash and she grabbed me around the waist.

“No,” she whispered onto the shell of my ear as one hand came down and grabbed a handful of me. “Caleb was just being Caleb. He didn’t really mean it.”

I didn’t give a shit. I opened the door anyway, but Bray slammed it shut with the palm of her other hand and I whirled around just as she pushed my back against the door. She stripped off her shirt and took me into a deep kiss, pinning me against the door with her hand still grabbing my cock, rock hard beneath her palm.

She pulled the wet towel from around my neck. I grabbed both sides of her head and pulled her hair, forcing her neck back and pushing the tip of my tongue down the center of her throat.

“What do you want to do to me?” she asked, squeezing and pulling my cock in her hand as her fingers tightened around it.

A low growl reverberated through my chest. My teeth clamped down on her chin, and then I slid my tongue into her warm mouth.

“I want what you want,” I said breathily and kissed her even harder, wrapping my arms around her body and crushing hers against mine.

Her hand came out of my boxers and she dug all ten of her fingernails into my back. “I want everything,” she said, and it sent a tremor through my cock.

I turned her around, stripped her shorts and panties off, and forced her onto her knees in the center of the bed.

Bray

When you know you’re going to die soon, all bets are off. You feel like the person you always wanted to be, the fearless, uninhibited member of society who doesn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks. You want to do and say all of the things that you were always afraid to do and say. You want to drink and do drugs until you can’t see straight, punch a random stranger in the face just for looking like an asshole, fuck until you can’t feel your legs anymore.