Page 80 of Tricky Girls

It’s just the coke that’s making me want to scrub away those tears; to pull her into my feverish body, warming her chilly, quaking skin; to hold her so hard she stops breathing.

To make her remember.

‘Tilda.’ I pull her hands away, holding them a little too tightly that she winces. Leaning down so we’re eye to eye, I say, ‘Wanna go dance?’

She blows out a breath and wipes her nose. ‘Yeah,’ she whispers. Then she laughs, a high lilting sound that makes my lips twitch. ‘Yeah, let’s go dance.’

She leaves the vodka on the table, exiting the glass room and taking a moment to regard it.

‘Magic,’ I breathe into her ear.

It’s different this time. The drink’s loosened her up, the baggie’s loosened me.

She dances along with everyone else, one arm in the air, the other combing back her long hair. Her eyes are at half-mast, a tipsy smile on her lips.

And I just have so much fucking energy I need to move.

At some point, that tatted little spitfire appears. She glares at me, gives my arm a punch and throws what’s left of her drink my way. But then she sees Tilda and can’t help her smug smile, a smile that only grows bigger after I let her snort a line off the screen of my phone.

Then she’s gone, leaving us alone.

Our bodies brush in the tight space. It’s like microdosing, hurting less each time we touch. I do it again and again until Tilda smiles.

She thinks I want her. For just a moment, she thinks I’m like the others.

There’s no denying she grew up pretty. The softness in her face hardening to a woman’s. Her waist and tits moulded to perfection. And those legs—slender, tapering, graceful.

The tats and piercings just add to the image.

So yeah, if Tilda wasn’t Tilda, we’d still be in that glass room, dancing a hell of a lot closer than this.

But it’s not long until my high ebbs. It never fucking is.

Like someone’s cut my strings, I stop dancing. Tilda does too, looking at me to make the next move.

There’s blood on her leg, still seeping from the wound under her skirt.

The sight makes me clench, that dark, black feeling back again. There’s this need to be in charge of her suffering and I don’t like that I had nothing to do with this. Where else is she gleaning her pain? What else could be that fucking bad?

I graze my fingers over the blood. ‘I don’t want you doing this.’

For a moment she looks defiant. Then she takes my hand, bending my fingers so my knuckles bleed again. ‘Fair’s fair,’ she says.

I’m sick of the sight of her by the time I reach my tent. It sits at an elevation, in a glade just above the cliffs. I like to sleep to the sound of surf; I like that nobody disturbs me here.

No one but Tilda who’s followed me back like a fucking puppy.

‘Is this yours?’

‘Mm-hm.’ I stand in front of it, blocking it from view. She’s got my lodge, she’s not having this too. ‘Time to go home now.’

She looks at me, then back at the tent. ‘I can probably—’

‘No, you can’t. Go home.’

She folds her arms, that defiance back. ‘So you’re just going to make me walk all the way back on my own?’

‘Independent woman like you? Absolutely.’

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