Page 81 of The Venom We Bleed

Last night was real. The evidence is in the soreness of my clit from his attentions and the still relaxed muscles of the rest of my body.

What the hell was I thinking?

Reaching up as my eyes pass over the bench press and football gear, I press two fingers to my lips. They still tingle from last night’s memory. Why did I agree to let Nolan go down on me? Why hadn't he demanded his payback? Is he going to wait for me to deliver? My mind rolls with question after questionto which there are no answers. Only one man can give me those and I'll be damned before I ask him straight up. I'm not entirely sure what he's planning for today, but I promise myself that if he acts like nothing happened, I'm just going to do the same.

I lie in bed and listen to Nolan talking to a woman in the distant part of the small house. I’m not entirely sure if Eliza Pierce knows I’m staying in her house, but on the off chance Nolan is keeping me a secret, I stay in his room until I hear footsteps in the hall and the sound of a door across the hall opening and closing.

Nolan comes back a moment later. “My mom’s gone to bed,” he tells me.

I flip back the covers and sit up, glancing at the cell phone on his TV tray nightstand. Reaching over, I don’t ask for permission to thumb the screen and light it up to reveal the time. “Do you mind if I take a shower before school?”

He eyes me in that way of his—as if he’s trying to penetrate the layers of flesh and bone to see what’s going on inside my head. I’m almost glad that X-Men and mutants don’t exist because if anyone could do it, I swear it would be him.

Nolan steps away from the door and over to his closet. “Knock yourself out.”

Crawling out of bed, I rifle through the duffle for actual clothes and head out of the room, stealing across the hallway and into the small bathroom. Though I feel dirty down to my bones—and not because of what I’d done with Nolan—I only allow myself two passes of soap and rinsing. Last night feels further away with each passing second, and I’m almost grateful for my lapse in impulse control regarding the head Scorpion King. If anything, what we’d done has helped me forget my attacker’s hands on my body.

It felt like he allowed me to take back ownership of my own body even if I technically hadn’t been raped. I close my eyesand think of Nolan’s mouth on my pussy. That, more than any soap or scalding hot water, seems to wash away the lingering unpleasantness.

Once I’m done, I get out and dress in a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting shirt that was once a solid tee before I cut the sleeves off. Months ago, I wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing something so pedestrian as jeans and a self-made tanktop. Or rather, my mother wouldn’t have let me be caught dead.

The reminder of my mom, when Nolan’s is so close, makes my head throb. No doubt if I were to check my emails now, I’d find more from my dad’s lawyer, asking for me to visit him. I wonder if Dad knows that Mom left town. That she leftme.

Gathering my wet hair, I rake my fingers through it and tie it into a loose ponytail before brushing my teeth with my finger and the paste I find on the bathroom counter. I should’ve gotten my toothbrush out of my duffle, but I’d rather get everything over with quickly. Spitting into the sink and rinsing out the last of the minty taste, I turn my head from side to side, examining my reflection in the mirror. The bruises aren’t so bad in the morning light, more sore than anything else. I don’t want to bother with answering any uncomfortable questions, though, so I dig through the drawers of the bathroom sink and sigh in relief when I come up with some old makeup.Thank you, Nolan’s mom.Hopefully, it hides the worst of the color.

Minutes later, I step out of the bathroom, holding my dirty clothes, and find Nolan waiting on his bed. His face is turned down to the phone in his hand and his brow is furrowed. I leave my PJs next to the duffle and find my converse and a pair of socks before dropping down onto the mattress next to him to pull them on.

“Problem?” I ask, hoping I sound casual when I feel anything but.

Nolan doesn’t respond immediately, his fingers swiping across the electronic screen with concentration. “No,” he finally says, slipping the cell into his back pocket. He must’ve dressed while I was gone because the wide, muscled planes of his body are hidden behind a black t-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket that looks older than he is it's so faded. “Everything’s good.”

With that, he stands, and just as we’re about to leave, he pauses and reaches back into my duffle. I scowl but don’t say anything as he withdraws the box and removes the cell phone. He doesn’t hand it over to me, but instead slips it into his own pocket.

I eye him warily. Boys are fucking weird, and Scorpion Kings—despite their reputations and the fact they got rid of the body of the man I killed over the weekend—are the same.

“Come on.” Lifting the keys to Gio’s Firebird and jangling them in front of me, Nolan leads me out of the house and to the driveway.

In the light of day, the street is just as cozy as it was the night before. Students hang out at the opposite end of the road waiting for the bus, and there are a few older ladies already in their gardens, bustling about with their curlers still in and their moo-moos billowing in the light morning breeze.

No one in this neighborhood has any obvious grand wealth, but neither do they seem to be scraping by. Middle class. Normal. Comfortable. It’s nice. And it’s not a place I belong.

Nolan hits the unlock button as he gets into the car. As I slide into the front seat, I frown at the sight of my backpack sitting on the floorboards. It hadn’t been there the night before.

Almost as if he reads my mind, Nolan chuckles. “The guys dropped it off for you last night,” he says. “They didn’t want to wake us up.”

I don’t know how to reply to any of that—not the fact that they’d cared about not waking us up or about the fact that theywent out of their way to drop off my backpack—so I don’t say anything at all as I buckle up. Nolan reaches into the console, hooking up the phone Lex had given me to a charger before he cranks the engine.

The Firebird rumbles to life with a low growly purr that resonates through my bones. I sit back and close my eyes. Once I’d actually fallen asleep the night before, there’d been no more nightmares. At least, none of the fictional variety. Now they haunt the waking world with their presence, never once leaving me alone or letting me get too comfortable. Nolan drives in near silence, the only sound that of the vehicle and a classic rock station set to a low volume. I’m so far out of my depth and only in the light of early morning do I finally recall the problem that might assail me the second I show up to Silverwood Public with not just one of the Scorpion Kings butthehead Scorpion King. Their leader. The powerhouse of the seedy underbelly of the youth of Silverwood.

By the time the Firebird pulls into the school parking lot, I’ve got a plan. A shit one, but it’s a plan nonetheless. The second we’re parked, I grab my bag and get out, slinging it over my shoulder. Every single person in the parking lot standing next to their shitty cars with their rusted rims and taped windows stares my way. I keep my head up, but I don’t acknowledge anyone watching me.

“Well, I’ll see you in class,” I say quickly. “Thanks for the ride.”

Nolan arches a brow at me as he steps out from his side and shuts the driver’s side door. I just need to get the hell away from him before the others show up. There will, of course, still be gossip, but if I can avoid them for the rest of the day, maybe it won’t be so bad.

Before I can make my way towards the school building, a black SUV swerves around in front of me, cutting off my escapeas it pulls into the parking spot next to the Firebird. The roar of a motorcycle isn’t far behind, and a second later, Nolan’s Indian speeds down the row of cars and stops next to the SUV and Firebird. All three of them are here. And me.Together.

“Fuck.”

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