Page 48 of Beneath the Dirt

Intrigued still, I lift my hand to the doorbell, wondering if the chime will be heard over the music. Though, before I can ring the bell, the door swings open. The music now clear, Bone Church by Slipknot slaps me in the face with its blaring sound.

“Is that fake?” a rough, masculine voice asks but I can’t make eye contact with him. Instead, my gaze lowers to the blood saturating the dark fabric of my bodysuit.

Thinking quickly on my feet, I fake a cool smile. My lids close for a second as my words lead the way. “Yes, it’s fake blood.” I scoff.I lie.“It’s Halloween, Ha…” A breath hitches in my throat asI open my eyes, not prepared for the blue irises boring into mine. Not prepared for any of what stares back at me. Time has changed him into someone I don’t recognize. Long gone is the lean, tall, blonde teen I knew Harlan to be, and in his place is a tall, muscular, tattooed man. With his dirty blonde hair that’s now long enough to be slicked back, but not too long that it hides the gauges in his ears or the spiked barbells that line each cartilage.

“Harlan.” I finish my sentence, as striking lines of black and gray drawn to look like a skeleton hand capture my attention as he lifts his inked hand to the doorway. Securing one hand in place, he takes the other to my body. Without asking, he brushes his fingers on my torso, swirling the blood I told him is fake onto his digits, without faltering his gaze away from mine. Goosebumps line my spine as the hairs raise on my arm from his touch. I can’t read his expression. It teeters somewhere between blank and amused. After another pass of his fingers, he finally retracts them from me, and I inhale. Rubbing his index and middle fingers against his thumb, he breaks eye contact, studying the crimson that coats his fingertips.

“Right,” he says, unconvinced. His eyes flick back to mine.

Fuck, this isn’t good. “What… are you going to tell on me, church boy?” I make a jab at him by calling him the nickname he hated so much, but that’s what I do when I’m trying to deflect, whether it be emotions, blame, or thetruth.

To my surprise, he ignores the jab instead by taking his hand coated in the guard’s blood to his blonde locks. He runs his inked hand through the loose strands and his bent elbow shows off another tattoo. It’s hard to make out completely from this angle, but it looks like an oar with a flower surrounding it.

Time has been kind to him. It’s done wonders, actually. He looks so different from when I saw him last. Not only has he grown more muscular, which compliments the ink now drawn on his skin, but he’s kept with the style I had him wear that night. Covered head to toe in darkness, which suits him more than light ever could. Though, as much as my eyes like how theman staring back at me looks, I can’t help but feel jealous. How nice it must be for him to have also been involved in whatever ritual we stumbled into that night, and took drugs just like I did, yet he got to remain here. While I got kicked out. Banned from the property with nothing but the clothes on my back. If anything, he was able to come back hererenewed. A true version of who, and what, he was destined to be, and his father clearly hasn’t put up a fuss about it. Meanwhile, the blame, as it always does, falls on me.

Must be nice being an archetype for hypocrisy. That’s a privilege I never had.

He shoots a smug look my way, forcing my gaze to his ocean blue eyes and not gawking over his ink. “Well, are you planning on coming in, or did you go through all that trouble just to stand and stare at me all night?”

My stomach drops. I can’t tell if he knows what I did to the security guard, or if he's just trying to rattle me for all I’ve done to him that I know he’ll never forgive me for.

“That depends.”

His brows arch, waiting for me to continue.

“Do you promise to give back what you took from me?”

Harlan inches backward. His inked hand motioning for me to come in. The smug expression on his face lingers, now amplified by the moonlight casting a luminous beam on his irises.

“Well,” I drag my tone. “Do you?”

He scoffs at my question.

“Pretty, little, thickheaded sister. I know your whore ass did not come all this way to discuss a fucking necklace.”

Indignance motivates my next move. My boot stomps on the porch and my arms cross in front of me.

He laughs, and I hate that the natural rasp of his voice makes his condescension sound more alluring than it should be.

He stifles a sigh, now grinning ear to ear. “Goddamn, your tits look great when you get all huffy like that.” He’s mocking me. Crossing his arms like mine, except jokes on him, because he is right. My tits look great when they’re forced to jut forward with the pressure my crossed arms put on them.

“It’s not just a necklace, Harlan,” I correct, disgust holding my voice hostage when forced to say his name.

“You’re right, it’s not,” he snaps, cold and brutal, like he has become. “Now you have two options. You can either strut that plump ass back to that piece of shit car you drove here in. Nice, and slow, of course, so I can enjoy the view of you leaving me… again.”

Oh my god, Harlan, get the fuck over it.

“Or you can get over yourself and come inside to get what you drove all this way for.”

A lump lodges itself in my throat at his harshness. I shouldn’t admit this, not even to myself, but I like him like this. Assertive and to the point, everything I once wished he could be.

I don’t answer him. I let my booted feet lead the way.

“That’s what I thought,” he hisses as I walk past him. “You’re right. It’s never just abook,” he says through a whisper.

I pause my steps, my hair flipping as I turn back to him. His words eerily similar to Frida’s that night I got the book—the one he fucking took the liberty to write in last night. But I’m not here for my book, I have it already. I’m here for my necklace. He knows that. He literally just acknowledged that seconds before.

“What did you say?” My eyes narrow.

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