Page 49 of Fearless

Miserably, Ava finished securing her ponytail. “That’s what Mercy said.”

“See? Even he thinks it’s great. You’re not gonna disagree withhim, are you?” Maggie turned away from the kitchen counter, heaping bowl of freshly-chopped salad in her hands, her smile one of loving challenge. She’d set a trap for Ava, and knew that Ava knew it.

“No,” Ava grumbled. “Why would I ever disagree with him?”

“She doesn’t need to be spending time with any boys,” Ghost said as he entered the kitchen and laid his new issue ofIron Horsedown beside his dinner plate before he went to wash his hands. “Who is this kid, anyway? Have I ever met him?”

Maggie answered him. “Carter Michaels. The one she’s been tutoring. You’ve seen him at the clubhouse.”

Ghost frowned; his expression would have been comical if Ava hadn’t been wrestling a stomach of butterflies. “That little wanker?”

“Someone spent the day going over the books with Walsh,” Maggie said with a snort. “Try ‘fucker,’ baby. You can’t pull off ‘wanker.’ ”

Ghost turned to Ava, hands braced back on the counter, his Dad-face rushing to the forefront. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t.”

His brows lifted expectantly.

“Aren’t you always telling me to be more normal?”

“No. That’s your bitch grandmother.”

Maggie paused on her way back to the stove, laid a hand on Ghost’s wiry forearm and tipped a meaningful look up to his face. “She was raised on you calling her grandmother a bitch and Mercy talking about pulling teeth out with pliers. Let her go out with a sweet boy.”

“You’re the one who calls the woman a bitch most of the time.”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah, but the other part’s true.”

Ghost sighed. Ava caught the glimmer of regret in his dark eyes. It was there and then gone again: he hated that she hadn’t had a fluffy pink unicorn girlhood. His club was his religion, but he wished it hadn’t had such a heavy hand in raising his daughter.

“I’m not going to do anything with him,” Ava said, and meant it. She leaned forward and reached into her boot, withdrawing the bone-handled knife from its hidden sheath within the upper of her Durango. Then she showed him her cell phone and pepper spray in the pockets of her leather jacket. “I’d take the gun, but that feels like overkill at a school function,” she said, giving her dad a grin.

He grinned back and nodded toward the door. “Go. But becareful. And check in with your mother.”

She zipped up her jacket. “I’m always careful.”

The hulking profile of Hamilton House blazed against a cloud-packed indigo sky. Set almost a mile off the road, behind overgrown trees and waving seas of fallow pasture, no one would be able to see the jeweled flames of lights in all the many half-boarded-up windows. The front door stood open, light pouring down the front steps onto the scrubby lawn. Someone had wound streamers around the columns. Kegs and coolers were set up on the rotted porch.

Ava stood beside Carter on the sidewalk, staring up at the monolith, wondering which of them would break the awful awkward silence of the ride over.

“Where did you tell your parents you were going?” he asked.

“Bowling.”

A late-season cicada began droning in one of the dead oaks.

“Where’d the booze come from?” she asked.

“One of the cheerleader moms bought it and brought it herself, I heard,” he said. At Ava’s raised-brow look, he said, “All some parents care about is that their kids are popular.” He shrugged. “It sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Without touching, they started up the walk, the music growing more overwhelming the closer they drew. Ava smelled pot, and piss, and mildew. The house sagged in all its corners, its upstairs balcony dripping wisteria and kudzu.

I’m sorry, she told the mansion as they passed up the steps.What are they doing to you?

“You’re leaving?” In the glow of the dorm room lamplight, Jasmine sat up and pulled her hair over her shoulder, arranging it with her lacquered nails though she was only half-awake. The covers were around her waist and her naked breasts, high and lush – fake, but good fake – gleamed in the lamplight, their dark centers drawing his eyes. Her sleepy eyes held yet another invitation. She’d screamed into the mattress and moaned and writhed, but she wanted more. Jasmine never got enough.

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