Page 144 of Ominous: Part 1
“Do you need me to follow you home?”
I consider him a moment, blue eyes glittering from the sun even as he shields them with his hand, his brow furrowed.
I think about how good it would feel to hurt Eli back.
But that’s the thing. The difference between us.
It wouldn’t feel good for me at all.
“No.” I reverse, then throw my car in drive, and leave without a glance back, my fingers trembling on the wheel. But when I turn out of his driveway, I see it.
Luna’s car is still there, and I don’t have to think too hard about what they might do tonight.
23
Eli
I should tell her,and I know that. But when I pick up my phone from underneath Luna’s elbow, tangled in the sheets of my bed, I decide I won’t. Nothing good will come of it, because I’ve found honesty is rarelyeverthe best policy.
I slowly get up, glancing over my shoulder to see Luna’s face buried in my pillows, her back rising and falling softly, her swimsuit on the floor of my bedroom.
I clench my fingers tight around my phone and think about waking her up, getting her out of my house, but I don’t want to deal with the talking that would require, so I head to the balcony, slipping outside into the hot summer night and sinking down into a chair, staring at my phone as I do.
“You are incredibly fucked up.”
I pick my head up, finding Janelle standing in the shadows, leaning against the wall of the balcony, her arms crossed.
Adrenaline doesn’t spike in my body; my pulse doesn’t even pick up.
I just ask, “How long have you been out here?” My screen dims in my hand and Janelle turns her dark eyes toward me, arching a brow, a slit down the middle of it. She rolls her eyes, tossing her dreads over one shoulder before she sighs and sits in the chair at the far end of the porch, staring back out at the night sky.
The moon is only a sliver, the pool lights glowing below us far brighter.
Propping her elbows on her thighs, covered with burnt orange shorts, a loose muscle tank on over her bikini, Janelle cups her chin in her hands. “I came to get your lighter.”
I see it still on the table between us, next to the ashtray, and imagine she was planning to smoke a joint downstairs or something.
“But then I got stuck out here after you and Luna…” She trails off, sounding disgusted. “And I kind of liked theoutdoorview.”
I smile a little and lean back in my chair, propping my feet on the ottoman, crossing one ankle over the other as I tuck a hand behind my head, the bottom of my phone resting against my sternum. I open up a message to Eden. She’s sent me nothing since she left.
Dominic, Jasper, and Baca were gone shortly after Eden.
Janelle stayed. She lives two houses down, and home is not a place she loves to be. Probably why Dad called her, knowing she’d come on a dime, just for an excuse to leave. She’s adopted, and her parents are like every other in this neighborhood. More interested in appearances than what’s lurking beneath the filthy rich exterior.
Janelle had a little sister. Her family took them in as a packaged deal.
She doesn’t have a sister anymore.
“What happened?” She doesn’t look at me as she asks, but I know she isn’t afraid of me. Same reason she helped pin me to the wall, and probably did more of the heavy lifting than Jasper or Baca. Even here, I see the cut of her arms, lean and feminine, but Janelle spends all of her free time playing lacrosse or training for lacrosse or running at Trafalgar, sometimes even in the dead of night. I assume she thinks it’s better than being forced to speak to her adoptive parents.
“Nothing.” I type out a message to Eden, regretting I let her drive away. She had been drinking, and she’d done a line.
I watched her through the glass of the pool house. I saw Dominic kiss her shoulder too, and I couldn’t stand it, her attention on him, even as I spent the morning with Luna, trying to get Dad out of my head. I didn’t want to hurt Eden. It’s just, with her, everything is so…much.I feel too deeply, and she asks questions no one else will.
It’s unnerving.
Janelle says nothing but she laughs; a light, tinkling sound, but she is definitely not amused. “Is every word that comes out of your mouth a lie?”
