Page 79 of You're so Bad

She watches me for a moment before saying, “I’m not saying I can’t do this without you, but I’d rather not.”

I get that tickle in my chest again. “I want to see it through too,” I say, but I let go of her hand. I can’t allow myself to get used to this. “We’ll see what we can work out.”

When we get within view of the main cabin, there’s a small group of people gathered around the porch with lanterns. No pitchforks yet, but unless they’re out there whispering ghost stories to each other, they got all the makings of a problem.

As we get closer, Bianca steps to the front of the gathering. “It’s them,” she shouts.

Fuck, are we about to get murdered? Because if so, I would have preferred to go out while I was still inside of Shauna. I’ve always thought that’s the way I’d like to die—balls deep in a beautiful woman.

But no one tries to run us down. They stick where they are as we get closer, like they’re afraid to go near the woods.

“Wherewereyou?” Bianca asks, her voice shrill. Champ’s next to her with a hangdog smile, his eye swollen. “Don’t you know there’s a psychopath on the loose? Someone wandered into the camp and punched Colter in the face and tried to steal his wallet. Everyone else has already left. We’ve been looking for you and trying to call. We even went to your cabin to warn you, and there was a horde of grasshoppers in there.” She says this last part with a shudder. “One of them…” She pauses and swallows, as if she needs to scrape up the bravery to continue. “One of them got stuck in myhair. Another one…” She takes in a deep breath. “Another one almost jumped in my mouth when I was screaming. This place is ahorrorshow.”

Well, shit, I guess those little suckers found a way out of their box. I swallow down the rest of what she said and glance at Champ, who gives me a slight nod. I don’t know what his game is, but he had my back. Either so he’ll get a future chance to screw me over in a different, worse way, or because he really knows he deserved the punch. Given my knowledge of the world, I’m guessing it’s the first.

His mother’s standing with them, along with a couple of meatheads. Shelly clearly didn’t say a word to Bianca about having seen us in the woods. I feel like we did Jelly Lady dirty, because she’s apparently cool as shit.

“Grasshoppers?” Shauna repeats, and damn, she’s a good liar when she needs to be, because there’s not a bead of sweat on her face.

“I’ll be complaining to management,” Bianca says. “What a fucking disaster.” She glances around. “We don’t even know if that psycho’s still here, hiding in the woods somewhere.”

Shauna has anoh shitlook, probably because she didn’t put two and two together to make four. Of course, Bianca’s the sort of person to complain. If Shauna feels the need to make this right for Murderland, I’ll help her, although I’ll bet it won’t hurt them to have a review like that. It’ll make the place sound like more fun than it is, that’s for sure.

A glance inside the main cabin suggests it’s still full of ABC crap, like an abandoned baby shower. That’ll be fun for the Smileshine people.

“Well, shit,” I say. “Sounds like we’d better grab our bags and get a move on, huh?”

“We’ll come with you,” Bianca insists. “We should all travel as a group. In those slasher movies, it’s only when they break off that he comes for them.”

She’s being awful dramatic seeing as she’s the one who chose to party down in Murderland.

“Really, it’s okay,” I say, wrapping an arm around Tiger. “My girl here’s got a black belt in taekwondo. The psycho will think twice before messing with us.”

They must be in a hurry to bounce, because we only a get a few weak objections before they peel off, leaving the mess in the cabin behind, and we head down the long gravel road to our place.

We’ve made it about halfway before laughter explodes out of Shauna. It’s the kind of laughter that catches, and soon it’s rumbling through me too. The image of Queen Bee opening the door to that cabin and getting a face full of crickets is fucking funny—even if we’re going to have to brave our own horde to reclaim our shit. I grab Shauna up and swoop her around in a circle, hooting, and she laughs harder, her whole body shaking with it. Then I capture the rest of her laugh with a kiss before setting her down on the gravel.

She grins up at me. “You know what, this has been fun. I think it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

“Me too, Tiger. Me too.”

I’m not blowing smoke. I feel more alive when I’m with her, even when we’re not causing trouble. There’s this…connection, I guess you call it, that I sensed from the beginning, and it’s gotten stronger.

She turns to look at me while we walk. “You know, Nana’s not expecting me until tomorrow. Maybe we can still have an adult sleepover?”

There’s that clutching feeling in my chest again, panic trying to grab me down, but I fight it. Because I want this. I want to take her back to the purple house and explore more of her. Make her forget that Champ or anyone who came before him ever touched her. I want to watchThe Sopranoswith her head in my lap instead of on the other side of the phone. I might not know what it means, but I want it.

“Way ahead of you. I downloaded the entire series ofThe Sopranosafter we watched that episode last night.”

“Something tells me you torrented them.”

“Why waste good money on a show that’s been out for twenty years?”

She nudges me with her arm but doesn’t give me a hard time about it.

When we get to the cabin, she turns to me again, my arms still around her, and looks up. “Thank you, Leonard.”

“You already said that.”

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