“Erm, yeah,” she said with a suggestive grin. “Who’d have thought Coach Monroe would go around kissing his students?”
My skin prickled with hot energy at her words and her eyes sparkled with amusement as Blake and Kyan laughed along.
“It was a joke,” I muttered, moving away from Saint in case he got any ideas about a repeat performance. Because the way he was watching her said he quite liked grabbing her attention like that and I wouldn’t put anything past him.
“Here you go, Cinders,” Blake called, tossing her the lipstick he’d used to defile me and the grin fell from her lips as she caught it.
She quickly pulled the lid off and looked at the pale pink colour inside before closing it again. “Is this the only one of my lipsticks you’ve stolen?” she asked suspiciously.
“Why? Do you think I’d look better in red?” he teased, dropping down beside her on the couch and throwing his arm around the back of it.
I didn’t like how casual the three of them were about being close to her. It rubbed me up the wrong way. Especially as she’d made her rules clear about hooking up with them. Not that she was complaining. In fact, she seemed perfectly comfortable sitting so close to him. Maybe even too comfortable.
“I just…lost another one, that’s all,” she said, glancing my way before shrugging it off.
“She means, some creep tried to freak her out then stole it and wrote Night Whore with it across the mirrors in the girls’ restroom the other week,” I said, folding my arms as I looked her right in the eye.
The Night Keepers all burst into speech at once and Tatum gave me a death glare just as Saint yelled for silence.
“Nice work, traitor,” she growled at me, cutting me a scowl half a second before Saint made it to her and caught her chin, forcing her to look up at him.
“Explain,” he demanded. Even with pink lipstick smeared across his face, he managed to look like a fucking psychopath.
Blake shifted closer to Tatum on the couch, his arm dropping to encircle her waist and Kyan prowled forward to stand behind her as they waited. This was why I’d told them. They may have been fuck ups who were holding her captive and revelled in antagonising her, but if there was one thing I’d learned about them the night we’d all murdered a man together, it was that all of us would kill for Tatum Rivers. We’d protect her to our dying breaths, whatever our individual motivations for that were.
“Someone just tried to freak me out,” she explained, playing it down. But the way she’d looked at me when she’d told me about the things that had been going on last night let me know exactly how worried she was about this. And maybe if I hadn’t been pushing her away so much during the last few weeks, I would have been able to help her sooner and she wouldn’t have hidden it for so long.
“By calling you a whore?” Kyan growled.
“And sending her weird ass letters,” I added.
“I know who not to trust with my secrets from now on,” she shot at me icily.
“You don’t have secrets,” Saint hissed. “Not from us. Not ever.”
“Sorry, but that wasn’t in the rules. I didn’t realise I had to trust you assholes with every little thing that bothers me.”
“Do you seriously think you can’t trust us?” Blake asked, looking wounded by her words. “After what we all did the night of the break in?”
Tatum huffed irritably and rolled her eyes at him.
“Maybe I don’t want to trust you guys with everything,” she clarified. “I’ve been dealing with my own problems for a hell of a long time.”
“That’s not how this family works,” Saint replied darkly.
“Family?” I asked, but they all ignored me.
“Tell us everything,” Saint demanded and they all leaned close, dominating her space and giving her no choice but to answer.
She shot me another death glare as she began to explain all of the creepy shit that had been going on and I ducked away from her pissed off vibes as I headed down the short corridor towards Kyan and Blake’s rooms at the end of the hallway which led off the back of the church. I pushed open the heavy wooden door into Kyan’s room so that I could cross through to the bathroom and wash the lipstick from my face.
I moved straight to the sink and splashed water over my jaw, rubbing at it to remove the pink marks before looking up at myself in the mirror. There was a smile playing around my lips and it took me a moment to realise it shouldn’t be there. I shouldn’t be enjoying fooling around with the Night Keepers. I shouldn’t be enjoying spending time with Tatum Rivers.
Although as I thought that, I wondered if I was being too harsh on myself. I’d dedicated so much of my life to tearing down Troy Memphis and his family that I’d never really been able to enjoy anything much. At least not in the years that had passed since the car crash. So why shouldn’t I enjoy myself now? Why should I have to suffer through my revenge? Everything I was doing was working towards my end goal. So if some of my smiles weren’t faked then why the fuck should I care?
A knock sounded at the door and I looked around in surprise, calling out to whoever it was to come in.
As the door swung open and I found Tatum there, I frowned. The two of us being alone in a bathroom was not a good idea. We’d already thoroughly proven that point. And of course the moment I thought about that kiss, I couldn’t fucking
