I hadn’t been expecting that. For someone like Carter, so confident and untouchable, to admit to any kind of vulnerability—honestly, I was at a loss for words.
“No, it’s not,” I said finally. I was totally out of my depth here. My hand squeezed his leg lightly. There was something strangely intimate about being here with him in this swaying car. It felt like the rest of the world didn’t exist. Just us, here, suspended in the air, hidden behind our masks. I decided that distracting him might be the best option. “Tell me about the cove. You said the girls were being taken there?”
“You’re not from around here?”
I bit my lip. “No,” I lied through my teeth. Of course, I knew about the cove, not that I’d ever been there.
“Down the coast, past the pier and the beach, there’s a cove at the bottom of the cliffs. Most of the tourists don’t know about it. There’s a party there later. Exclusive. Select.”
I deflated a little. Of course. Only the elite, hand-selected by Carter and his friends, would be invited. “You’re coming with me,” he added, oblivious.
Before I knew it, the ride was coming to a stop at the bottom. The bar lifted and I climbed from the car, my feet a little unsteady, and Carter took my hand again. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” I could practically hear the smirk in his voice as he continued. “Of course, I did get to have a hot as fuck girl draping herself all over me, distracting me from the thought of plummeting to my death.”
I didn’t even know how to respond. I was so out of my depth tonight, I couldn’t even see the bottom. The whole evening felt completely surreal, like I’d fallen into a dream. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to require a response from me because he continued talking. “Want to take the masks off for now? I want to see your face.”
“Not yet.” I shook my head frantically. “Later.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to hide something.”
There was suddenly so much suspicion in his voice, and I panicked, trying to come up with a good enough reason to keep them on. “Isn’t the whole point to remain anonymous? So no one knows who we are?”
“Yeah.” His voice hardened. “We’re taking them off when we go to the cove, though, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed softly. I needed to leave before that happened. Before he found out who I was.
I should have left already, or even better, come clean, but I didn’t want to stop. He’d said there was something addictive about me, but the Carter Blackthorne I was experiencing tonight? The guy who flipped between scarily domineering and sweet, who’d given me an orgasm in a haunted house of all places, then shown me his vulnerable side? I was already addicted to him, and I couldn’t even explain why.
“Watch this.” I snapped out of my thoughts to see that we were now standing in front of the shooting gallery, and Carter had a gun lined up, pointing at the moving targets. With the same confident, practised ease he always seemed to have, he fired three shots in quick succession.
“You got one hit,” the attendant told him in a bored voice.
“One? This thing is fucking rigged.”
I stepped closer, sliding my hand up his arm to try and ease the tension. “I was impressed.”
“Really.” The disbelief in his voice was clear. For someone like Carter, I guess it was disappointing. I didn’t care, though.
“Really.” I glanced idly at the shelves of prizes. “Did you win anything?”
“Sorry, you only get prizes for hitting three targets,” the smirking attendant informed us.
Carter bristled, looming over the attendant, who shrank back, the smirk dropping from his face. “This is fucking ridiculous.”
“Come on, let’s go.” I tugged at his arm, needing to get him away before he did something stupid. He glanced down at me, his eyes barely visible behind the lights of the mask, but I could see the way his expression softened slightly, and he let me pull him away from the shooting gallery. The lights faded behind us as he took control and quickly moved us through the crowds, away from the carnival, past the skatepark, towards the subway and the graffiti wall that marked the edge of the skatepark.
The sounds of the carnival were replaced with the noise of the occasional car rumbling down the road over the subway, and the wind whistling through the trees. We came to a stop, back in front of the wall again. Reaching into the pocket of my hoodie, Carter pulled out the canister that he’d given me earlier. “Are you in the mood for some art?”
Art?
“Why?”
He grabbed another canister from his own pocket, and gestured towards the wall. “Want to add to this?”
“Are we allowed to?” I whispered.
“We can do whatever we want. Tonight, there are no rules.”
8
I stared up at him, his hooded figure towering over me, the glow of his mask giving him a sinister, otherworldly vibe. But somehow, I felt…happy. Excited, even. Who knew that a mask could be so freeing? “Let’s do this.” I examined the wall, at the colourful images and words spanning the length. There was space at the far side, where the writing had faded, and I headed towards it.
I felt Carter’s presence at my back, and when I came to a stop in front of the wall, I heard
