Fraud (Antihero Inferno #2) - Lily White Page 0,52
Emily’s house, or even Ivy’s family home for that matter, but it gives me the privacy I crave on days I don’t feel like being seen.
Only the guys know I live here, the deed written in the name of a fake business I set up to ensure nobody can run a simple internet search and find me.
The chicken incident taught me well, but more than that is the need I feel to hide. A need nobody knows about.
Except Ivy.
Which is why it pains me that she exists.
We pull up to the house, a two-story Tudor-style mansion that looks like it was pulled from a page in history rather than built specific to my tastes.
Only the outside looks old. The inside is more modern with sleeks lines, ample natural lighting and a spectrum of grey color that is understated compared to the design of Tanner’s place.
Don’t ask me why the interior doesn’t match the exterior. I try not to think that it’s a representation of the man who owns it.
Sawyer taps my shoulder in goodbye and jumps out of the car as soon as it stops, his long legs easily covering the distance to his car where it’s parked on the other side of the driveway.
I’d only brought him to Emily’s to ensure grabbing Ivy would be as quick and quiet as possible, but now that we’re here, I have no need for him to stay.
His taillights retreat into the distance as he drives off, another sharp crack of lightning splitting the sky just before thunder rolls over our heads, shaking the car beneath us.
“The storm seems fitting, don’t you think?”
Surprisingly, Ivy hasn’t moved from where she’s laid across the backseat, the bag still over her head that I thought she’d pull off immediately.
She goes quiet at the sound of the storm and my question, her voice cautious a few seconds later when she says, “It’s best we don’t bring that up.”
It really is.
“Aren’t you going to pull the bag off and fight to escape?”
“So I can see the woods you plan to chase me through? No thanks.”
I laugh. I hadn’t planned on doing that, but now that she’s mentioned it...
“Let me guess: the rest of the guys are here? How big is the gauntlet party? What’s the theme? And I’m not drinking that green shit, just so you know.”
“We only do that when someone refuses to pay the price. And if I want to, I’ll hold you down and dump it down your throat.”
“Well, I’m still not paying the price, and I’ll spit that shit back in your pretty face, so where the hell does that leave us?”
Fuck, she’s stubborn.
Always has been.
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Screw off, Gabe.”
My lips curl. “No, actually, I won’t. I happen to like where this conversation is going. Tell me more.”
Ivy growls and shuffles over the backseat to sit up, her hair a mess around her head when she tugs the bag off and looks around.
“Damn it. We are in the woods. This is bullshit.”
Twisting in my seat to look at her, our eyes meet just as another bolt of lightning tears through the night sky, the flash of it reflected in her gaze, just like a night that never should have happened.
Ivy’s shoulders flinch at the sound, yet she says nothing, our silent thoughts tangled together as thunder shakes the car.
“I hate storms,” she finally whispers.
It’s hard to speak around the knot in my throat. “Why?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
That’s a dangerous topic to bring up, yet both of us keep returning to that place, the violence of the storm around us forcing us back to a moment in time when our stupid pranks took on a cruel new meaning.
My voice is rough when I say, “We should go inside before the rain starts.”
Just like that, the skies open up. It would have been best not to mention it. Mother Nature hates when we’re together and does everything in her power to stop us.
Maybe Ivy was right to say that we are the natural disaster. Not the storms. Not the turbulence. Not the lightning that cuts trees in half and sends us running.
We are the devastation that was born on the day we met as children, our hatred of each other swirling in chaotic winds, our attraction cracking the sky apart on a spark that becomes a raging fire at the point where it strikes the earth.
She wasn’t the person who set my house on fire that night. Nature was at fault