Nightfall (Devil's Night #4) - Penelope Douglas Page 0,60

night.

When he got serious, he got to me.

I looked back down at my lap, breathing hard and feeling a little sick because my body was raging with a lot of different things.

I liked it.

We crawled closer to my house, and he hadn’t said a word, but I didn’t care. I just soaked up the feeling for as long as I could. Feeling him next to me. Riding with him. The goosebumps on my legs, because I felt kind of pretty in the skirt now. Did he like it?

He turned onto my street, and I clutched the hem of my shirt, seeing my house ahead, but I didn’t want to leave him.

He drove too fast, though. Why was he driving so fast? He had to stop in a second.

But we passed my house, not stopping or even slowing, and I popped my head up, looking back at my place through his back window.

He maintained speed, not slowing as my house came and went, disappearing again.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, despite my heart leaping a little. “You have to take me home,” I said. “I can’t be late.”

I couldn’t muster any more than a soft voice, because I really didn’t want to go home. I just knew I had to.

Finally, he glanced over at me. “What are you afraid will happen? You’re good at saying no to me, right? You can stay with me for another hour.”

I arched a brow. What the hell was he going to try that would make me need to say no?

I checked the clock on the dash. It was only 9:19. As long as I was home by ten, Martin probably wouldn’t ask questions. Probably.

He would know the bus had arrived already, though.

Will drove us through the neighborhood and pulled onto Old Pointe Road, heading toward Adventure Cove.

I tensed. What was he up to? The place closed at eight, and there was nothing else out here.

He turned and pulled into the parking lot of the theme park, the whole place empty for the night. He stopped the truck, not really bothering to fit into any particular space, but he kept the engine running and turned down the radio.

I let my eyes trail around the deserted lot, the empty ticket booths and darkened rides looming beyond the entrance gates. One single overhead light shone on the parking lot.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as he leaned back in his seat, staring out the window as the weight of the silence made my heart skip a beat.

“Do you see the Ferris wheel?” he finally asked.

I followed his gaze, looking out my window and finding the Ferris wheel to the right, on the edge of the theme park.

“If you head past it,” he said, “about five-hundred yards east, you’ll come to Cold Point.”

Cold Point was a part of the cliffs that jutted out into the sea a little more than the rest of the coastline between here and Falcon’s Well. With the theme park in the way, it was nearly inaccessible now.

And for good reason, given its history.

“Do you know that story?” he asked me.

“Murder-suicide,” I muttered.

He was quiet, and then I heard his soft, “Maybe.”

I turned my eyes to him as he leaned his head on his hand and stared ahead.

“In 1954, Edward McClanahan was my age,” he told me. “Senior, basketball star, bit of a bad boy, but only where it counted…” He smiled, teasing me. “He was good to people. He showed up for people, you know?”

I didn’t know much about Edward McClanahan, other than the basketball team made an annual pilgrimage to his grave. I never really cared.

But I stayed quiet.

“That season was supposed to be their greatest,” he said. “They had the team, the coach, the years of training… They could anticipate each other’s moves, even their thoughts.” He met my eyes. “That’s what years of playing together had brought them to. They were a family. More than family. They were in perfect symbiosis.”

Like the Horsemen. Watching them sometimes, the other players didn’t exist. Michael, Kai, Damon, and Will were like the four limbs of a single body.

“And that rarely happens,” he continued. “They relied on each other and would do anything for each other, and they were going all-conference. Everyone was hyped for what was coming that season. The games, the parties, the celebrations…”

I wondered how true all of that was. He painted a nice picture, but we believe what it suits us to believe, and nothing