“Fuck,” Lucas mutters. “Way to kill the buzz, Luce.”
“I’m being serious,” she says, leaning back, the tension in the room lifting slightly like that simple shift in posture somehow altered the very air. I look around and notice how everyone else seems to mimic what she does exactly: the placement of her hands, the tip of her head, all of us subconsciously miming her movements. “If you could kill someone and know for a fact you wouldn’t get caught, would you do it?”
Levi lifts his hand to the back of his neck, massaging it gently. His cheeks are flushed and he won’t look at me, he can’t look at me, because he knows what I’m thinking. What we’re both thinking.
“I don’t know,” he says at last. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
And there’s that word again—love—or at least a derivative of it. I don’t know if Levi actually loved Eliza, and to be honest, I don’t care. I loved her, too, but that didn’t stop me from hurting her; from making her feel guilty about the things she wanted. The life she craved. In fact, I think I hurt her because I loved her—that’s what people do, after all. Destroy the very thing they desire the most.
“Bullshit,” Lucy spits. “That’s bullshit.”
“Would you?” Levi shoots back, suddenly angry, and I can’t help but flinch at his abrupt change in tone, the way Lucy so easily burrowed beneath his skin.
“Of course I would,” she says, satisfied with his reaction. “We all would.”
We turn to look at her, tired eyes trying to focus, and I wait for her to smile, let out a laugh. Instead, she simply crosses her legs before picking up the pin and twisting it in her hands.
“The only thing that makes bad things bad are the consequences, right? Think about it. The fact that we’re all here right now means we’re all a little morally loose.”
She grins as she says it and everyone is quiet, looking around, suddenly feeling so exposed. I can’t help but flush as I take in the empty bottles we pulled from the bar; the liquor we drank that isn’t ours. The way we’re all sitting here in this place we don’t belong, acting like we do. She’s right, I realize. If there’s one thing Lucy’s taught me since the moment we met, it’s that once you bend one rule without consequence, it feels a lot easier to break the others.
“If we could indulge in life’s dirty deeds without the repercussions, we’d be animals,” she continues. “We are animals. All of us.”
“I disagree,” James chimes in, and I turn to look at him, though I’m barely listening. Not really, not anymore. I’m still thinking about Lucy, entranced by her confidence. Mesmerized by the way she asserts herself with no apology before inevitably bringing everyone around to her side. “That’s not the way it works.”
“It’s not?” she asks.
“No, it’s not,” he says. “Morally, most people would draw the line before killing someone.”
“Moral is subjective.”
“Moral is straightforward,” he argues. “It’s right versus wrong—”
“Nothing in life is straightforward.”
“Okay,” Nicole juts in, an uncomfortable twinge in her voice. Her eyes keep darting over to Levi, his long, tanned legs knocking into hers. “We get it. You’ve made your point.”
“No.” Lucy shakes her head. “I haven’t. And my point isn’t about morality, anyway. My point is that if you claim you’re above killing someone, it’s only because you haven’t found a reason to do it yet.”
She looks at me and winks, a shot of adrenaline spiking through my chest.
“We break rules when we decide the cost of getting caught doesn’t outweigh the reward of doing it, right?” she asks. “You can say the same for everything. Once you find the right person, the right reason … the scales start to tip.”
We’re all quiet, considering it in our drunken stupor. The idea of it like some distant dream.
“I’d kill my stepmom,” Trevor says at last, his expression blank. He nods once before bringing his cup to his lips, like the matter is settled.
“Professor Lund,” Sloane adds, nudging Nicole to let her know she’s kidding. “He gave me a B in pre-cal for no reason at all.”
“We all have it in us,” Lucy continues, ignoring her, crossing her arms tight against her chest. “Joke all you want, but under the right circumstances, we’d all do it. I know we would.”
“What about you?” I ask without even realizing I said it out loud. I’m still looking at Lucy, at the glimmer in her eye that I swear wasn’t there just a few seconds ago. Only she could make something like murder sound so straightforward. Only Lucy could make you feel like you might actually consider it—or that there’s something seriously wrong with you if you don’t. “Who would you kill?”
I watch as her head turns in my direction, pointy teeth digging into her lip and those pinprick pupils trained on me. Then she cocks her head, eyebrows furrowed like she doesn’t understand the question. Like she’s disappointed in me, somehow.
Like I shouldn’t have even had to ask.
“I would kill someone who deserves it.”
CHAPTER 21
I’m up early, six A.M., the gin and tonics I drank the night before making my tongue feel raw. I don’t know if I ever fell asleep, really, but instead just lay rigid beneath my comforter in some kind of comatose state, staring at the ceiling. My head pounding gently to the rhythm of my heart.
I pull the covers up to my chin, a chill traveling down the length of my spine. It isn’t just the temperature that’s making me shiver, although it is freezing in here. I had noticed it on that very first day, the way the upstairs was so stifling hot compared to my room, constantly cool. I had chalked it up to shitty insulation at the time, cracks in the windows, although technically, that should be making it hotter in here, not the other way around. But right now, it’s thoughts of Lucy that are making my body react like it had that day in the dorms, her glacial gaze on my back turning my spine cold and hard. An icicle materializing from the chill of her eyes alone.
I can’t stop thinking about the way she looked last night, elbows pressed together as she leaned into Levi. The concentration on her face and that little twitch of a smile as she bit her lip, watched him squirm.
“If you knew you could get away with murder, would you do it?”
I climb out of bed and creep toward my door, pushing it open in the dark. It’s just starting to get light outside, the hazy start of a new day, but the silent stillness of the house tells me everyone is still sleeping. I’m not surprised. I can’t even remember what time we stumbled home last night—only a few hours ago, surely—but still, I slink into the hallway, past Lucy’s room, and tiptoe up the steps until I reach the second floor.
“Sloane?” I whisper, knocking gently on her door. “Are you up?”
She doesn’t respond, but still, I enter, her blackout curtains choking any trace of light from outside. I climb onto her bed and shake her gently. “Sloane,” I say. “Wake up.”
“What?” she groans. “What time is it?”
“Shh,” I say, dipping my voice low in case Lucy is around. I know it’s illogical—I know her door was closed when I walked past, I know she’s sleeping—but still. She has that habit of creeping up behind you, popping up unannounced. You never really know when she might be around. “I need to talk for a second.”
“And I need to sleep,” she says.
“What was up with last night?” I ask, ignoring her. “That was weird, right?”
“What about last night?”
“Lucy,” I say. “That question.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, eyes still closed. “Lucy likes to play games.”
“Well, yeah. I gathered that.”
“I don’t mean that game,” she clarifies. “I mean games. Head games.”
“You think she was trying to get into Levi’s head? Because of what I told you?”