Dead of Summer - Page 122

But I stop the moment my gaze falls on Darcy, who’s standing behind Otter Hall and hugging herself as tears run down her face. But it isn’t the crying, or her being here, that causes me to be unable to tear my gaze away.

It’s the clear, expressive guilt on her face I can see all the way from here.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

There’s no way most of the kids are asleep. Not after the day Camp Crestview had. But there’s only so much we can do, apart from drugging their cocoa, and since Liza isn’t here to advise us on morality and dosage, that’s not really an option.

But at least all the kids are in their cabins. I’d probably be able to tell from my perch in one of my top five trees if that wasn’t the case.

The camp is as quiet as it can be, and I can’t hear any human sounds from anywhere around me. Instead, cricket song fills my ears, along with the sounds of distant wildlife and a breeze blowing through the canopy of leaves. If I’m not mistaken, judging by the way the wind smells, it’s going to rain soon-ish. And with hiking day being tomorrow, despite my protests with Fink that maybe we should wait or cancel it given what had happened to Emily, I hope that it either rains tonight or holds out until tomorrow night. The kids are already going to be nervous about hiking, if I’m right. Although Fink had tried to keep what had happened to Emily under wraps, everyone knows.

It’s impossible to keep a secret around here, after all. Especially from a bunch of twelve-year-olds.

Hearing something that doesn’t sound like a cricket or deer, I turn to look down at the ground, and promptly find myself looking down into Kayde’s shrewd, thoughtful expression.

Honestly, I don’t even have it in me to be startled anymore. “That’s so creepy of you,” I tell him, eyes narrowing. “I have a question, actually.” I hold my hand down to him, but Kayde just eyes it before using two knots in the tree to propel himself up to my branch. It’s a damn good thing this is the most stable of my favorite trees, because our combined weight doesn’t even make the thick limb under us shudder, let alone creak.

“What’s creepy?” Kayde asks, swinging his legs leisurely under the branch. “That I just showed up? Pretty sure we’ve had the me following you discussion, right?”

“Something about you being overly possessive, obsessed, and unable to leave my orbit, right?” My brows raise as he just looks at me, but my grin turns a little savage at his flat, unamused glance. “Yeah, we’ve had that discussion. Plus, I’ve made my peace with that bit of your weirdness. What I was talking about is your ability to just, you know, show up like that.” I wave my hand dismissively in the air and pull my knee up to my chest before dropping the other one off of the branch to swing it below me.

“Was that a thing you could do pre-psychopath days?”

“Sociopath,” Kayde corrects automatically, his look turning baleful. “Sociopath, baby girl. There’s a difference. It’s important. If I were a psychopath, I don’t think we would have made it to this point.”

“I’m still calling you my psychopath. It sounds cooler, and when I tell my friends, you’ll sound more intimidating. More threatening.” I wiggle my fingers at him when he looks my way again, and I’m surprised to see an amused glint in his eyes.

“Fine,” he shrugs. “I don’t mind.”

“You don’t?” Hadn’t he just been the one lecturing me about what to call him?

“Not at all.” His smile grows crooked on his lips. “You’re calling me yours after all.”

Immediately my eyes narrow, and it’s hard not to groan in exasperation. “You’re so set on me loving you, huh? Have you considered maybe I’m wild and free and can’t be won over?”

“No. Because while you might be wild, and you might not want to be won over, you don’t love being free from me,” Kayde answers sweetly. “Otherwise, you’d put up some kind of fight anytime I pin you to your bed and remind you who you belong to.”

There’s no way I’m not blushing, and I’m glad for the darkness that hides my embarrassment from him.

“I’ve always been quiet,” Kayde admits, and it takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about. My goldfish brain had completely forgotten my question about him being so quiet, and I scramble to backpedal to that part of the conversation. “Even before the sociopath thing. But I started trying more, after the accident. It’s easier to get what I want if I can sneak up on my victims.”

“Can we not call them that? Can we at least pretend you don’t murder kids?” God, part of me wants to ask him exactly how many kids he’s murdered, but there’s no way I could ever get those words out. Not if my life depended on it. It’s bad enough that I’m pretty sure this isn’t his first summer camp rodeo. I don’t need to know facts.

“No, Summer.” His voice is firm, and his grip on my calf mirrors his tone. “No, we’re not going to call them something else, or pretend that I’m not what I am.” As I watch, Kayde scoots closer to me until he’s straddling the branch to trap me against the trunk behind me. He leans in, his forearms resting comfortably on the bark, and his eyes glitter in the moonlight. “You don’t get to pretend not to know what I am, or who I am.”

“Yeah, I figured that would be too easy,” I breathe, unable to pull my eyes from his. “But I’d like it to go on record that I really don’t like it. And I don’t approve.”

His low scoff of a chuckle is barely audible, and he leans forward to brush his lips to mine. “It’s been noted. More than once, actually. But I can’t say that’ll change anything, sweetheart. I’m never going to hide what I do from you. And I’m never going to not want to tell you all about it.”

“Maybe you could just murder adults?” I ask finally, my voice weak. When he nudges my knee that’s pressed to my chest, I acquiesce and drop it off the other side of the limb so that I’m mirroring his pose. “Maybe you could, umm…just chill with the child murder?”

His head tilts to the side, and he reminds me of a curious puppy as he asks, “Would that make you love me?”

The way my stomach constricts and a tremble shooting up my spine have me gasping, and I curl my fingers into the bark under me and the fabric of his jeans. “You can’t ask me that. How do I know if it’ll make me love you?”

“Because I know I love you,” he replies. “I’m just trying to figure out how to make you want to love me, too.”

“Well, knocking me off this branch certainly won’t help, just in case that was going through your head.” I grumble the words nervously, reaching up to rub at my exposed arms under my tank top. While it’s not cold, the breeze makes the night a little chilly, and I wish I’d thought to wear something that would provide me with a little more warmth.