In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(44)

“Coop!” My scream was gutteral. But Coop wasn’t listening to me; he was punching the man, over and over, blood flying.

The man with the buzzed scalp shoved Coop off his partner and thrust the machete under his chin. “Don’t move.” His voice was ice. His eyes dilated, making him look mad, and his veins twisted like dark tree branches under his pale skin.

Coop froze. The man with the scar scrambled to his feet and wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. “You’re going to regret that.”

I leapt from the bed to the kitchen, where I’d left my phone.

“Hey!” barked the man with the machete. “Move one more inch and I slit his throat.”

I stopped and turned.

The man with the scar seized Coop’s wrist. “You’re not quitting. You’re coming back and you’re recommitting.”

“Go to hell,” insisted Coop.

The man grinned and pulled Coop’s arm straight. For a second, I was confused, because it looked like a dance move. Then the man struck like a viper, snapping Coop’s arm at the joint.

For a split second, it was the worst sound I’d ever heard—bone shattering, ligaments tearing—until Coop’s bloodcurdling scream.

He dropped to his knees. I rushed forward, barely able to see past my tears, knowing I had to protect him. But the man with the machete pointed it at me, and I halted before I ran into the blade.

“Coop,” I sobbed.

“If you don’t come back,” said the man with the scar, “we will hunt you down.” His eyes shifted to me. “We’ll hunt her down. And we’ll kill you both.”

“You don’t get to walk away,” the man with the knife said. “Remember that.”

Waiting in the emergency room that night, alone and shaking, all I could see was Coop’s face when the glass door first shattered, his lack of surprise. The way he reached automatically for the machete in his bedside table—the movement quick and fluid. Practiced.

I’d known, but I’d forgotten: Coop was dark, wrong, the opposite of perfect. What was I playing at?

It would never be right between us. Not after this.

He may not be able to walk away, but I—I still could.





Chapter 19


Now

The police. Years of being an outlaw, of skirting the cops, and now Coop was handing himself over. Tying himself to the stake. Going up in flames.

“I won’t let you.” I moved ahead of him and crossed my arms.

“You don’t get a vote. For about a thousand reasons.”

“Does Caro know?” I hated to bring her up, but I needed any ally I could get.

A rustling noise made Coop look past me into the trees. “I came clean about dealing. Told her all of it—the pot, the molly, the tweak. The whole thing.” His eyes found mine. “Well, I left you out. She doesn’t want me to go to Eric or the cops, either.”

“That’s because it’s an insane plan. The cops are not the answer.”

Just like that, we were twenty-two again, arguing a decade-old argument. My voice echoed back: Just go to the cops, Coop, and turn them in. They’re dangerous, and they’re going to hurt you. I bet you’ll get immunity or something. His voice: I can’t do that. I’d torpedo law school and kill my mom. It’s hypocritical, anyway. I’m not innocent.

How ironic that we’d now switched sides: Coop, running to the cops. Me, urging him not to.

Time, making fools of us all.

He schooled his face into a blank expression. “Jess, if you don’t agree with me, just walk away. It should feel pretty familiar by now.”

Like a knife to the heart. “I don’t want to.”

Coop moved around me. “Let me guess: you just want everything to go back to normal. You want to go back to the party and parade yourself in front of everyone, show the whole school how successful and glamorous you turned out. You want Mint to follow you around like a lovesick puppy. You want to pretend everything’s perfect and none of us are fucked up. Same old, same old.”

I seized him before he could walk away. “You’re wrong. I don’t want anything to stay the same. Don’t you see? I hate how things used to be. I hate it so much I want to scream.”

“Then scream, Jessica. Christ, be honest.”

When I moved, it was both surprising and inevitable. Like a gun going off in a movie you’ve already seen. I saw my hands move to Coop’s face, pull him down with a familiar roughness. Twenty-two or thirty-two, it didn’t matter: it was always going to happen like this. The movement echoed backward and forward through time, too quick for Coop to be anything but surprised. I kissed him and drowned in it.

If we were being self-destructive tonight, Coop had nothing on me.

There was a moment of perfect—his stubble rough against my fingers, his hair as soft as I remembered, his mouth moving against mine, breathing me in, my heart, untethered, lifting—and then he broke away with a sharp intake of breath.

Coop looked at me with such wonder that I knew, for all his provocations, he’d never expected me to do this. Then the wonder turned to hunger—that old, private look, like he was a man starving for me, and no amount would ever be enough.

“I’ve got to admit, I didn’t see this coming.”