Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)(60)

“That has to be a fake laugh.”

“Then it matches her nose,” said Millie, before dragging me away. She trailed her hand along the bark of a nearby oak tree as we walked.

“Trying to reconnect with nature?” I teased.

She nudged me and I teetered off the path, into the mud that lined it. “Hey!”

“Just trying to get your mind off everything.”

“You’re a real gem.”

“Thank you, Sophie,” Millie said, giving me a ridiculous curtsy.

Finally, we entered the square: generous patches of grass divided by crisscrossing stone paths and bordered on all sides by towering trees. At the north end, a huge screen had been erected.

“They have a taco truck this year!” Millie squealed, dragging me by one of the belt loops on my denim cutoffs. “Let’s sit somewhere around here.”

Scores of people were already relaxing on chairs and blankets in front of the giant screen. Families had come out with their children, who were running around with careless abandon, while others were arriving as couples sewn together at the hips and hands and elbows, carrying everything from cushions and picnic baskets to cans of beer and bottles of wine.

“Whoa, people must really love Monty Python,” I observed as Millie fanned out her blanket in a spot equidistant from the screen and the taco truck. She smoothed down all four corners, making sure it was perfectly straight.

“I still can’t believe you’ve never seen this.”

When we were comfortably sprawled out, I emptied the contents of my bag until our makeshift feast was scattered across the quilt in streaks of sugar and chocolate.

Millie ripped into a bag of sour gummi bears and stuffed four into her mouth at once. “I love these,” she said with swollen cheeks. “Even though I’m not allowed to eat them.” She grinned, revealing tiny slivers of jelly that were now anchored to her invisible braces.

I laughed at her, and felt good about it. Since the night I fell for Nic, I had been tormenting myself with questions and wallowing in self-pity, which was doing more harm than good. I had to stop before I drove myself insane thinking of things I knew I couldn’t change.

I broadened my smile and then felt it falter at the sudden look on Millie’s face.

“But I thought he was out of town,” she mumbled, her voice was unnaturally subdued.

“Huh?” I followed her gaze and squinted into the growing crowds. “Who are you talking about?”

“Robbie Stenson. He’s here.”





I poured all of my concentration into the back of Robbie Stenson’s stupid round head. Even though I still couldn’t remember anything from that night, I felt angry just looking at him. It was like my skin was burning at the memory and my brain was struggling to catch up. Beside me, Millie’s raucous laughter was buzzing in my ears. She was blissfully glued to the movie.

“Why aren’t you laughing?” she asked.

I scanned the screen, where a bunch of British knights were harping on in comical French accents. Strange. “I’m distracted.”

“What are you trying to accomplish by staring at Robbie’s head like that?” Millie shoveled another handful of caramel popcorn into her mouth. “Are you trying to make him explode with your mind?”

“I don’t know.” I scrunched up my face in an effort to find the memory that was hovering just outside my realm of consciousness. “I’m trying to remember.”

Millie stuffed another handful into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Don’t,” she said, letting sticky kernels spew across the blanket. “Just try and forget about it. You’re here to unwind, remember?”

I did my best to follow her advice, but still, something wasn’t right …

After almost an hour, the screen blackened to text, which signaled a short intermission. “Taco?” I offered, feeling the need to stretch my legs.

“If you insist,” Millie replied, reclining. “Get me two, please.”

I brushed the crumbs off my clothes and walked across the grass, taking my place at the end of the taco line; soon after, I was wedged between a girl with bright pink hair and an overweight man.

“This register is open!” a pubescent voice shouted. A slew of people from behind me parted and shuffled into a second line, and suddenly I was standing almost side by side with Robbie Stenson.

He glanced at me and then quickly looked away, but not before I caught sight of the yellowing bruising around his eye sockets and along his thick jawline. What the hell happened to him?

The register chimed and the line moved forward, taking me with it. Robbie caught up on his side; he was swirling a red cup in his hands, making the liquid slosh back and forth. He lifted it to his lips, smacked them against it, and began gulping down its contents greedily. The more I saw the red cup bobbing back and forth toward his mouth, the more I fixated on it.

Then it all came flooding back to me.

I remembered going into Millie’s parents’ room and coming face-to-face with Robbie Stenson. I spilled some beer on myself — wasn’t that what he had said? But he had been holding two full cups in his hands. And he told me he hadn’t even been drinking. I grimaced as the memory of the sweet, fizzy liquid glided into my mind, reminding me of how he had urged me to drink it and how, as we sat on the bed, I had become uncomfortable with the way he watched me. And then everything in my memory went dark. I realized, just as the register rang again — echoing the alarm bells in my brain — that Robbie Stenson had drugged me that night and then orchestrated our walk home together so that he could assault me. There was nothing innocent or na?ve about it.