All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(89)

“He had some coke,” Emmett said, breaking the silence in the car. “Hailey wanted to party, so we found him at the bus station and bought it. He seemed pretty cool at first, and we invited him to the club. God, that was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the worst. Things were fine when we got there. Nobody really cares about the fake IDs, and so we got some drinks and were chilling. Just the three of us at a table. Then Hailey went to the bathroom to do a line, and it was just River and me. God, you’re not going to like this part.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“He started asking me about you.”

“What?”

“River. He said he’d seen us talking at Bighorn Burger, and he wanted to know how I’d pissed you off. So I . . . I told him.”

“You told him what?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’m guessing your version of the story is different from mine.”

Emmett blew out a breath. “All right, I took some liberties. I was mad at you, and I was mad at Austin, so I told him you were into me, but I’d blown you off, and you’d settled on Austin.” Glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, he said, “Vie?”

“Keep talking.”

“You’re not mad? Because you look mad.”

“I said keep talking.”

“He wanted to know more. I didn’t really think about it at first. He’d circle around, come back to it. But he kept asking. Just little things. Where did you go. Who did you hang out with. What was Austin like. Then Hailey came back and she dragged him out to dance. I don’t know what happened next. They were dancing pretty close to Austin’s table, and River must have said something, because Austin looked pissed. So did Kaden and Colton, but that was mostly for Austin’s benefit I think.”

“What did River say?”

“I don’t know. Honest to God, I don’t. But Austin was cooking he was so mad. Anyway, that seemed like the end of it, and Hailey came back to the table and River hit the head. He didn’t come back for a while, but when he did, he was amped. Hitting his own supply, you know? He started moving in on Hailey, and I told him to beat it. I mean, Hailey’s fine, but it was more about the principle of the thing.”

“You’re a fucking misogynist.”

“No, I’m a fucking caveman.” He leered at me, and his hand drifted toward my knee. “I’m equally possessive of all genders.”

I knocked his hand away.

Emmett laughed. “River wasn’t going to let Hailey go, though. He just kept hitting on her. So I stood up, told him to step outside. He just laughed at me. He stood up, and I thought for sure he was going to take a swing, but he just kept laughing. Then he walked straight over to Austin’s table, and by this point, Austin had been hitting the booze pretty hard. River planted his hands on the table, leaned in, close enough to kiss your cowboy, and said, ‘You know him?’ And he jerked his thumb at me, and Austin nodded, and River said, ‘He’s been throwing his meat to your gay boy over at Bighorn Burger couple times a week. What do you think about that?’” Emmett’s eyes drifted towards me. He was grinning, the bastard.

“What did Austin do?”

“Austin just about flew over that table. He got in a good punch before Kaden pulled him back, and River was just laughing. Creepy laughter, you know? Like he didn’t know why he was laughing, or maybe like he didn’t know what laughter really meant. I don’t know, God, it’s giving me shivers right now. Anyway, I was mad too, so I started for River, but Austin rushed at me, if you can believe that. Colton caught him, but by then it looked like I was involved in all that mess. By the time Remy got one of the bouncers, they dragged everyone out except Hailey and—”

“And River.”

“Yeah. Somehow that slippery piece of shit got to stay in the club. We were all standing outside, and I was getting in my car because I wasn’t going to let Austin take another free shot at me, when all of the sudden he got a text. I don’t know who it was from, but I know what it was about: you.”

I thought of Becca’s text to Austin the night I had cut my hand, but I tried not to show it on my face. “Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” Emmett said, with that cruel grin twisting his mouth. “That little cowboy went up like it was the Fourth of July. He started screaming—some pretty awful things, to be honest—and he found this big old piece of wood, God, I don’t know where, and he just about clobbered a trash can to death. By the time he was finished, it was as flat as a pancake.”

“And you just sat there, watching, enjoying yourself.”

That nasty smile widened, but Emmett didn’t say anything.

Jesus, that was bad. I rubbed my head, trying to ignore the high-pitched whine that had started at the back. That night at the club, Austin’s reaction to my cutting—it was so much worse than I’d realized. But I couldn’t deal with it now. “So River stayed at the club,” I said as the high plains of Wyoming streamed past us. Ahead, visible at the end of a long gravel drive, stood the timber-and-glass monstrosity where Emmett lived. “And Hailey stayed with him.”

“Yeah,” Emmett said. “Fuck her, right?”

“They left together at about eleven-thirty,” I said, barely hearing him over the noise growing in my head. It wasn’t a whine. It was a . . . a shriek. Like a train whistle, please God, just let it be like a train whistle and that’s all. Maybe I’m having a migraine. Maybe it’s not what I think it is. “And River sees DeHaven Knight,” I forced myself to say. “He gives him his jacket and wants him to take it somewhere.”