Taken While I Slept by My Stepbrother and His Friends novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Pennies

Laine saves the tea for a test and makes the four a deal on the pool deck, said awake and on her terms, then finds the sedative in Dwight's golf bag with her mother's name on it.

I picked up the mug with both hands.

Across the table, Gage set his fork down very slowly.

"Thanks, Mom," I said.

I blew on it.

Then I brought it to my lips and let the steam touch them and didn't drink.

"Oh, shoot," Kipp said loudly. "Is that the bacon? Dwight, I think the bacon's on fire."

Dwight turned to the stove anyway.

My mom turned with him.

I tipped the whole mug into my swim thermos on the bench beside me and screwed the lid on.

Zane coughed into his fist so nobody heard the cap.

When Dwight turned back, I was licking chamomile off my lip.

"That's my girl," he said.

He kissed the top of my head on his way out to a campaign breakfast.

My mom went back to bed at ten in the morning.

"I don't know why I'm so wiped," she said from the hallway, and laughed. "Getting old, baby."

I watched her bedroom door close.

Then I went outside and threw up in the oleanders.

Gage drove me to the pharmacy in his truck at eleven.

He didn't talk, and I didn't ask him to.

I bought a box of drink test strips, the kind girls carry to bars.

He bought a box of mouth-swab drug tests, the kind his crew used for job screens.

"If he ever tries to say you're using," Gage said at the register, "you'll want to prove you're not, fast."

By two the house was empty.

Dwight was knocking on doors with a clipboard.

My mom had driven to the club for a massage, yawning behind her sunglasses.

I put on the red bikini.

The four of them were sitting on the pool deck under the umbrella with their phones and a cooler, not drinking anything in it.

I walked to the edge of the deep end and sat with my feet in the water.

"Come here," I said. "All of you. I'm only saying this once."

They came.

Gage sat on the step a few feet away.

Zane sat on the warm stone on my left.

Kipp lay on his stomach on my right with his chin on his crossed arms.

Torin stood behind me, a shadow over my shoulders.

"You talked about me through a wall last night," I said.

Kipp groaned into his arms.

"I listened," I said. "And I liked it. I touched myself to it."

Nobody breathed.

"So here's the deal." I held up one finger. "I'm awake. Every time. If I'm asleep, nobody touches me, ever."

"Not to check, not to help, not for any reason."

"Yes," Zane said instantly.

Two fingers.

"Sober. Me and you. Nobody's drinking anything around me they didn't open themselves."

"Fair," Torin said behind me.

Three fingers.

"My rules. I pick. I say when, and who, and how far, and I can say stop in the middle of a sentence."

Kipp lifted his head. "Can I ask a clarifying question?"

"No."

"Okay."

Four fingers.

"Nobody owns me. Not one of you, and not all four of you together. I'm not a trophy you pass around ASU."

Five.

"And nobody lies to me again." I looked at Gage. "Not to protect me. Not to protect your dad. Not for a single day."

He held my eyes and didn't look away.

"Not for a single day," he said.

"That's it," I said. "That's the deal."

Kipp sat up so fast he nearly went in the pool.

"I would like to say yes to the deal."

"Then come say it."

He leaned in and kissed me.

He tasted like sunscreen and spearmint.

When I let him go, he looked stunned.

Zane was next to me, close enough that his arm brushed mine.

"Can I?" he asked.

"You can."

He cupped my jaw in one huge hand.

He kissed me so slowly I forgot my own name.

His thumb moved on my cheek.

I made a sound I'd never made out loud.

Behind me, Torin knelt.

His fingers slid under my wet hair and tipped my head back against his chest.

He kissed me upside down.

His glasses bumped my nose, and he didn't fix them.

His other hand spread flat on my stomach above the bikini bottoms, and stayed there, and pressed.

I arched into it.

"You were right about the popsicles," I told him breathlessly.

"I'm always right," he said against my mouth.

Then I looked at Gage.

He hadn't moved off the step.

His knuckles were white on his knees.

"You're on the bench," I said.

"I know."

"Until you tell me everything."

"I know, Laine."

He said my name, and I liked that much more than I should have.

I pulled my thermos out of my bag.

I unscrewed the lid, poured a capful of cold breakfast tea onto the pool deck, and dipped a strip in the puddle.

We all leaned over it.

The control line came up first.

The second line never did.

On those strips, no line meant positive.

"Benzo," Gage said quietly.

Now I knew what had been in my blood all summer.

Dwight's golf bag stood in the garage by the door to the house, where it always stood.

I went through every pocket while Torin watched the driveway on his phone.

A campaign button that said FAMILY FIRST.

In the bottom of the ball pocket, wrapped in a hand towel, was an orange pill bottle.

I turned it to read the label.

It was my mother's prescription.

Her name was typed across the top, and the bottle was almost empty.

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