The Wright Brother (23 page)

Elisa smiled at Julian as she’d told him. Even though they were all going to the same school, neither she nor Jules had had much of a chance to hang out with the guys. Only about once a month or so could they all find the time to get together. Roman and Christian had done exactly what she’d expected them to do in college: they’d joined a frat, gotten involved in team sports, and basically lived the party lifestyle.

Chastity turned down a quiet country ride, causing them to bounce up and down in their seats. Without streetlamps, the car was suddenly cast in deep shadow, with only the faint light of the moon to see by.

Elisa dropped her hands to her lap.

“Hey,” Julian tapped onto her bicep, “we can go whenever you’re ready, even if we have to call a cab, okay?”

Smiling, and so thankful she’d fallen for Julian instead of Rome or Christian, she nodded. “Okay, thanks babe,” she said, even though she knew he couldn’t hear the words.

Chastity frowned and glanced between them for a minute.

“What?” Elisa asked when she said nothing.

Shrugging, she smiled. “Nothing, we’re almost there.”

Looking up, Elisa saw the lights. Elisa wasn’t really sure who owned McCreary Woods, but it was private property that somehow the college campus was able to access.

Only once had she come through the woods, and that had been during the day for a long fifteen-mile jog with Julian. Even in the wash of morning sun it’d felt creepy. It probably had more to do with her imagination than the fact that the trees looked like something straight out of Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and it was a known fact that murders of crows nested there, which all added to its spine-chilling allure.

Elisa had never wanted to come back, but she had to admit it was the perfect setting for a Halloween bash.

“I strung up the lights, what do you think?” Chastity asked when she parked the car.

Getting out, Elisa smiled. The white stringed lights that Chas had hung up through the dead branches all over the place, coupled with the strobing pulse of lights from the DJ booth set in the back did make it kind of funky cool.

There were punch booths set up, food tables, and instead of chairs to sit on, Luke had scattered square bales of hay all around.

Elisa was glad for her friends warning, because she was right, the place was packed with bodies dancing, laughing, eating, and making out. A few faces she recognized immediately.

She spotted Ava and Thomas who looked like they must be a matching Romeo and Juliet snipping at each other at the refreshment stand.

“It’s pretty damn awesome, actually,” she said, turning and smiling at Chas, who now looked like a proud peacock.

Chas was studying to become a bio-medical engineer, but her passion of late had been design, much to Elisa’s surprise. This was the fourth party Chas had set up for Luke, with each one looking a little better than the last.

The moment Chas’s eyes began to twinkle, Elisa knew Luke was headed their way.

Luke sidled up next to them just a minute later and instead of wearing a devil costume like Elisa had assumed he would, he wore an all-white suit with a golden halo crown on top.

A very light-skinned black man with unbelievable green eyes that spoke to his Irish-African heritage, it was easy to understand why Chastity had fallen in lust with him the moment they’d met. Thankfully the feeling was totally mutual, Elisa loved seeing them together.

“Hey sexy,” he said to Chas, wrapping his arm around her waist and planting a big kiss on her lips before turning to Elisa and Julian.

Freeing his hands, he jerked his chin toward Jules’s outfit. “See you didn’t get the memo.”

Shrugging almost sheepishly, Julian settled his arm across Elisa’s shoulder. She wiggled deeper into his warm body, wrapping herself up in his clean scent of soap and mint. No matter how cold she got, Julian always stayed warm—he was like the world’s best blanket.

“Do you want some punch?” he asked a second later.

Nodding, she watched as the two guys walked off to grab their drinks.

Chastity threaded her arm through Elisa’s. “So you guys are super serious, huh?”

“I don’t know,” she said even as her stomach grew hot with nerves.

“Pft.” Blowing a raspberry, Chastity led her toward a stack of hay sitting before a large bonfire and took a seat on the edge of one of them. “Yeah, and I’m blind. The way he looks at you, holy hell, it makes my insides want to combust.”

“Chastity, you’re such a freak. What would Luke say if he heard you?” Elisa laughed, glancing at the guys who were now in the middle of an animated discussion.

Luke and Julian, she’d discovered, had had much in common. Namely, their love of rhythm and blues.

It always astounded Elisa how much Julian could hear without actually hearing. He loved music, sometimes she’d come home to find him lying down on the couch with the stereo turned to full sound and his eyes closed as he’d tap his foot to an invisible rhythm.

Which she was sure drove her neighbors nuts, but since the Ken and Barbie twins liked to blast their music through all hours of the night, she was hardly going to ask Jules to turn his down.

Chastity grinned.

“Anyway, how are things going with you guys?” Elisa flicked her wrist, switching the subject. Not that she was shy talking about her relationship with Julian, but it was just one of those things where what they had still felt so new and intense that she wasn’t really sure how to define it.

“Good. I guess.” She sighed, slumping her shoulders as she toyed with a thread of hay. “He graduates next year.”

Elisa’s stomach flopped at the sadness tingeing her girlfriend’s eyes. It was easy to forget sometimes that she was now a junior and Jules only a freshman. Next year she’d be the one saying the same thing.

“Oh hell,” Chastity said, squeezed her hands. “I totally forgot, Lisa, you and I are pretty much in the same boat, huh?”

Feeling a little like someone had deflated her balloon, she shrugged. “Well, at least we still have almost two years before we have to talk about that.”

Just then a hard kiss popped the left side of her cheek. For a second Elisa grinned, thinking it’d been Julian, until another pair of lips popped her right side.

Twisting around, it was to see Rome and Chris—dressed in gladiator getups—grinning back at her.

The guys had begun to look even more alike as they aged. Almost to the point that if she hadn’t known better she would have thought them identical twins instead of fraternal triplets.

They’d filled out nicely, and the costume only helped to highlight their now bronzed and muscular physiques. Chris’s hair was still slightly lighter than his brother’s, and his blue eyes just a little more intense, but apart from that they were almost carbon copies.

It didn’t help that they’d bought the exact same outfit. A dark brown pleated leather skirt with wrist cuffs and a leather collar around their necks. On their feet they had leather sandals that wrapped up to their knees.

Leaving their rippling abs and nicely toned biceps on full display. She could admit to having the tiniest of heart flutters.

The Wrights could never be accused of failing to make an entrance.

“I think you guys got had.” Elisa grinned and pointed at them.

“What?” Roman’s brows twitched as he glanced down at his body and then at Chris, who was having the same reaction.

Snickering, Chastity nodded. “Yeah, somebody forgot to sell you the rest of your clothes.”

“Oh please, you know you love it.” Christian made his pecs pop as his eyes gleamed.

Roman sat beside Chastity, and Chris beside Elisa, both guys grabbing their hands and petting it seductively.

“I say we ditch the losers and you fine ladies come and dance.”

“Like hell you will.” Luke slapped Roman upside the head, which caused him to laugh and hop up from his seat.

“You heard that, did you, damn.” He snapped his fingers. “Maybe next time.” He winked unabashedly at Chastity.

Elisa knew Luke owned Chas’s heart, but the woman had an eye for hotness. And good looking was good looking, no matter which way you diced it.

Julian cocked a brow, giving Christian a knowing look.

Wiggling his own in return, Chris gave her another kiss on her cheek. Elisa laughed as Julian growled, but it was all in fun. Grabbing her hand, he got her to stand so that he could take the spot she’d been sitting at and then patted his knee.

Tossing Chas a silly little grin, she took a seat and sighed when he handed her the drink.

“I think it’s sick the way you let her use you like a chair,” Roman teased. “But come to think of it…” He pretended to adjust himself.

Julian tossed a clump of hay at his brother’s head and he merely chuckled before sitting down on the bale beside them.

The boys were currently single but actively looking for their Mrs. Wright now.

Taking a sip of the hot punch, she played her fingers along Julian’s slightly furred forearm.

“So how are things going, guys?”

Christian shrugged. “It’s going. But I’m thinking of switching majors.”

“Already?” Chastity chuckled. “You’ve barely even begun.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, but I’m not sure I’m actually that serious about being a horticulturalist.”

Julian snickered, signing quickly. “Are you serious? I thought you were kidding.”

“It’s where all the chicks were, dude.”

Roman chuckled, yanking Chas’s drink out of her hand just as she was about to take a sip.

“Lord save us,” she growled at Luke.

“Hey, babe, you’ve got some straw between your boobs,” Julian tapped out on her spine. “I would get it but…”

Laughing, she glanced down. “Do I really? Oh jeez, how in the world did that happen?” Yanking it out, she released it into the nippy fall breeze before turning and giving him a kiss. “Thanks.”

Chastity’s mouth opened wide.

Casting a worried frown at everyone else, who didn’t seem to be in on whatever kind of surprise Chas had just elicited, she asked, “What?”

“Do you guys just speak by osmosis or what? Y’all are freaking me out just a little bit.”

“Oh, yeah.” Roman snorted. “You mean that strange Morse code shit they do.”

“Morse code.” Elisa rolled her eyes. “You guys are crazy.”

“Its not even sign.” Chris nodded. “It’s weird, right? Rome and I always said that shit was weird.”

Chastity and Luke nodded.

“But,” Luke said, “I see them do it all the time.”

“Do you really?” Chas turned to him before looking at everyone else. “I only saw you guys do it for the first time tonight on the drive here, and just now. What are you guys saying?”

Blushing, even a little embarrassed, Elisa glanced at Julian. “Care to explain?”

Nipping her shoulder, he tossed up his hands.

“Oh, gee, thanks. You’re such a help, Jules, really.”

He tweaked her nose.

Pretending to be annoyed, she swatted him away. “I don’t know, we just talk. We can’t always look at each other when we do it, I guess we did kind of develop our own style.”

“Um, yeah.” Roman leaned forward and began doing a dance of fingers across her bicep.

Elisa gave him a perplexed frown. “And just what was that?”

“My point exactly.” His blue eyes twinkled. “And for the record, I told you when you get bored of the kid, call me.”

Julian flexed his fist, which set everyone off to laughing. But Elisa wasn’t laughing. If she allowed herself to think about their relationship too much, she’d almost scare herself—the way she needed Julian, the way she loved him, how they knew each other in a way no one else in their lives did, sometimes it made her feel like heart ache just waiting to happen.

She shivered. Misunderstanding the source of the movement, Julian wrapped his arms around her and gave her a gentle squeeze. Kissing whatever part of his skin she could reach, which just so happened to be the side of his jaw, she decided that at least for the rest of the night she’d stop overthinking things and just have fun.

And she was having fun, sitting around the fire, chatting with friends while being held by Julian, it was a perfect, idyllic night.

Until it wasn’t.

Somehow Julian had managed to coerce her onto the dance floor. He was making an effort to have fun. This was his scene about as much as it was hers, she’d like to think it had more to do with her dress and how she looked as she moved, more than the fact that Chastity had mentioned it probably hadn’t been fair to create invite them to a dance when Julian couldn’t enjoy it the way the rest of them could, but they here they were, slow dancing to a fast techno-pop song. Bumping into bodies and being bumped into.

She didn’t care, though, they were under a canopy of stars, tucked away in an eerie forest of skeletal trees and Halloween decorations and it was all so beautiful. Her feet were killing her, though, and she’d managed to take off her jacket for a little bit, but now her skin was pimpling up from the cold and she was just about to ask Julian if he wanted to go back to the fire when something slammed into them.

Shocked, Elisa yelped as she lost her balance.

Even though the fall took all of a second, it was like time slowed to a crawl. Elisa had an almost out-of-body experience as she watched her arms windmilling, as her steps became crooked and her right heel caught on a divot, wrenching her ankle with a loud
pop
and dropping her like a sack of flour to the ground.

Fire bolted up her calf and tears came immediately. Julian was down on his knees beside her, his fingers trailing along her kneecap. She bit down on her lip, hugging her leg to her body as her ankle literally swelled before her eyes.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that, bitch!” Chastity’s shrill voice pierced through the fog of Elisa’s pain. “You tripped her on purpose.”

“No, no, I swear,” Ava’s shrill voice rang with panic.

Squeezing her eyes shut, trying to focus on anything other than the stomach churning queasiness of her throbbing right leg, Elisa shook her head. Right now she didn’t care if it was on purpose or not, hell, she wouldn’t have even cared if the woods were burning down. The only thing she did care about was getting to a hospital immediately.