Chapter Sixteen: To Hell
(Zander)
I want nothing more than to pull Ivy away from everyone. I want to be alone with her, without staring eyes filled with anger and shock. My hunger is doing more of my thinking than anything else, though, so I resist the urge and make myself endure the scrutiny of everyone around me. At least Samuel decides to take my advice and head toward Kaleigh. After seeing me take a chance with a girl, the guy who asks his teammates to scare away girls for him, I guess he figured he could try, too. Good for him. I watch him approach her, slip into her group of friends effortlessly, and join the conversation. Kaleigh laughs at something he says and I see Samuel relax.
Confident that he’s at least on his way to asking her out, I scavenge for a good reason to get away from everyone else and get some space from Ivy without anyone asking questions. “You want something to drink?” I ask.
“Sure.”
I start pulling her away, hopeful I can get even deeper in the mass of students and let go of her hand before I lose it. Van’s voice, trying and failing to sound natural, cuts through the music and stops me. “Get me a slushy, will ya?”
Our eyes meet and my hand tightens around Ivy’s. Van doesn’t care about the slushy. She wants to make sure I come back to the group. She doesn’t want me to be alone with Ivy. The irritation her drink request inspires builds under my skin. It shouldn’t, because I know she’s right. I know I shouldn’t be alone with Ivy, either. Realizing that she’s only trying to protect me, I soften my grip and my tone of voice.
“Ketchup, do you want anything?”
He looks up, surprised I spoke to him. It takes him a minute to realize I am serious. “Uh, sure. Diet Coke.”
I nod and turn away with Ivy. I hope she doesn’t notice how stiffly I’m holding her hand. I want to be able to hold her tightly, pull her close to me, but even doing this much is enough to make me explode with desire and hunger. Without anyone else glaring at me as a distraction, it gets harder to resist. My hand tightens on hers. I know any second it’s going to start hurting. I can’t stop my hand from squeezing hers. I want her knuckles to grind together, crack and crumble. I want to hear her cries of anguish.
An image of her cradling her broken hand, crying eyes filled with hurt and betrayal, flashes in my mind. My hand springs away from hers immediately. I push away from her until at least three feet are separating us. It’s the most I can manage with the entire high school population crowded under the bleachers.
“Are you okay?” Ivy asks. I look away, ashamed at my lack of control.
Ivy stops and looks up at me. “Hey,” she says, “what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Ivy. I told you that isn’t easy for me.”
“I know. It’s okay.” She doesn’t push me about it. She walks beside me, not too close and not too far away. “So, Van said there were some scouts at the game watching you tonight. Were those the guys talking to you after the game?”
“Yeah, they both wanted me to go to their campuses and visit so they can try to convince me to sign with them. I’ve still got another year of high school, though, so I’m not sure why they’re already pushing me to make a decision,” I say, glad for the change in topic.
“Why do you have another year left? You’re already eighteen, aren’t you? You should be a senior.”
Dodging a real answer, I say, “You’ve seen how good I am at math. Isn’t that enough of an answer?”
“You’re not bad at math. You just need to focus more.” Ivy looks over at me, her eyes narrowed slightly, concentrating. “What’s the real reason, Zander?”
I don’t answer right away. We reach the snaking line to the concession stand and secure a spot. I look over the heads of the people in front of me in an effort to see the beginning of the line. We’re going to be here a while. When Ivy’s hand touches my arm lightly, the current that runs through me jerks me back around to face her.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she says. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just curious. I feel like I don’t know very much about you yet.”
“Does that bother you?”
She shrugs, looking down. “Not enough to make me stay away.”
“But you still want to know?”
Ivy’s gaze trails up my body to meet mine. The intensity of her gaze makes me forget everything else. I watch as one finger comes up and taps on my chest. The sparks of hunger her touch evokes is equaled by the desire to capture her.
“You are a very mysterious guy, Zander. I want to know everything about you. If you don’t want to tell me about this, that’s okay. I understand if it’s too personal.”
Van may doubt her, but I can see the honesty in her eyes. “The last few years were tough for my family. A lot of really bad things happened to us, to me. I was really sick for a while, then I got behind at school my sophomore year. I barely made it through the year. It just kept getting worse. More bad stuff happened the next year. It was too hard to deal with everything. I got sick again because of the stress and everything, and missed the last half of the year. Rather than let me fail every class, the school said I could just start the year over. It meant another year of high school, but it saved my GPA and my eligibility to play sports.”
“Can I ask what happened?” Her voice is quiet, but the slightest bit insistent.
“My…” It isn’t because of trust that I hesitate, it’s because I can’t make my mouth form the words. Ivy briefly touches my arm, and for once it calms me more than enrages my hunger to know she’s there. There isn’t much I can tell her. I can’t explain how it all started, because it would require me to explain about turning sixteen and being too dangerous to be sent to school, or what happened because of that, but there is one thing I can tell her.
“I was the one who found my parents when they were killed.”
Ivy’s arms tighten around her body. “Zander, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
Wicked Hunger Page 20