by Tracy Wolff
“We were on the parapet outside his bedroom. We’d just crawled back through the window when the earthquake hit.”
“The earthquake.”
“Yeah, the earthquake. You know, that whole ground shaking thing that happened about five thirty this afternoon. It must have been an aftershock from this morning.”
“Oh, I know about the earthquake. We all felt it.”
“So why are you acting like I’m losing it?”
“I’m not. I was just thinking… I mean, it’s probably silly. But what exactly were you and Jaxon doing when the earthquake hit?”
I freeze at the question, my gaze fastening on the wall directly behind her ear. But it doesn’t really matter where I look, because I can feel my cheeks heating up.
“Oh my God. Were you—” Her voice drops. “Were you hooking up with him?”
“What? No! Of course not!” Pretty sure my cheeks just went from pink to bright red. “We were…”
“What?”
“Kissing. He was kissing me, okay?”
“That’s it? Just kissing?”
“Of course that’s it! I met the guy less than a week ago.”
“Yeah, but…it seems like it would have to be more than that.”
“What does? I mean, I’m not even sure he likes me.”
Macy starts to say something but must think better of it, because in the end, she just shakes her head and stares down into her soup like it’s suddenly the most interesting thing on the planet.
“Seriously?” I implore. “You don’t get to do that. I answered all your questions. You need to answer mine!”
“I know. It’s just—” She breaks off as a knock sounds at our door. Of course. “It’s probably my dad wanting to check on you again,” she says as she climbs to her feet. “He’s not very good at waiting on the sidelines, especially when someone he cares about is sick.”
I put what’s left of my soup on my nightstand and burrow down under my covers. “Will it offend you if I pretend to be asleep? I’m really not up for talking to anyone else right now.”
“Of course not. Fake sleep away. I’ll let him get a good look at you, and then I’ll kick him out.”
“Best. Roomie. Ever.”
I close my eyes and roll onto my side—face toward the wall—while Macy goes to answer the door. I can hear a deep murmur from whoever is on the other side of the doorway, but I can’t understand the words.
It must be Macy’s dad, though, because she answers, “She’s fine. She just had some soup, and now she’s sleeping.”
More murmuring from that deep voice and then Macy offering, “Do you want to come in and see for yourself? Nurse Marise gave her a lot of medicine. She’s still drugged to the gills.”
There’s a little more murmuring, not much. And then Macy closes the door.
“Coast clear,” she says, but her voice sounds a little off.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to lie to your dad. If you want to call him back—”
“It wasn’t my dad.”
“Oh. Who was it, then? Cam?”
“No.” She looks a little sick as she admits, “It was Jaxon.”
I spring up in bed for the third time tonight. “Jaxon? He was here? Why didn’t you let him in?” I throw back the covers and climb out of bed, searching the room for my Chucks, but they’re nowhere to be found.
“I did invite him in. He’s the one who declined.”
“Because you told him I was sleeping.” I give up on the shoe hunt and head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Macy squeaks.
“Where do you think?” I pull open the door. “After Jaxon.”
36
No Harm,
All Foul
I charge out of our room, figuring I’ll catch Jaxon a few doors down. But the hallway is completely empty. Still, he couldn’t have gone far, so I take off toward the main staircase. Worst-case scenario, I know where his room is, even if a cleaning crew is currently in there.
I finally find him on the stairs, taking them three at a time. He’s not alone, though—Liam and Rafael are with him, and all three of them seem like they’re in a really big hurry.
I should probably let them go, but he’s the one who came to my room, not the other way around. Which means he wanted to see me.
It’s that thought that galvanizes me, that has me calling out his name as I move to the top landing.
He stops on a dime. All three of them do, and then they’re all staring at me out of the same blank eyes. I have a second to try to absorb the direct impact of all that male beauty and intensity—it’s a lot—before Jaxon is bounding back up the stairs.
Liam and Rafael watch for a second, their faces locked in that expressionless look I’m coming to hate. But then they both give me a little wave, plus Rafael adds a thumbs-up, before they turn away and bound down the stairs.
“What are you doing out here?” Jaxon demands, and just that quickly, he’s in front of me. Only his face isn’t blank. It’s livid with a mixture of self-loathing and regret, his eyes an incandescent black that has shivers sliding through me for all the wrong reasons.
“Macy said you were looking for me.”
“I wasn’t looking for you. I came to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh.” I hold out my arms, do a little self-deprecating shrug. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine.”
He snorts. “Pretty sure that’s a matter of opinion.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, you look like you’re going to fall down any second. I don’t know what you were thinking to come running down the halls after you nearly bled to death. Go back to bed.”
“I don’t want to go back to bed. I want to talk to you about what happened this afternoon.”
“Blank” doesn’t describe what happens to his face. It goes beyond blank, beyond empty, until there’s absolutely nothing there. No sign at all of the Jaxon I watched the meteor shower with. Definitely no sign of the boy who kissed me until my knees buckled and my heart nearly exploded.
He looks like a stranger. A cold, emotionless stranger, one who has every intention of ignoring me. But then he finally answers. “You got hurt. That’s what happened.”
“That’s not all that happened.” I reach for his arm—I want to touch him, feel him—but he steps out of reach before my fingers can so much as brush against his shirt.
“It’s the only thing that happened that matters.”
Ouch. My heart falls straight to my feet as I struggle with the fact that he’s grouping our kiss in with all the things he thinks don’t matter.
For long seconds, I don’t know what to say. But then I ask the one question that’s been burning inside my brain since I woke up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
“But I am worried about you.” It’s a lot to admit—especially when he’s working so hard to shut down everything between us—but that doesn’t make it any less true. “You look…”
His eyes meet mine. “What?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Not okay.”
He looks away. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” It’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk to me right now, so I take a step back. “I guess I—”
“I’m sorry.” It sounds like the words are dragged out of him.
“For what?” The apology astounds me.
“I didn’t protect you.”
“From an earthquake?”
His gaze swings back to mine, and for a second, just a second, I can see something in his eyes. Something powerful and terrible and all-consuming. But it’s gone as quickly as it came and then he’s back to showing nothing. “From a lot of things.”
“From what I u
nderstand, you saved my life.”
He snorts. “That’s the point. You don’t understand much. Which is why you should go back to your room and forget all about what happened earlier.”
“Forget about the earthquake?” I ask. “Or forget about you kissing me?” I don’t know where I got the guts to bring it up…except, truth is, it’s not bravery so much as desperation. I have to know what Jaxon’s thinking and why he’s thinking it.
“Forget about it all,” he answers.
“You know that’s not going to happen.” I reach for him once more, and this time he doesn’t jerk away. Instead, he just watches me as I rest my hand on his shoulder, hoping the contact will remind him of what it was like to touch me. Hoping it will break through the barriers he’s erected between us.
“Yeah, well, it needs to happen. You have no idea what we just did.”
“We kissed, Jaxon. That’s all we did.” It felt momentous, important—it still feels that way to me—but in the grand scheme of things, it really was just a kiss.
“I keep telling you that it doesn’t work like that here.” He shoves a frustrated hand through his hair. “Don’t you get that? You’ve been a pawn since you got here, a chess piece to move around the board to get the desired result. But now…now we’ve upped the stakes. This isn’t just a game anymore.”
He might mean his words as warnings, but they feel like body blows.
“I was a game to you?”
“You’re not listening.” His eyes glow incandescent with the effort of holding in emotions I can’t even begin to decipher—no matter how much I wish I could. “From the moment I kissed you. From the moment you got hurt, everything changed. You were in danger before, but now—”
He breaks off, jaw clenching, throat working. Then says, “Now I’ve all but put a bull’s eye in the middle of your back and dared someone to take a shot.”
“I don’t understand. You didn’t do anything.”
“I did everything.” He moves then, swift as one of those shooting stars from last night, until his face is right up in mine. “Listen to me. You need to stay away from me. I need to stay away from you.”
His words send a chill through me, make my mouth go dry and my palms sweat. And still I can’t just walk away. Not when he’s standing right here. “Jaxon, please. You’re not making any sense.”
“Only because you refuse to understand.” He backs away. “I have to go.”
The words hang in the air between us—dark and somber—but he doesn’t go. He doesn’t do anything but stand there, staring at me with tortured eyes.
So I do something. I step forward until our bodies are just barely brushing against each other.
It’s not much, but it’s enough to have heat pooling in my stomach and electricity crackling just below my skin. “Jaxon.” I whisper his name because my vocal cords have forgotten how to work. He doesn’t answer me, but he doesn’t move away, either.
For one second, two, he just stands there looking down at me, his gaze locked with mine. His body pressing forward into mine.
I whisper his name again, and it’s almost enough. I can see him waver, feel him lean more heavily against me.
But then he snaps out of it, his voice cutting like broken glass as he tells me, “Stay away from me, Grace.” He turns away, takes the steps three at a time, and doesn’t stop until he’s on the landing ten feet below. Then, without turning around, he calls up to me. “It’s the only way you’re getting out of this school alive.”
“Is that a threat?” I ask, more shaken than I want to admit—to him or to myself.
“I don’t make threats.” The I don’t have to hangs in the air between us.
Before I can respond, he puts two hands on the iron banister and vaults straight over it. I let out a strangled scream, rush to the edge of the staircase, half afraid I’ll see his mangled body down below. But not only is he not lying broken on the ground three stories below, he’s nowhere to be seen at all. He’s vanished, right into thin air.
37
Don’t Ask the
Question if You Can’t
Handle the Answer
I stand, staring down at where Jaxon should be but isn’t for several seconds. He couldn’t have just disappeared. It’s impossible.
I start down after him—the sane way—but I’ve barely made it four steps before someone is calling behind me. “Hey, Grace! Where are you going?”
I turn to see Lia coming across the landing toward me. She’s dressed in all black, as per usual, and looks totally badass in a chic, feminine way. Also as per usual.
“I wanted to talk to Jaxon, but he’s too fast for me.”
“No news there. When Jaxon doesn’t want to be caught, he’s too fast for everyone.” She rests a hand lightly on my shoulder. “But, Grace, honey, are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
I’m pretty sure that’s the understatement of the year, so I just kind of shake my head. “It’s been a weird day. And a long one.”
“It always is when Jaxon is involved,” she tells me with a laugh. “What you need is a little more of my tea and some girl time. We should arrange that for later.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“In the meantime, maybe you should go after Jaxon. Otherwise who knows how long he’ll brood.”
I think about it, I really do. But I have no idea where he went—or even if he’s still in the castle. And if he’s not inside, it’s not like I can exactly go chasing after him in my pajamas.
Which is why, in the end, I just kind of sigh and say, “I think I’m going to go back to my room for now. Maybe try to text him.”
“Oh, yeah, of course you could do that.” She sounds a little patronizing, but it could just be that I’m pissy. Which is why, when she says, “Here, let me help you back to your room. You look like you’re going to collapse at any second,” I try not to be annoyed.
I feel like I’m going to collapse at any second, but I figure that’s no one’s business but my own. Especially in this school, where physical weakness seems like a character flaw.
Which is why, instead of answering her, I cast one more look down the stairs after Jaxon—to no avail—before turning to walk back the way I came. Lia seems to think I’m going to fall at any moment, though, because she walks right next to me, hand up like she’s prepared to catch me if I fall. Which I absolutely am not going to do. I’ve caused enough trouble this week to last a lifetime.
“So what’s going on?” she asks as we slowly make our way back to my room. “I thought I’d see you at dinner, but you weren’t there.”
“Oh, yeah. I had a little…accident.”
“I can see that.” She eyes the bandages covering too many of my visible surfaces. “Anything serious? Because you look like you went three rounds with a polar bear. And lost.”
I shake my head with a laugh. “A little flying glass from the earthquake earlier, no big deal.”
“Oh, right. The earthquake.” She studies me for a second. “You know, we’ve had more tremors since you got here than we’ve had in the last year. I’m beginning to think you brought them with you, California girl.”
I snort. “Yeah, I’ve already had that discussion today. But I have to tell you, I never got hurt like this from a quake in California.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you know what they say about Alaska.”
“North to the Future?” I respond, quoting the state motto I found online when I was researching this state.
She laughs. “More like, everything here is designed to kill you in ten seconds or less.”
“I thought that was Australia?”
“I’m pretty sure it works for any place that begins and ends with an A.” She grins, but there’s a bite to the words that reminds me just how bad things can get here. I may have fallen out of a tree and gotten cut by some glass since I
got here, but Lia lost her boyfriend. And Jaxon lost his brother.
“How are you doing?” I ask as we get closer to my room.
“Me?” She looks startled. “You’re the one who’s all cut up.”
“I didn’t mean physically. I meant…” I take a deep breath, blow it out slowly. “About Hudson. How are you doing?”
For a second, just a second, rage flashes in her eyes. Towering, unadulterated, infinite. But then she blinks, and it’s replaced with a bland, pleasant expression that is somehow a million times worse than the fury beneath it.
“I’m doing all right,” she says with a strange little smile that makes me ache in sympathy. “I mean, I’m not good. I’ll never be good. But I’ve figured out how to say no, so that’s something.”
“To say no?”
“Yeah, we talked about this before. Everyone wants me to just move on, and I can’t. They tell me that nothing has to change, that Jaxon’s a perfectly good replacement—”
“Jaxon?” My whole body tightens up at the mention of his name linked with hers. She can’t be serious…can she?
“I know. It’s absurd. He and Hudson are nothing alike. And I don’t care about politics or family dynasties even if he does. I just want Hudson back.”
I’m reeling under the news that she and Jaxon are supposed to be together—and the implication that he’s willing to go along with it. But she looks so small when she says it, so exposed, that my heart twists for her.
Besides, it doesn’t make sense. Not with the way he held me earlier. Not with the way he kissed me. He didn’t do either of those things like a guy who had another girl on his mind. He did them like a guy who was as desperate for me as I was for him.
Yeah, he tried to take it back on the stairs a few minutes ago, but you can’t just take something like that back. Not when I’ve never felt anything close to it before in my whole life, and I would swear he never had, either.
So what’s all this about, then? What’s Lia getting at? And why is she talking about it to me, of all people?