I looked up at the guy, shaking my head. “Not yet,” I said with a smile that felt grim, and dangerous. “But I will be.”
WHEN I GOT back to my apartment, Alexis was awake, balanced on the edge of the couch with her knees bent and feet propped on the coffee table. She grinned when I came through the door, but she looked bleary, her long legs bare as they descended from my t-shirt and her eyes smudged with yesterday’s makeup. Usually I found this sexy, but today I found it painful.
“Ugh, why did we do that?” she said, nudging the mostly empty bottle in front of her with her toe. “I can’t believe you ran. I think I missed a quiz this morning.” She ran her hand across her forehead and through her rumpled hair before holding it out for the coffee I carried.
“I fixed it, but be careful. It’s hot.”
She sipped the sweet concoction with her eyes closed. “Mmmm, good job, babe.” Finally, she looked up. “Hey, you’re soaked!”
I peeled off my top layer before sinking down next to her. “Your coffee waits for no weather.”
“You’ve been gone for, like, an hour.” More like two. She set her coffee on the table. “Carter, what’s going on?”
“I need to go away for a few days.”
“What? Why?! Did something happen.”
“It’s what’s already happened,” I said, trying desperately not to lie to her. When you grew up keeping secrets for your own good, it became second nature. I didn’t know how to stop. And I couldn’t tell her this secret without telling her mine. She was safer if she didn’t know. “I just…yesterday I realized I need a break. To work through it.”
“Oh, babe,” she said. She put her head on my shoulder and hand on my knee. “You should have done this before.”
“I wasn’t ready before.”
“Are you going home? How long will you be gone?”
“A few days. I’ll miss you.” I cleared my throat, unsure how to say what I wanted to say. “Listen, do me a favor while I’m gone? Don’t spend too much time around my uncle.”
Her head snapped up and her forehead wrinkled. “What?”
“I just…I’m worried about you. After what happened. That it could happen again, and you’d be there.”
Lex smiled, broad and true and so big her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Why Carter Penrose,” she said in her best Scarlet O’Hara. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re trying to say you love me.”
I looked back at her for a long time, memorizing that smile and the beautiful tangle of things that added up to her and only her. “Maybe,” I said, “I am.”
But it was too late.
I knew what I needed to do. And where I would start.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lainey
Ridiculous as it was, pretty much the only rule I still abided by was the one I’d set for myself at the beginning of the year: no staying at my apartment during the week. I hardly stayed there at all. The weird thing was, Jack didn’t seem to mind. Amy had been right about the advantages of having a single.
“This brings back memories,” Jack said. He had a book in his lap as he sat behind me on my extra-long twin bed.
“Spent a lot of time studying in girls’ rooms, did you?” Sometimes I forgot Jack was a student, too. All TAs were. He never seemed overly concerned about it. But then, he rarely seemed concerned about anything.
“That was definitely the best place to study. You couldn’t do this in the library.” He tossed his book aside and grabbed me around the waist, dragging me backward to nuzzle his face into my neck. He made a long inhale as I settled against him. “There. This is perfect.”
I giggled. “What about your studying?”
“I’d much rather study this,” he said, kissing my neck. “And these.” Quick as a thief, his hand dashed up my shirt.
I squeaked and swatted at him. “Before you can study that, I have to study this.” I shook my Finance book. “I don’t have much time left.”
He turned his face into my skin and sighed. “You worry too much.”
“Lately, I don’t worry enough,” I said without planning to. The truth always found its own way out.
“Everyone understands.”
I frowned. Not exactly. I’d blown Amy off last week, but her words still echoed in my head. Finally, I said, “I—I want, no need to pass my exams. It’s important to me.” As long as I passed my exams, I’d pass for the semester.
He nodded, holding me tighter, and we stayed like that. After a moment of quiet, he said, “Have you thought about it anymore? The Perceptum, I mean.”
I stiffened, but didn’t pull away. Yes, I’d thought about it. I’d been thinking about it more and more after the funeral, and pretty much non-stop since Jack had told me he was taking the Council intern offer. Up until a month ago, I truly believed I’d never, never ever ever, be able to do what they wanted. But something in me changed as I watched them lower my brother into the ground. The need not just to do something, but something that mattered, swelled in my heart until it burst into my arteries and spread, filling me with the crackling restlessness I’d since been mollifying with partying and drinking and Jack and sex.
In fact, it would be so easy to just turn around, drop my book and lift my shirt, and let Jack “study” me so I wouldn’t have to talk or think about any of this anymore. But my mouth had spoken the truth once tonight and it wanted to keep going.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve thought about it. I’m…considering.”
I felt Jack’s eyelashes brush my skin as his eyes popped open. “You are?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I repeated, softer. Part of me couldn’t believe I was about to say this, but the rest, the hot, angry center blistering in my chest, knew it was true. “I am. I’m ready to talk to them.”
Jack inhaled hard, the breath rushing against my neck in a cold breeze, and his arms tightened around me until they were almost too tight. “Thank you,” he whispered, so soft I almost didn’t hear it.
And then he kissed me, and I heard that loud and clear. My Finance book slipped from my fingers and landed with a thud.
LATER, I FELT myself slipping toward sleep and didn’t bother to fight it. Jack shut off the light and I snuggled into his arms, tired, warm, and content. My eyes drifted closed.
“Lainey.” Jack’s voice. I felt it, like a breath in my ear, or a whisper in my brain.
“Hmmm?”
It was quiet for a long time before: “I love you.”
Was I dreaming? Was I awake? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure I’d heard those words or just thought them. But I knew they’d been there, below the surface, waiting to be said. Love. Jack loved me.
“I lo—”
“Lainey.” It wasn’t Jack this time. It was Kendra’s voice, outside the door. She was tapping, quiet but insistent. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and felt Jack sit up too. “Lainey,” she whispered again. She sounded so urgent.
“Coming,” I called softly and got out of bed.
Behind me, Jack murmured, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Kendra needs me.” I threw on my robe without turning on the light and slipped out the door. Kendra’s eyes were wide and startled. From the fresh charcoal on her hands, I could tell she hadn’t been sleeping. “What’s wrong?”
Her eyes slid from me to the front of the apartment and back. “There’s someone at the door for you,” she said, still whispering despite that everyone in the apartment was awake, like she was telling me a secret.
“What?” How odd. “Right now? I didn’t hear the bell.”
“He didn’t ring it.”
He? Amy was the only person I knew who’d show up unannounced and she wasn’t exactly speaking to me at the moment. “Who is it?” I asked.
Kendra opened her mouth and then shook her head. “Maybe you could just go talk to him? He seems kind of…upset.”
Confused yet curious, I tightened my robe and tiptoed to the door. I didn’t know why we were being so quiet but I couldn’t
stop. I cracked the door open and a tall, tall boy with blonde-brown hair folded himself off the wall at the sound.
Oh. My. God.
“Lainey,” he said. He was whispering too.
Oh. My. God. I must have been dreaming.
“Lainey,” Carter repeated. “Please. I have to talk to you.”
My shock broke, and I gasped in a stuttering breath. “Carter? What are you doing here?”
He ran a hand over his short hair once, twice, three times, like he couldn’t stop himself. “I really need to talk to you,” he said again. “Please. Just listen.”
I pushed the door open a little further, drenching him in light, and had to stifle another gasp. He looked like hell, with plum-colored circles under his eyes and deep lines that should not have been on his young face. Like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Please.” Carter touched my arm, where I was still holding the door handle, and I jerked away from him, backing into the suite. He followed, though I wasn’t sure I meant it as an invitation. “I’m sorry, it’s late. I know I should have called or something but—”
“You shouldn’t be here!” I said, backing up another step. I shook my head, trying to work some sense into it, and tightened my robe again. A desperate sense of fear was clawing down my throat and under my skin. Goosebumps jumped out on my arms and I hugged myself.
“I know,” Carter said. “I know, it’s just, please. Lainey, I know. I know about my uncle, that something happened at the range, that—”
“Lainey?” In the hall, my bedroom door was opening. We both turned toward the voice. Carter went absolutely rigid, eyes wide as moons and filled with something like…recognition. “What’s going on?”
Jack stepped into the common room and froze.
“Jack?” Carter said. Blood rushed to his face at same time Jack’s went white.
“You—what? You know each other?” My eyes flicked between the two of them, finally landing on Jack. He took a step toward me, hands held out in front of him.
“Lainey, it’s not what, I swear, I was going to tell you—”
Carter stepped between us, his hands closing into fists. “So this is what the Perceptum Council intern has been doing all year? Kensington, you son of a bitch!”
And then Carter launched himself at Jack and they hit the ground with a crash.
About the Author
Cara Bertrand is a former middle school literacy teacher who now lives in the woods outside Boston with: one awesome husband, two large dogs, one small daughter, and lots of words. She is the author of TANGLED THOUGHTS, SECOND THOUGHTS and LOST IN THOUGHT, the first novel in the Sententia and one of three finalists for the Amazon/Penguin Breakthrough Novel Award in the Young Adult category.
Visit her online at www.carabertrand.com or on Twitter @carabertrand
Tangled Thoughts Page 28