He brushed his knuckles across my cheek, and that’s when I felt the tiny moisture there.
“I still love you. I’ll love you ‘til the end of time.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone, all thoughts of my practical joke gone. Instead, I had to come to grips with the truth of his words.
Chapter Thirty-One
The ride to school was quiet. Not really because Flynn played metal music at deaf-con levels the whole way. We just didn’t speak. The trio still left at our house, were busy sleeping as we headed off to school like losers. Okay, I liked school. I actually liked it a lot, but with everything going on, it didn’t rank high on the importance list.
He parked, and I saw more than a few girls with tongues hanging like puppies at the sight of his car. He hopped out to face his adoring fans, and I took my time. I didn’t want to watch as he gave out hugs like the Easter Bunny gave out candy.
I had the door handle when it was yanked out from me. He stood there with an offering hand for me to take. I did because it made it easier to get down. He didn’t let go when he closed the car.
“What are you doing?” I asked angling my head down a little so my hair would curtain anyone from watching me.
“Claiming what’s mine,” he said, wearing a shirt that said Heads I Get Tail, Tails I Get Head with a picture of a coin between the two phrases.
Only he could get away with wearing that sporting the special flirty smirk that made girls fan themselves after seeing it. I felt a little warm myself and hoped my deodorant was on the job. The whispers as we walked by had me looking up.
Every girl I passed practically bared her teeth at me as Flynn basically dragged me along. I stepped in his shadow unaccustomed to the spotlight. Luke was popular, but Flynn had superstar status. Wherever he went, eyes were on him.
A couple of guys Flynn played sports with walked over, not shy like the other girls who stayed in our periphery the whole time.
“Dude,” one said while giving him the one-hand hug deal. “Where ya been?”
I tried to walk away with the excuse that he was talking to some else. I’d hoped he’d let me go. No such luck.
“Taking care of shit,” Flynn said.
“Yeah, we heard about Luke. That sucks man.”
Flynn nodded. They traded fist bumps, and we were on our way again.
“Don’t you think this is odd? They know I was Luke’s girlfriend, and now I’m holding hands with his best friend.”
He didn’t respond at first, and I thought he hadn’t heard me. I’d tried to whisper.
“None of these people matter, Mercy. It’s just you and me. I don’t live for anyone in this school outside of you.”
My heart skipped like a rock over water. I thought our morning conversation had set our relationship back. Clearly, Flynn wasn’t giving up just yet. I wasn’t sure we were going forward. But, he was being patient giving me the time I needed to set things in order without putting pressure on me. It was times like these, I wondered why he wasn’t an angel. I couldn’t believe how I misjudged him all those years.
We stepped into the school just as the first bell rang. Something was different. The school had a dull cast to it. Everything looked worn around the edges. And then Amanda came around the corner and stopped short.
She looked stunned and outraged. Being that she wasn’t shy, she pushed her way through the milling crowd towards us.
“Oh my god. Flynn. This could be an all-time low. Even for you.”
“Don’t start Mand.” He hadn’t completely said her name, and I wondered what other nicknames he had for her. Was she Petal or Sunshine?
It was dumb to be jealous, so I shook those thoughts off.
“That’s Luke’s girlfriend. We just had his funeral. You think you could wait a month before you start dating her.”
Her words had been what I feared people would think.
“You don’t know anything Amanda. Don’t assume. It just makes an ass out of you.”
And me, I thought as I continued the saying in my head.
She narrowed her eyes. “So are you lending her support or something?”
Flynn didn’t let her words affect him or that people had started to pay attention. “Something. It’s really none of your business.”
Her mouth closed with a snap.
“Amanda, you aren’t wrong. Mercy is nothing but a slut. Her boyfriend’s body isn’t even cold before she goes after his best friend.”
Nina popped into view with her hands on her hips. All she needed to do was move her neck and the way she said the words would match her body language. I, on the other hand, was thrown. Nina had been in hell. Why was she back?
“Got your claws out Nina?”
That voice. I shifted to look over my shoulders, hands landed there. Sebastian stood sentry behind me. Nina paled some.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”
His eyes flicked with fire, and Nina backed down. She fled the scene like some of the fire had gotten on her.
Flynn turned towards the other boy and pulled me along. “What’s up Bastian? I thought school was little below your standards these days.”
To everyone else, Flynn looked like he was catching up with an old friend. I saw the weariness hidden beneath his words.
“Pops told me to keep my eye on the prize, which meant coming to school.”
As he spoke, Sebastian scanned us, letting the predator come out to play. I shivered, wondering how close he was to his monster. I also gathered that he’d talked to Belial. Somehow he’d convinced him he had me in line.
“Yeah, my dad says the same thing.”
It was a challenge as they smiled grimly at each other. Sebastian held his fist up startling us both. Flynn knocked fists with him.
“Later.”
Sebastian walked off, and Flynn and I traded glances. He walked me to my locker, and Maggie was there waiting. He acted as though he would stand guard while I got my books and talked to my best friend.
“Flynn, I’ll be fine.”
“Mercy, what if—”
I shook my head. “Don’t baby me. That’s not how this is going to work between us.”
He chewed on that. “Call me if something happens.”
I rolled my eyes as he walked away.
“Eme, what happened after I left? Are you guys out in the open now?”
“I don’t know what Flynn’s thinking.”
She sighed while I fiddled with my combination. Finally, I remembered and got the darn thing open.
“My night was interesting.”
The way she said it had me leaning back to glance at her. “What happened?”
She blew out a stream of air that lifted tendrils of hair from the sides of her face. “What didn’t?”
Then she angled her head to the side as if to get me to look at something. I slowly turned almost afraid of what I was going to see. There on the other side of the hall stood Brent. His eyes were solely focused on Maggie. It sounded cute, but it wasn’t. He looked as though he were watching prey.
“Don’t make eye contact!”
I snapped my head around to frown at her. “Why?”
She shrugged. “He’s been that way the whole time. He’s hardly said three words, and most of them sounded like growls.”
I reached in my locker for my first-period book. “It’s bad isn’t it?”
“It’s creepy. Last night, I found him watching me through my window from the sidewalk. When I went down to confront him, he wouldn’t say one word. He just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. When I started to cry, and yes, I cried. Don’t judge. I love him, and he was scaring me. Anyway, he hugs me and holds me tight. Meanwhile, my brother shows up. And you know Liam, if he even thought something was up, he would try to protect me. So I'd played it off. Only Liam wasn’t alone. He brought his new girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” I said cutting off her diatribe of words.
She nodded. “Yes
, girlfriend. I barely got to meet her. Brent’s hold was too tight it was almost embarrassing. I had to pretend I enjoyed him holding me so close.”
“Did you tell Tom?”
“Of course I did. Sometime after Liam left to go back to his dorm, Brent let me go. I called Tom right away. He had to come over and use his Lion King powers to get him to go.” She waved her fingers around.
As if his ears were burning, Tom showed up.
“He’s doing it again,” Maggie complained.
“I’m on it,” Tom began.
“Wait, what’s wrong with him?” I asked.
Tom's lips thinned. He looked at Maggie, then back at me. “It may have been too late for him to change back to human. He could have been stuck in animal form too long, or whatever magic they put on him was too powerful.”
I thought about how I still had lingering queasiness. In fact, I had barely been able to swallow half a bagel that morning.
“So it’s my fault.”
Tom put an arm on my shoulder. “No, it’s good that you got him to change. Now he has a fighting chance to come back. I’m going to hang around and hopefully get him through this week, so he can graduate.”
“What about college? He couldn’t wait to play football, and the practices start mid-July,” Maggie said.
Tom nodded. “I’m going to take him with me to find the girl as soon as we get through graduation. I don’t think his parents would be too happy if they don’t see him walk across the stage.”
Maggie looked forlorn.
“We’ll get through this like everything.” He waited for Maggie’s nod. “I’m going to distract him. When I do, you should head to class.”
Tom walked off, and I closed my locker. We stood for a minute until Tom blocked Brent’s view of her before we darted off to class. I muddled through each subject without paying attention to most of it. I had far too many worries to be in school. I should be at home spending what time Mom had left with her.
I walked into the lunchroom and stared at Luke and Flynn’s table for a second before deciding to go to my old one. Whoever had taken it over wasn’t there, so I claimed it. I sat my bag down and joined the lunch line.
I came out the other side with what was supposed to be pizza. Sadly, it lay dead on a plate with coagulated cheese and dried-up pepperoni. I choose it over the salad because the lettuce was just a slightly green before brown kicked in. The best thing on my tray was the Coke.
The table was still empty when I sat down. A second later, Maggie showed up with Tom. They spotted and joined me without question before going to get food. A few minutes later, Flynn strolled in with a gaggle of girls following him like fan wannabes.
Flynn looked to the right, then to the left and saw me. He strode over and plopped in a chair next to me. By that point, I had managed to eat a quarter of the personal sized pizza. Just as Tom and Maggie came from the lunch line, Flynn slid my tray towards him and started eating the rest of my food, which was fine with me. I wasn’t hungry and feared if I ate more, I would puke all over the table.
“Why are we sitting here?” Maggie asked.
I turned my head slightly and caught Nina glancing in my direction. “Nina’s here.”
You would have thought aliens landed the way her expression morphed into disbelief. “What the hell? I thought she was in hell?”
I lowered my voice and explained all that had happened since we last spoke including that morning. She sat with her jaw unhinged as I wove the tale. I glanced to Tom, who listened thoughtfully, but his eyes were glued elsewhere. When I finished, I turned to find Brent at his usual table unnaturally focused on us as if there was nothing else in the world to look at.
“Yeah, he’s being a total creeper,” Maggie said changing the subject.
Again, I wondered if I should erase Maggie’s memories of us. She deserved a normal life. Wasn’t that what I wanted?
I sighed. Flynn started to rub my back sensing my discomfort. My eyes met his, and a smile curled his kissable lips. Never in my wildest dreams, would I have imagined him and me in this position. He seemed so untouchable. Yet, there we were, me with the bad boy. The guy whom I thought was a total asshole.
“What are we going to do about any of it?” Maggie asked.
“Mags, I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the days I didn’t know that there was truly more than humans on earth.”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of cool. I feel like we’re young having the best times of our lives.”
“Don’t make it sound romantic. Your boyfriend is staring at you like you’re his favorite bone. I’ve got a crazy girl who thinks that I stand in the way of her getting a boy who doesn’t want her.”
“And she’s headed this way,” Flynn said turning back around.
He didn’t remove his hand from my back.
“Let her come.” I waited for it, but she only glared at me before exiting the lunchroom.
“Sebastian’s here,” Maggie announced.
Tom straightened in his chair.
“I don’t think he’s here for me. I told you about last night.”
I watched him lean against a wall somewhere in the middle of where we sat and where we used to sit.
“Brent is freaking me out. I think I’m going to eat in the media center.”
“They don’t allow food in there,” I automatically said.
Maggie shrugged. She packed up her salad and dumped the container in her bag. I watched as she made a hasty exit.
“Shit,” Tom mumbled. He was on his feet. Flynn started to get up, but Sebastian pushed off the wall and went to intercept Brent.
“What have I done?”
“Mercy, not everything’s your fault. You couldn’t have known what would have happened to Brent. You gave him a fighting chance.”
“I think I’m going to. I just—”
I got to my feet. Flynn stood and took my tray. He’d polished off my pizza. Boys, I thought, they could eat anything. Sebastian and Tom were still quietly talking to Brent, who stared out the lunch room doors as if he could still see Maggie.
Flynn guided me out with his hand at the small of my back. When the doors closed behind us, he reached for my hand and twined our fingers together.
“You two are too much.”
Flynn and I spun around.
“Have you no shame.” Nina strode forward.
“You know what—”
“No, Flynn, I have this.”
I let go of his hand and met Nina halfway. She gave me a bored look. “I could squash you.”
“Give it your best shot.”
She laughed. “We all know that until you give up your V-card you won’t come into your true strength. You’re just a baby without a diaper, shitting everywhere you go. Creating messes everyone else has to clean up.”
Her last words hit a cord. I brushed it aside and concentrated on what she first said. It made so much sense. Why hadn’t anybody told me? Then again, would I have done things differently? I think I preferred making the decision about my V-status on my own terms. Yet, she didn’t know. Sebastian didn’t know. What did that mean for me?
She reached up and fingered my hair. I knocked her hand away, only she kept hold of a strand pulling it at the roots. I caught her wrist and glared at her. A flame flickered in her eyes.
“I think you’re playing on the wrong team now,” I guessed.
I felt a hand on my arm, and I glanced over to see no one. It had to be Luke. Unfortunately, his distraction cost me. In a move I didn’t count on, she twisted and pushed me, sending me careening into the lockers. I knew not to stay in the place I landed. I rolled to the side as her fist hit the spot where I’d been.
Flynn moved, and I said, “Don’t. I’ve got this.”
I raised my hands as if in surrender. When she came closer, I jackhammered my fist into her nose. Dark blood squirted just as the bell rang. The halls flooded with students, and Nina played her next role well.
“She hit me,” she called out, sounding like a victim.
People stopped and stared. I lowered my bloody fist knowing I was in trouble. Teachers came barreling over, and I was led to the principal’s office while a gleeful Nina was taken to the nurse.
Flynn grinned at me and then winked as I passed. I said nothing in defense because I had nothing. I sat outside the office in the chairs where the guilty waited for punishment. I’d only been in that position once before when Tom and I had been wrongly accused of making out in the parking lot. It seemed fitting to round out my high school experience to have me actually be guilty this time.
I read an incoming text from Maggie when I was called in.
“Mercy Moore, I thought better of you. We had that chat about kissing boys in the parking lot, and I thought I wouldn’t have to see you. Now you are fighting. It’s unlike you. I know you’ve been out, and I know that one of our students, Luke Bishop, passed away tragically. I understand that this boy was your boyfriend.”
Even though Luke was alive, well sort of, hearing about his death caused a throat full of emotions to choke me. I had to swallow the lump that formed.
“Yes.” My voice felt small and hollow.
She sat back. “You were out for a while. I guess it took you hard.”
I nodded.
“Normally, we have a no warning policy when it comes to fighting. However, your pristine record here at the school along with your grades show that you aren’t one of my trouble makers. Plus if that bruise on your arm is any indication, you weren’t alone in the fight.”
I bit my lip.
“I’m going to give you and Nina warning this time. It happens again, and it’s an automatic suspension.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Okay, get back to class.”
Outside her office, Sebastian stood. I wasn’t sure why he was there, so I continued the front-desk receptionist and a few other teachers making copies. Once in the hallway I waited for him to speak.
“You need to end her.”
“What?” I gasped.
He kept walking, and I followed like a puppy needing more explanations.
“She’s being used, torched. Her soul is in chaos. She’s following orders so the hold they have on her will somehow ease the pain.”
Sacrifice of Mercy Page 22