by Weil, J. L.
I ran my hands over his back, trying to offer him comfort and support. “So how is he?” I whispered, though I didn’t really need to ask. It was there, written in every strained part of his body. Travis was not good. I don’t think not good even came near describing how Travis was dealing with the loss of Emma.
Chase wasn’t a sharing-circle kind of guy. In his mind, if we didn’t talk about this part of his world, he was keeping my soul from being stained. Newsflash. I’d been marked for Hell some time ago, but I knew Chase wasn’t willing to accept that.
He was determined in that pig head of his to find a way to purify my darkened soul. I say good luck. Some things just are.
Chase shrugged, twiddling our fingers. I absolutely hated the shadow of pain that flashed in his eyes. It made me immediately regret asking. “As well as can be expected after having your heart ripped out a second time.”
I could see the gears winding in Chase’s mind, putting himself in Travis’s shoes. The silver eyes I loved so much filled with a heart-jerking pain.
“Maybe if I talk to him—”
He cut me off, lips forming a thin line. “I am not discussing this again. Topic closed.”
I let out a long puff of air. “Whatever asswad.”
“Oh, now I’m an ass. A few hours ago you thought I hung the moon.”
I snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
He laced his hands behind his head, staring at my white popcorn ceiling. “You know this isn’t about me. I am trying to keep you safe. Why must you always make it so difficult?”
“Why must you be so impossible?” I countered. He knew that the safe-card was becoming old. I wanted the same for him. The difference was, he constantly put himself in the line of fire and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I was just expected to be the good, dutiful little girlfriend and wait for him to come home safe and sound after gallivanting all night after his emotionally broken cousin.
Not in this lifetime, bucko.
I wanted to get my hands dirty too—figuratively speaking of course. Travis was my friend, and I really missed him.
I expected an equally smartass comment in reply, so I was quite surprised when I suddenly found myself enveloped into his arms with my face buried against his neck. He smelled like a mix of Heaven and Hell rolled into an impressive sexy package. It was the best scent in the world.
“Are you sniffing me?” he asked.
I smiled into his neck. “I can’t help myself.”
“That’s what they all say.”
I socked him in the gut. He scowled down at me, and I gave him my Sweet-N-Low smile. “I couldn’t help myself.”
His brows wiggled. “I just bet.”
The goal had been to get his mind off all the crap that had gone down. When he was with me, I wanted to distract him from the drama and pain he was dealing with at home. I wanted to erase the lingering guilt and make him smile. Or at the very least, bring out the smartass in him. It was part of his charm. Without it, he wasn’t whole, and who would have thought I would miss the jerky part of him so much?
But I did.
Immensely.
He kept me on my toes.
And I loved kissing that dirty mouth of his. Totally warped, I know, but, hey, it was kind of our thing.
He fell asleep before I did, which was rare, but I guess his body needed it. I pushed aside a stray piece of dark hair and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. He didn’t stir. Laying my head on his chest, I closed my droopy eyes and listened to the steady beat of his heart. It was like listening to white noise.
~*~*~*~
Monday mornings were the epitome of suckiness.
It didn’t matter if the sun was shining or if the sky opened up and poured buckets; I wasn’t a morning person. Chase awoke as if he was ready to run a marathon. I hated him. Muttering a string of colorful words at my alarm, I whacked it with my fist. The only thing that accomplished was I now had a throbbing hand to go along with my crabbiness.
Peachy keen.
Some days I wished my mind had a delete button. Today was one of those days.
After standing in the shower like a zombie, I managed to choke myself with my toothbrush, stab myself in the eye with my mascara, and put on two different color socks. I figured I had met my crap-that-can-go-wrong quota in five minutes.
Boy was I wrong.
Shocked didn’t even come close to what I felt at seeing Emma Deen walk down the halls on Monday morning. I mean, her dad had just kicked the bucket a few days ago. Didn’t she need a period of mourning? Like a month? Or a year?
He wasn’t even my dad and I was still shaken up about the whole thing.
That girl must have ovaries of steel, or she was just heartless, which I knew not to be true. I had seen that girl with hearts beaming in her eyes. She had loved Travis, and while she had been crazy in love, she had been anything but a cold-hearted biotch.
Now she was just scary. Again.
Seeing her filled my stomach with so many knots that I thought I was going to spew bits of blueberry Pop Tarts all over the school linoleum floor. Chase stiffened beside me. Lexi stopped chattering to Sierra and Hayden. I swear you could have heard a pin drop. When her emerald eyes connected with mine, I forgot to breathe.
Goodie gumdrops.
Emma looked like she wanted to slice and dice me again into millions of fragmented pieces. Feeling awkward and uncomfortable as heck, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my fuzzy scarf. (It was a gift from my mom. I loved it. Whoever had come up with the idea to put pockets at the end of a scarf was ingenious). Emma breezed by me. Just when I thought the coast was clear and I was about to exhale, she spun around, strawberry hair flying with her movements.
I jumped. It couldn’t be helped. She was intimidating.
There was nothing friendly about the way her lips curled. “I bet you’re glad to see me.”
Chase cracked his knuckles.
Keep cool. Keep cool. “Actually, I was just thinking that I wish I could go back to the day I met you…and walk the hell away.” I also wished I could uninstall anxiety, because right now mine was through the roof. Where was the app for that?
“See you later…friend.” The last word rolled off her tongue like ice. “I’d watch your back around here. High school can be dangerous.”
Was that a threat? I think she just threatened me. Chase growled, but it was pointless. Emma was already strutting down the hall, her combat boots clanging in her wake. You can bet her scrawny rear I was going to watch my front, my side, my butt, and my back.
Chase nudged my hip with his. “Hey, you okay?”
I hugged my science book against my chest, trying to breathe normally. “No. I am not okay. I have classes with that lunatic.” Emma had just given me a stroke. I had been prepared to face her again, just not so soon. I had imagined I would have more time to prepare myself and not act like such a ninny.
Next time, I am not going to let her get the best of me. I was not going to let her intimidate me for the rest of our senior year. For once I wanted to just be a normal teenage girl. Emma made that nearly impossible.
Sighing, I realized I was going to have to kick her ass.
It was the only way. I had to get down to her level. Plus, I was sort of becoming quite the scrapper. Dare I say that I sort of enjoyed taking my aggression out by attacking Emma?
The bell blasted right above my head, and I swear I lost an eardrum. Chase pressed a kiss to my cheek and whispered, “I’ll see you after class.”
“If I survive,” I muttered.
Bad joke. Probably too soon, but I had a mouth disease. I said crap at the most inappropriate times. Thanks, Mom.
Chase shot up a brow, his silver hoop mocking me. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
I leaned on one foot. “I lost it when I met you.”
The sly grin he gave me sent warm butterflies zooming in my belly. “Don’t stress. I’ll help you find it again.”
“Th
at’s what I’m worried about,” I muttered.
Lexi looped her arm through mine. “Let’s go. The two of you can do your bizarre foreplay later. We are going to be late.”
She tugged me down the hall leaving a certain half-demon smirking behind me. I glanced over my shoulder for one last mouthwatering glimpse, just something to hold on to for the next 45 drawn-out minutes.
He winked at me.
Believe it or not, things went from worse to God-kill-me-now, and it wasn’t just because we were playing volleyball in gym class. That was a cinch compared to what waited for me in the girl’s locker room.
How had I forgotten that Emma and I shared this class? Oh, such fond memories of her harassing me in between Jane Fonda workout videos. I miss-stepped just a beat before I strolled past her, deliberately bumping her with my shoulder.
She snickered, but underneath her I-don’t-even-give-a-shit façade, I could feel hate radiating off her skin. I briefly contemplated using my newly acquired compulsion skills to make her forget everything. I mean everything. Then it hit me, the whole light bulb going off in the brain... I thought I had just found the answer to my troubles.
And I might have smiled like a crazy person.
My loony-grin didn’t last long. Emma had snuck behind me and slammed my gym locker shut in my face. “Don’t even think about using your demon mojo on me.”
God, she had read my mind. Freaky. Or I was just that transparent? “Are you scared? Of little me?” I taunted, which was never a good idea considering she hid weapons in her panties.
And so the beginning of the end of gym class began.
I almost broke her face with the volleyball.
She spiked the ball on my back.
If a volleyball could kill, I think we’d both be dead.
I retaliated with a body slam across the court—my signature move.
This was the most intense volleyball game of my life. A few of the other girls caught on and started to back away from us. Our cat spat was going to be headline news in the school paper. That was, if we had one.
For her final act, she tripped me as I walked toward the lockers, and I face planted the blue mats. They smelled like dirty socks and sweat. I gagged, should have seen that one coming—classic.
“Bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
“It’s not my fault you’re a klutz,” Emma spat, eyes like green liquid fire.
I shoved my hair out of my face and gave her the one-finger salute. She was into all that military crap. “It’s not my fault if my foot slips up your ass.”
“I forgot how funny you are,” she leered. Her lips weren’t exactly cracking a smile, not even the tiniest bit of one.
I sat on the mat, shooting missiles of loathing at Emma’s retreating back. “I’m so naturally funny because my life is a joke,” I muttered to no one in particular.
Sierra, my frenemy, came out of nowhere and offered me a hand. Where had she been a minute ago to save my face from being flattened? Reluctantly, I took her hand and she tugged me to my feet, practically pulling my arm out of the socket in the process.
“You make foes easier than you make friends,” Sierra said once I was on my feet. “Welcome to the club.”
That wasn’t the case before I’d moved here. There must be something in the water supply. “I don’t think I want to be a member anymore.”
She flipped her siren red hair into a ponytail and began to walk backward toward the locker room. “You’re the honorary president.” She shot me a grin.
What a day.
I felt like I had been wrung through the ringer, and this was just a preview of days to come. More than ever, I needed to talk to Chase. Make him understand that this plan I was formulating was the greatest idea of the century.
I was sure Emma had plenty of conspiracies up her sleeve, but I had a slew of half-demons with anger issues on my team.
I think I win.
Chapter 3
Walking in a Winter Wonderland…
That was pretty much what Spring Valley was like in December. A beautiful, powdery white dusting of snow covered the ground when I awoke this morning. It was spellbinding. This was my first real snowfall, and I was ready to make a snowman.
I pushed aside my curtains as I looked out my bedroom window, admiring the magical snowflakes as they fluttered from the sky. A chill coated the glass pane, but I couldn’t have cared less. This was a milestone in my life, something to cross off my bucket list. I lost track of myself as I gazed out the window, hugging my knees to my chest, until a glint of yellow caught my attention.
My heart started thumping as the golden glow brightened through the window next door. Smiling, I traced a heart in the shavings of ice that gathered on the glass.
Chase.
His name echoed in my head. I felt his desire to be with me among all other things. What I really needed was a user manual for being linked to a half-demon. I was still experimenting with the floodgate of feelings between us. Some days it was easier to decipher, others were an emotional overdrive. Occasionally, we could even lock them away, but mostly it was just the blind leading the blind.
We had no idea what we were doing.
It was kind of fun. And I could use some fun after the week I’d had.
It took only a fraction of a second for him to disappear from my sight.
Scrambling, I pulled a pair of black legwarmers over my leggings and raced down the stairs. He was already leaning on the porch railing with white flakes peppering his dark hair when I threw open the door.
“It’s snowing,” I stated with an enormous grin on my face.
His silver eyes twinkled. “Thanks for the update, Captain Obvious.”
I yanked him inside, the reversal of my usual door-in-the-face response. “We have so much to do.”
“We do?” His eyes ran over me, making my blood spike, and then stopped at my feet. The corner of his mouth curved. “Cute legwarmers.”
Putting my weight on one foot, I said, “I think you should be more worried about the fact that you know what they are.”
He snorted. “You forget I live with Lexi. Now what is it we have to do today?”
“Duh,” I replied and then promptly started rambling off the list. “Build a snowman, maybe a snow fort. I want to go snowboarding, have a snowball fight—”
“Whoa, slow down, Sparky.” He was standing in my mom’s entryway, dripping puddles of snow from his boots on the floor. “There is just one condition.”
I immediately became leery. “Do I dare ask?”
Those silver eyes lit with trouble. “You make me a snow angel.”
A blooming seed of warmth started to grow inside me. I felt like a shining star. “Deal,” I agreed. “But the name jokes are getting old.”
“Really? Not to me.”
It was then that I noticed Chase was harboring something behind his back. “What are you hiding?” I asked, angling my head to try to get a better view.
He sidestepped my inquisitive peek and managed to zip in front of me all in a blink. God I hated when he did that. “I got you something for your first snowfall.”
My eyes narrowed. “You did, huh?” I was prepared to get a snowball in the face, although he had been known to surprise me a time or two.
He pulled out a dark blue scarf and wound it around my neck, keeping his grip on the ends. With a quick tug, he edged me closer to him with humor in his expression. “It brings out the color in your eyes.”
I had a thing for scarfs. Never needing them in Arizona, I was suddenly partial to the downy things. My throat clogged with foolish girly sentiments. I looked away before I made a sappy fool of myself. It was just a scarf. It was not like he had given me a diamond ring.
Oh poop.
Did I want a diamond ring?
That was a contemplation for another day.
“Do I get a thanks?” he asked in a gruff voice like he’d just woken up.
With him so close and his body touching mi
ne, forget it; my thoughts were bouncing all over the place. “Thanks,” I managed in a squeaky voice, brushing my cheek against the bunny-soft fabric.
“That’s not what I had in mind.”
Gulp.
I stood on my tiptoes, bringing my lips not quite level with his, but it didn’t matter because he met me the rest of the way, as eager as I was. The first touch was euphoria, a blend of my exhilaration and his longing whirling inside me. The feelings bum-rushed me, nearly knocking me off my feet. It had been too long since our last kiss, and the result left us breathless.
Chase stepped back before I was ready. I wanted to cling to him like a saran wrap, but I wasn’t that kind of girl. I was much too chill for that. Admiring my new scarf draped around my neck, I asked, “Now that you’ve been properly thanked, can we go play?”
He rocked back on his heels. “You’re dying to get out there, aren’t you? Just wait until we have our first snow day.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. I didn’t even want to think about school. “I am just glad it’s Saturday. If I have to go through another week like the last, I’m dropping out.” No joke.
GED—sign me up, if it meant getting away from the batshit crazy Emma.
Chase pushed off the couch, turned me around, and started massaging the muscles in my neck. I sighed in heavenly bliss, partly because my muscles ached and partly because he was touching me. It didn’t matter where. As long as he was touching me, my body had some kind of reaction.
Tingles.
Flames.
Content.
I relaxed. “On second thought, you could just do this all day.” His fingers were gentle as they worked out the kinks in my neck. I leaned into him, feeling languid.
“Not a chance,” he replied and gave my butt a smack. “Grab your coat. I’ma gonna show you what us countra folk do in the winta.”
I giggled at Chase’s attempt at a bumpkin accent—it was bad. “That was so sad. A minute of my life I can never have back.”