I had to ask that to believe it anyway. I pulled my face back slightly to look at his eyes. He just smiled sheepishly and looked out behind my shoulder. This wasn’t the first time he’d saved me from that moron. He always had some kind of uncanny sixth sense when it came to saving me from Kin. I never questioned it too long, I just loved that he did it. “Grace,” Ian’s voice moved right beside my ear again, relieving me by simply saying my name and reminding me I was safe from Kin. “Are you okay?” He was looking down. Ohhh! He meant my toes.
I nodded unable to find the ability to speak to him just then. My body was talking, but my voice had dropped to my stomach.
“Guess he’s gone,” Ian peeked around me at the corner Kin disappeared from. “Are you okay?” he repeated.
I backed up from the corner the two of us were sandwiched into thinking about all the times he’d done this. Ian and I had been best friends since, well kindergarten. He’d always been there. Always! When life’s disasters seem to happen, he always showed up at precisely the right moment to pick up the pieces.
“The bell is about to ring. You need to go.”
He was still standing a little too close to me to hide my own nervousness. I tried to swallow. Didn’t happen. I tried to breathe. Didn’t happen. I held my breath.
“You’re lips are turning blue, princess.” He shifted his arms a little making the warmth of him hit me in soft waves against my skin. Sadly, the dull pang of reality gnawed at my heart.
“Why are you not in class?” I demanded taking a deep breath still in a swirling fog of dizziness. His eyes blinked when a wave of my winded breath hit him. Thank goodness it was before lunch.
He held up a pink slip of paper indicating that once again, he had a “get out of jail free” card as we called it. Class passes were hard to come by for most people, but they never were for Ian.
He shrugged and pocketed it. “Umm, I didn’t feel good” he said, but his expression was saying something else.
Yeah, right! I didn’t believe him, but I had a feeling he was only hiding it to protect me from something bad he was dealing with. “Who was Kin looking for?” I asked severely.
“You, I guess!” he said without hesitation.
“What?” I was in shock only because he’d said it so casually. He rolled his eyes in what seemed like amusement. One Mississippi…two Mississippi…the seconds were ticking slower than a turtle running a 5K. Was he going for shock?
“Oh, I don’t know, Grace, I heard him coming. I didn’t think you’d want to run into him.” Ian retorted.
He had to have the most devastating dashing smile that shot his upper lip up at the corners. I melted and forgot all about getting answers out of him. As I quietly cursed this all too often lately, cryptic, intense Ian that reduced me to acting like a giddy preteen schoolgirl, I just shrugged and rolled my eyes.
I smiled deviously, batted my eyelids, and headed back to gather my things. He just stood there and watched me go. I stopped briefly to look at the “Hug a Tree” poster I’d hung over the library door. I turned to look at Ian and remind him of my tree meeting at the library today, but he was gone.
Read more from Deception, book one of the Fey Court Trilogy found at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Denial (Goblin's Kiss Series Book One) Page 29