by Jo Holloway
Jory immediately threw his arm around her shoulders, eliciting a giggle and a backhand to his chest.
With a grin, Cara held the glass door open to the dining hall. “I can't wait to meet him, then.”
Wes shot her a glare that took her back to the days she'd thought of him as a dark cloud. Man, that felt like forever ago. She reminisced on the bad old days of loneliness and secrets, practicing her new emotional distance from the memories while they grabbed dinner and their usual table.
It would have been impossible not to notice the babble of voices and cluster of people around the table near the spiral staircase in the center of the hall. Their classmates came and went from the surrounding knot of people. No one expected a new kid in the middle of sophomore year, and curiosity drew a crowd.
“Anyone know why he transferred?” Cara asked.
“Something about his dad’s job,” Wes muttered.
A mischievous look spread across Liv’s face. “I don’t know. If he was at a boarding school in England, why couldn’t he have stayed until the end of the school year? I bet he did something to get kicked out.”
Kaylee and Ethan left the new guy’s table and sauntered past theirs. Cara’s hand darted out to grab Mike’s wrist as he passed their table behind his friends. If he was so keen to talk to her all of a sudden, she might as well take advantage. Feelings off and everything.
“Did you meet the new guy? What’s he like?”
Mike stepped a little too close to her. He managed to look both pleased and suspicious at the same time. She dropped his wrist and scooted her chair back so her neck didn’t have to crane up so far.
“Harrison? Yeah. Not sure what the big deal is.”
“Harrison?”
“Uh huh. Preppy name, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.” She gazed across the room at the guy still surrounded by people. “It’s sort of cool.”
Wes gave a small headshake and stabbed into his baked potato, clearly still bitter about his relegation to tour guide. Mike wandered away. She caught a glimpse of unfamiliar dark-brown hair in the middle of the attention. Not surprisingly, Cassidy’s curls—back to her trademark blonde now—bounced beside the new student as she tossed her head back in a well-practiced flirty laugh. Tish leaned away from the other side of the table, and Cara finally had a view of Harrison.
He was slim and didn’t look very tall, although it was hard to tell while he was sitting. Even from a distance, his eyes were a piercing emerald. He caught her watching him and flashed a smile across the space. Maybe she’d found the off switch for her feelings for real, because her insides didn’t lurch with any embarrassment at being caught staring. The blush she expected never came. Wes coughed beside her.
She ducked her head toward him. “What?”
Liv and Jory bent their heads together in deep conversation as they cast glances over at the other table and ate slowly. Cara took a few more bites of her pasta before nudging Wes under the table.
“Should you go over and introduce yourself? You know, since you’re supposed to show him around and stuff?”
“Nope.”
To be fair, from the way Harrison was commanding the table, turning between conversations and flashing that toothy smile at everyone around him, he didn’t look like he needed a tour guide. That guy would be fine on his own. A thought struck her out of the blue. They bore no resemblance to one another, but the grin, the self-assuredness, the easy way with people . . .
“He reminds me of Jory,” she whispered to Wes.
“You have to be kidding.”
“What’s got you in a mood? Is your arm bugging you? Do you need another painkiller?”
Jory’s voice cut in to their conversation before Wes could do more than scowl. “Hey, guys, Liv realized something.”
She and Wes looked up.
“His roommate,” Jory started.
Cara was trying to work out what that meant, when Wes gave a little moan and swore softly.
“Theo,” he said. “Damn. Poor guy.” He stopped scowling and glanced over at the crowded table.
“Oh. Theo’s the only one without a roommate, right?” she asked.
Jory nodded and wrinkled his nose. “He’s had a room to himself the whole first semester since Nate never came back. Entire place smells like gym socks. It’s rank.”
Wes’s gaze stayed on the far table until Harrison was visible again. He sighed and stood up with his tray. Cara rose to go with him.
“Are we going to say hi?”
“No. I’ll see him soon enough at practice tomorrow.”
“Why the sigh, then?”
“Look at him. He probably shoots a compound bow.”
Cara suppressed a smirk at how serious Wes looked when he talked about bows. “Is that bad?”
He gave a dismissive shrug. “I prefer my recurve bow, that’s all.”
“Judgy much?”
“Not really.” He faced her as they put their trays away. “Compounds are fine. But look at his scrawny arms. I doubt he can handle much draw weight. I’ll have to adjust one.”
She hadn’t noticed Harrison’s arms, but she looked over again to check him out. “They look pretty normal to me. Besides, you said archery was more about back muscles.”
Wes grunted and headed for the door, leaving Cara to follow.
“Fine. But at least be nice to him tomorrow.”
“I thought you were doing the whole no-feelings thing. I thought you didn’t care,” he said.
“I don’t have to feel any way about it. But he is new. And that’s always hard.”
“She says . . . not caring.” The side of his mouth curved up as Liv and Jory caught up to them. They headed to Cara’s room to collect Jenner for an evening of hanging out safely indoors, away from any strangers—new students or otherwise.
CARA DIDN’T HAVE TO wait to learn more from Wes after archery the next day. Harrison was in her math class right after lunch. He walked in smiling and chatting with Mr. Meyers and took an open seat a few rows in front of her. She’d been right about him. He oozed charisma.
She spent the class wondering how Wes was going to handle having to teach him, and how they’d get along. By the end of the long hour, her musings left her considering what would happen if they got along great and started to hang out. He was so similar to Jory, she could picture them becoming friends. And Jory and Liv would be spending all their time together now. Would she be the odd one out like Mike?
The tension mounted when she left the building to head to French. She stuck close behind a group from her class, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the forest.
Are these your feelings or something else?
She worked to suppress them. Had Lydia or another one of the hostile Pyx returned to the area? Or was this her? If she could shake the sensation, then it was just her. She gritted her teeth. There was nothing to worry about. Her friends wouldn’t ditch her. They would still do things as a group. Besides, she’d have Jenyx. She could spend more time with Delaney and Kaylee, even if that meant Ethan, which meant Mike. She swallowed. She would be okay.
As her inner pep talk took hold, the feelings started to recede. They must have been hers.
She packed the emotion away, filled her lungs with crisp air, and tried to clear her head. No sudden anger replaced the thoughts, so she figured she was safe. The babble of voices ahead washed over her, until a crisp accent in the middle reached out and sucked her in like a receding wave.
“I expect I’ll be bored. We covered this all last year at my old school,” Harrison stated.
The girls around him nodded at how far ahead and sophisticated he must be.
Cara’s only thought was: Wanker.
Oops. Her insults had turned British at the sound of his voice. Her reading taste had veered away from fantasy lately, and she was clearly reading too many MI6 spy thrillers these days. She snickered.
Harrison glanced over his shoulder at the sound, and his
emerald eyes twinkled when she shook her head at him. He fell back a few steps and held out a hand.
“Harrison Winter. A pleasure.”
We’ll see about that.
“Cara Ransome.” She gripped his warm hand, trying not to smirk at the formal gesture.
He leaned in. “I enjoy it when people call me out on my bullshit,” he whispered.
“Then you’re walking with the wrong crowd,” she whispered back.
She dropped his hand and strode into the building with an entertained smile. Wes was going to have an interesting archery practice this afternoon. His bullshit threshold was pretty low.
THAT NIGHT, SHE WAS still trying to weasel details out of Wes as they walked from the dining hall to the gym for the big rivalry basketball game.
“So is he any good at archery?”
“Not as good as he thinks he is,” Wes replied.
“Meaning what?”
He shrugged.
“You know, a few more words wouldn’t hurt. Is this as much as you talked to him? No wonder you don’t have anything to share.”
Jory stepped closer, his hand still intertwined with Liv’s and swinging between them with each step. “It’s not like you just met Wes. Nothing’s changed, right, bud?”
“Nope, nothing.”
“Fine. I’ll have to talk to him myself, I guess,” Cara huffed.
Wes shook his head in the semi-dark and then took pity on her. “To be fair to him, he could draw more weight than I expected.”
“Well, that’s . . . a thing . . . I guess?”
He chuckled at her complete ignorance when it came to archery. They filed into the gym and grabbed seats in the bleachers. Jory and Liv stopped to chat with friends several times and ended up sitting in the row below Cara and Wes as the seats filled up. Soon, the teams emerged for the start of the game, and butterflies jolted through her at the sight of Rhys in his uniform. By the time she stamped those back down, the sounds of squeaking shoes and cheering students echoed through the gym.
A bustle of activity in their row made her look over. Harrison shuffled past people until he reached them. He stopped with a cheeky grin.
“You two are friends? Brill.” He rubbed his hands together and inserted himself in between them, forcing Wes to slide over. “I should’ve guessed.”
“Why’s that?” Cara asked.
“Similarities, I suppose.”
She glanced across him to Wes in time to catch his eye-roll. He stared ahead, watching the game. Harrison glanced at him, too, and followed his gaze to the court.
“So is basketball a big deal here, then?”
Cara scanned the bleachers full of school colors. “Depends. Valley Green is sort of a rival school.”
“Ah. I see.”
They watched the action in silence for a few minutes.
“That one sure is tall. Good job he’s on our team,” Harrison said.
Wes scoffed.
Cara muttered an answer for him. “That's Wes's brother, Mak.” Her attention had been focused on a different tall figure. It didn't help that Rhys was playing on the far side, facing them, and kept glancing up. Even from a distance, she swore she could make out the ring of gold flashing in his eyes.
“So you’ve an older brother . . . who also attends this school. I daresay that’s a topic we could’ve discussed.” Harrison turned toward Wes, who gave a noncommittal grunt in response.
On the court, Mak passed to Rhys, whose eyes had flicked up to the bleachers again. He managed to catch the ball and snapped his attention back to the game, spinning gracefully away from the Valley Green player. He’d been looking right at her. At least, that was what it felt like, until she remembered his sister was sitting directly in front of her, and then she caught sight of the back of Emma’s head another row down and a few seats further over.
“Does this one always prattle on so much?” Harrison rolled his head dramatically back to Cara with a sigh.
“Oh yeah. Wes is a real chatterbox. Watch your secrets around him.”
That finally got Wes’s attention, and he gave her a scathing look. “That other tall guy . . .”
He leaned over and pointed out Rhys. Cara’s mouth narrowed to a thin line as she shot a hard look back at him. He wouldn’t dare.
He held her eyes but finally finished with, “That’s Liv’s brother.”
Liv turned around at the sound of her name and nudged Jory. His brow furrowed at Harrison sitting between them.
“Um, have you guys met yet?” Cara asked.
“We haven’t had the pleasure.” Harrison leaned forward with a hand out.
Liv took it first and introduced herself and Jory.
The grin on Jory’s face didn’t match his eyes, which darted back and forth between his two best friends before stopping on Harrison. “Do people call you Harry?” he asked.
“Never more than once.” Harrison smiled broadly as he answered, but a note in his voice made it clear he was serious.
Liv and Harrison exchanged small talk for a bit, while Jory and Wes held a silent conversation over their bent heads. Cara didn’t follow most of what the two old friends could read off each other, but she didn’t need to. It would be in line with what she was thinking. Harrison seemed to have decided to insert himself into their group, whether they liked it or not. And with secrets like theirs, that could only be one thing. Complicated.
Her pulse sped up, and for some reason, she wanted to snap at him. He had no right to take over her friends. She pushed back the sleeves of her sweater and rubbed her sweating palms on her knees. She tried to focus on the game, but seeing Rhys look up again, probably to catch Emma’s eye, made her seethe even more.
Noticing her feelings taking over, she took a deep breath and tried to push the anger down. Mingling odors of sweat and perfume in the gym air only intensified the burning sensation. She couldn’t stop it.
It wasn’t her.
When the sharp whistle finally blew and cheers erupted for their team’s win, she reached behind Harrison to grab Wes’s good arm as they stood. He took one look at her pale face and began to scan the crowd. She’d been searching for the past twenty minutes, but nothing was out of the ordinary inside.
Worry had added to the baseless anger, and she couldn’t separate the two.
They drew Jory and Liv close as the surge of students headed for the door.
“Should we wait for Rhys?” Cara spoke quietly, letting kids stream around their tight knot of four. Harrison was swept along in the crowd and away from them.
Liv gave her a funny look. “Why would we wait for my brother?”
“There’s someone—something—here,” Wes answered for her.
“Oh.” Liv’s head swiveled. She swallowed. “I’ll text him to warn him, but he’ll walk back with the team. He’ll be in a crowd.”
“We should be too. Let’s go.” Jory took Liv’s hand and dragged her forward, with Wes and Cara following close behind.
They caught the huge mass of people going through the outer door. A surge of laughter drifted to them, and Cara caught Jory’s name being called. They angled toward the commotion.
“Jory, your cat escaped again.”
“How does that cat always know where he is?”
“Jory, your cat needs a leash or something.”
Jory hurried forward to collect Thomas, only to stop when he saw the cat in Harrison’s arms.
“He’s yours?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Jory reached out to take Thomas from him.
“I love cats.”
“Who is this entitled human?” Tomyx asked.
Cara and Wes shared a glance at the sound of his voice in their minds. She wanted to ask Tomyx what he was doing here, but with all the people around, that wasn’t possible.
“He’s a little too friendly for his own good sometimes,” Jory said.
Harrison handed Thomas over.
A green gleam crossed the cat’s eyes. Tomyx got to the point of why
he was there, speaking to Cara and Wes. “One of them is close. We’re sensing a few strangers in the area, but one who is very near. Are you getting anything, Cara?”
She gave a tiny nod.
“I came to warn you, which I could have done without the manhandling,” he grumbled.
Wes smirked at the tone Tomyx often put on. Harrison straightened with a grin and wished them all a good night before wandering away with the crowd. The four of them followed, sticking close to people.
As they approached the safety of the dorms, Liv broke the tense silence. “So what do we think about Harrison?”
Jory grunted. “He might be okay. But does he always have to have that cheesy grin on his face?”
Cara would have joined Liv and Wes, who both burst out laughing at the irony of Sunshine’s complaint, but her ribcage still felt too tight. Stuffing her own emotions down meant the tension was all she felt. That had been the plan. It didn’t feel great now that it was working.
She stared at Thomas sitting on Jory’s shoulder. Icy worry wormed through the lingering burn as his eyes flashed green. The boys walked to the door of the Cedars with them.
“Wes, text us when your brother gets back to the Lodge so we know the team’s back safely, or if you hear from Rhys directly.” She couldn’t help needing to know he was safe.
Liv gave her a funny look but stepped closer to Jory. She stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on Jory’s lips. Cara and Wes looked away while their friends said a tender goodnight before they each headed to their separate dorms.
“You’re pretty worried about my brother all of a sudden,” Liv said, holding open the door to the Cedars.
“I’m worried about everyone. And he was with us when we went to the council, so Lydia, or whoever came after us that night, probably saw him too. I figured you’d want to know he was safe,” she said.
“Thoughtful of you. Thanks.”
Liv gave her a last glance before they each headed down their hallways from the lounge. Cara tried to relax. She couldn’t let Liv know about her feelings. It would be too much for her to keep secret. Besides, friends’ brothers were supposed to be off-limits, even if, technically, he was the one she’d met first. Somehow she didn’t think Liv would see it that way.