A smile teased her lips. “Are you being crude?”
He arched a brow as he grinned in a way that looked like he was hiding a naughty secret. “I was going to say your mind. And you’re gorgeous face.”
She giggled. “Sure you were.”
His hand glided over her hip, across her thigh.
Music sounded from out in the lounge, followed by the dramatic screams that could only come from a horror movie.
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Hang on a tick, I’ll go tell Asher to turn it down.”
She rushed out the door toward the lounge. The room was dark except for the strobe-like flicker from the television illuminating the space in bursts.
Her gaze flitted to the T.V. as another blood-curdling scream sounded. A woman was being stabbed by a man in a balaclava as she struggled to crawl away from him. Then Zoe’s gaze moved to the lounge where peripheral movement alerted her.
She hid her gasp behind her palm. Asher was lying lengthwise on the couch. She was watching the horrible scene play out on the television, deep breaths sounding, as Rosalie straddled her waist, kissing at Asher’s neck.
Zoe turned away quickly and ran back to her room, shutting the door behind her.
“Didn’t she want to turn it down?” Theron asked.
Zoe shook her head. “I didn’t tell her to,” she said as she climbed into bed beside him.
“Why not?”
Zoe pursed her lips together for a long moment before she answered. “Um, do you think it’s weird that someone would have a horror movie playing and be watching it while making out?”
Theron smiled, but soon it fell from his face. “Are you serious? Is that what Asher was doing?”
She nodded. “She and Rosalie. On the couch. She was watching … listening … while …”
“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again—she’s a freak. Really fucking loopy.”
Chapter 25
After the last couple of weeks, Zoe craved normality—just an ordinary girl trying to keep up with the workload of her senior year.
Also, she didn’t want to be responsible for Theron falling behind with his own studies. So, Zoe made it clear that for at least a week, they were to focus on catching up with homework, completing assignments and reading set texts rather than spending so much time together.
That way, fingers crossed, there would be no distractions.
But her plan wasn’t working. In fact, she was more distracted because every waking second, her head was filled with thoughts of Theron.
All through the one class they had together, maths, sitting inches from him, she gazed at his strong forearms as they rested on the desk, and his thick fingers as they fluttered over his laptop keyboard.
During the classes she didn’t have with him, he filled her every thought, drowning out the teacher completely.
On Wednesday, Theron met Zoe outside her english class, the last lesson of the long day. His emblazoned stare said it all—he needed her as much as she needed him.
Never in her wildest imaginings could she have believed she would ever respond physically to a guy this way. She throbbed to be near him, tingled when she thought about him.
Without a word, he gripped her hand and started to lead her out of the building.
“Hello to you too,” she said with a giggle.
“I’m going crazy, Zoe,” he said with a growl.
She laughed. “I know the feeling. So where are you taking me?”
“Your dorm. Now.”
“Don’t you have a study session in the library?”
He stopped and stepped closer to her, his hands cradling her cheeks. “It’s either that or I’m going to make love with you right here in the hall.”
Her next breath was rushed, thin. “I see. We better get going then.”
He kissed her quickly, gripped her hand and led her away. As they hurried across the campus grounds, he said, “Staying away from each other is not working with my study.”
“Mine either,” she admitted.
“No more. Okay? We see each other whenever we want.”
Whenever we need. Which is always. She nodded.
They made it to her dorm, barely, before the need to touch each other was too strong to stop. They fell into her bed until this storm of desire played out the only way it could.
Afterwards, as Zoe lay on Theron’s chest, she felt the most content she had been in many years.
He kissed her forehead, stroked the hair from her face. “I was meant to meet you, Zoe.”
Zoe lifted her head and peered into his eyes. “You truly believe that?”
“You don’t feel this way about someone—crave someone—unless you were destined to meet them. You were made for me. Don’t you feel that too?”
His words washed over her like a balm, seeping into all the painful fissures living had inflicted. He was her rock, her medicine. At this moment in her life, when she didn’t understand the world around her, nor herself, he allowed her to feel as though none of that mattered and that she was fine exactly as she was—ghosts and all.
“I do feel it,” she said lying back against his chest.
He rubbed her arm and kissed the top of her head. Zoe’s eyes closed and she breathed in the comfort Theron wielded.
◆◆◆
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Zoe woke with a start. She sat up, looking around for Theron. He was seated on the end of the bed, mobile in his hand.
“What is it?” she asked, tongue still thick from sleep.
He sighed deeply and frowned as he held his phone up. “The footage from the hospital has been uploaded onto Reddit. It’s going viral.”
Zoe’s stomach clenched. Her jaw tightened. “What?”
He shook his head. “Asher must have uploaded it. It’s footage of you—the moment you passed out. The things you said. And of you running away from the hospital.”
She nodded slowly. “And … and it’s viral?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“Other students, they’ve seen it too?”
He winced. “It appears that way. A guy from our maths class sent it to me. He got it from Phillip.”
Zoe found it hard to draw in breaths. A sickliness unfurled in her stomach and boiled up to her throat.
Her life here was over.
The entire school was going to turn on her—treat her like an outcast. She’d seen it happen before. She had it happen to her. And students could be so nasty.
Already, she’d had a taste of just how far people were willing to go to ostracise those who were different.
Standing with shaking hands, Zoe pulled her panties on, followed by a pair of jeans. Her head was spinning.
Asher was going to get an earful about this. How dare she betray her trust?
“I’m going to have to leave the school.”
Theron stood, shaking his head. “Don’t get carried away here. It may not be so bad.”
She frowned, hating that she was on the verge of angry crying. “It is bad, Theron. I’ve been here before. I had an entire school treat me like a freak. I can’t go through that again. It’s not worth it.”
He pressed his hand to his chest, his eyebrows raised. “I’m not worth it?”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? You’re just going to run away the moment it gets difficult?”
Her chest expanded. She glared at him. “The moment it gets difficult! It’s been difficult from the very first day I arrived here. I’ve not had one easy moment.”
“Not even with me?”
Zoe grabbed her shirt, threw it over her head and sank back onto the bed. She was so frustrated, she could punch a hole in the wall. “THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!”
He spun, searching for his own clothes. “No. No, it’s not. You’ve made that very clear.” Theron finished dressing, marched to the door and flung it open. He spun back to face her, parted his mouth to speak, but nothing
came out. Instead, he shook his head then stormed out of the room.
She didn’t stop him. What was the point? Her attempt at normality was over, and that included Theron.
The front door slammed with a bang, shaking the windows, and she flinched. Zoe threw herself back onto the bed, kicked her legs in the air and beat the mattress with her fists as she screamed.
◆◆◆
Zoe set her laptop up in the study nook near the kitchen. She searched on Reddit for her video. Her heart thundered when she saw the footage was trending and the frozen picture on the screen was of her screaming as she ran toward the car in the black of night.
“I’m going to kill you, Asher, you inconsiderate …” she mumbled to the monitor.
She held her breath as she pressed play. It was a fifteen-minute-long edited video that showed her face over and over again.
Why would Asher do this after she told her not to?
A sense of betrayal burned up inside her.
The front door tinkled, and Asher walked inside, followed by Rosalie. Zoe stood, her chest expanding with anger. “What the hell, Asher?” she said when she came into sight.
Asher stepped back, eyes wide. “What?”
“Don’t act stupid.” She pointed at the computer. “The footage of me.”
She shook her head. Still, that perfectly placed innocence was in her expression. “What about it?”
Zoe paced closer, thrust her hands on her hips. “Gee, I don’t know, what do you think I’d be angry about?”
Again Asher shook her head and shrugged.
Zoe lowered her gaze and sighed. When she looked back up at Asher, her cheeks were hot, her jaw aching from clenching it. “How about the fact that’s it’s trending on Reddit?” She tried to sound fierce, but her words were thin and cracked.
“I don’t understand. Reddit? What?”
“Why would you do that? Why would you do that when you know—when I specifically said for you not to?”
Asher shook her head. “Zoe. I have not uploaded that footage. I’ve done a little editing on it, but that’s all.”
“DON’T LIE TO ME!”
Asher’s nostrils flared. “I’m not lying. I don’t understand what you’re even talking—”
“I did it,” Rosalie said, stepping forward.
Zoe’s mouth parted on her next inhale. “What? You uploaded it?”
Rosalie shrugged a shoulder, the most blasé expression on her face. “Yeah. I did. So you can stop screaming at Asher. She knew nothing about it.”
“Why would you do that? Do you realise what this means for me? My life comes to a halt now because of this. I’m going to have to leave and go home to my parents.”
Rosalie rolled her head back and laughed mockingly. “Oh, please. You seriously need to get over yourself. You’re not the centre of anyone’s universe, Zoe. No one gives a shit about you and your little interactions with spirits.”
Zoe shook her head. Anger vibrated through her. “How the hell would you even know what it’s like for me? You have no idea what I—”
“You’re going to give me some little bullying sob story about what happened at your previous high school. Yeah, teenagers can be mean. Most people, including me, have had to put up with mean kids. Look around you. No one’s here beating at your door. Because no one gives a shit.
“People will see this video, look at it for two seconds, and that’s it. They’ll move on. Anything longer than that is in your imagination. It’s all in your head. No one cares, and if you looked around and saw things for what they actually are, put aside the bullshit in your head, you’d know I’m right.”
“Screw you!” Zoe screamed. She was trembling all over, resisting the urge to slap this girl in the face.
“Yeah, I think you should be quiet right about now,” Asher said to Rosalie.
Rosalie narrowed her eyes. “You can’t be serious?”
“I am. Zoe’s my friend, and you had no right to do that to her.”
Rosalie snarled. “You both are freak shows. Delusional crazy bitches.”
Asher sighed. “I think you better leave or I’ll call the headmistress to let them know a past student has broken into the girls’ dorm.”
“Fine,” she hissed. “But don’t you dare call me again. I don’t know what I was thinking getting involved with a high school kid.”
“Blah, blah, blah … GET OUT!”
Rosalie spun and marched out the door, slamming it behind her.
“Bitch.” Asher frowned, her shoulders hunching as she did. “I’m so sorry, Zoe. I had no idea she would do that. I don’t know why she would have done that.”
Zoe shook her head, lifted her hand to stop Asher’s apology. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know, but I filmed it all, and ...”
Zoe was finding it hard to breathe. She needed peace and time to think, to assess her options. “I’m going out for a walk. I need to clear my head.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“No. I just need some time to think. Alone.”
“Of course.”
The dorm felt stifling, suffocating.
When Zoe got out into the light of day, the cool breeze blowing on her skin, she gulped in a deep breath, dragging air into her lungs. A sob broke from her throat. Not because of the way Rosalie had spoken to her but because what she had said held some truth.
Perhaps others didn’t really care about her.
Perhaps those kinds of reactions she assumed students had to her were held over from the past but no longer valid.
Perhaps people were so caught up in their own lives that she was only something fleeting to occupy their time, if at all.
But even if they did laugh at her, call her crazy, poke fun at her, could she really blame them? If she was unable to embrace her own differences, instead choosing to hide them from everyone else, even refute their very existence, then how could she expect that others not do the same?
Zoe paced along the footpath toward the football fields. Ruby league training was in progress, and the grunts and smacks of boys tackling each other rang out. But the scenery faded on the outskirts of her attention as she explored her own thoughts.
What Rosalie had said stirred something inside her—anger. Anger at her parents for assuming she was crazy. Anger at Rhianna and Daniel for treating her so poorly. But mostly, anger at herself for not accepting herself—every single part of her.
She clenched her fists at her side and groaned. She was past the point of worrying if she was crazy. There was empirical evidence now that what was occurring wasn’t occurring solely in her mind.
She wasn’t insane.
She simply had a gift that no one else had. A big, bizarre and completely unbelievable gift, but it didn’t matter the magnitude. All that mattered was that she accepted herself and everyone else be damned.
This quest for normality was not working. The only thing it achieved was secrecy, resentfulness and anger. Asher was right all those weeks ago when she said that Zoe would never be normal, and she needed to embrace that fact instead of working against it.
What good was it to be like everyone else anyway?
Would it make her happier?
How could she ever have believed that changing her innate self and pretending to be someone else, all for the prize of ‘fitting in’ with people who were all trying to do the same, was not going to be fraught with danger?
Any happiness she had earned during her time here in Hampshire was when she opened up, was honest about who she was, and let people in. And those people, Theron and Asher, had embraced her.
Zoe stamped her foot on the path and groaned, face turned to the sky.
Why couldn’t she have seen this earlier?
Theron’s face filled her thoughts and regret swamped her like a great current of icky horribleness that filled every fissure of her body.
I hope I haven’t blown it.
She needed to call him to apologise. All this time
, she had been so self-absorbed, so worried about her inner-self showing to others that she couldn’t believe he would ever truly have emotions for her.
When all this time, he had only ever shown her his beautiful emotions that shone directly on her like a burst of sunlight through the darkened clouds.
Zoe pulled her mobile from her pocket and called his number. He didn’t answer. She hung up and typed out a message.
ZOE: I’m so sorry. I don’t want to lose you. You’re more important to me than anything else.
Knots pulled and tightened in her stomach to the point of nausea by the time she arrived back to her dorm. She still hadn’t heard back from Theron.
She pushed through the door. When she walked into the lounge, Asher stood. Theron was there with her.
When the shock subsided, to be face to face with the very person she needed, she asked quickly, “Did you get my message?”
He held his phone up. “My phone’s flat.”
“I wanted to let you know—”
He got to his feet. “Can you let me talk first, please?”
She blinked, wanted to smile but her face wouldn’t cooperate. “Um … sure.”
He came closer. “I’m sorry I stormed out. You needed me, and I … I walked away. And that’s not fair on you.”
She managed a smile, shook her head. “It’s okay. I can get a little self-obsessed at times.”
“You were frightened.”
“Yes, but,” she glanced at Asher, cheeks hot, “I was shown that perhaps I may be looking for shadows where there’s only sunshine and because of that, I’ve missed what’s good in my life.”
Theron nodded, stepped closer. “So you forgive me?”
She smiled. “As long as you forgive me too.”
He stroked a finger down her cheek. “Of course.”
“I’m going to be more accepting of myself.”
“I like the sound of that,” Theron said with a grin.
“And I’m not going to jump down anybody’s throat until I have all the facts.”
Asher laughed. “I like the sound of that even more.” She looked at Theron. “You should have seen her—she was ready to rip my throat out.”
After Life Page 16