“Touch her and I will end you.”
Joshua flopped back onto his bed, oblivious to the t-shirt and notebook now pinned between his back and the mattress. “I thought you didn’t have feelings for her.”
“Of course I have feelings for her. She’s my best friend.”
“You know, I’ve never looked at my best friend like I wanted to rip off his clothes with my teeth.”
Jase wondered if the courts turned a blind eye on college students who murdered their roommates. Surely it happened on a regular basis.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think I do,” Joshua said, rolling onto his side and closing his eyes. “And I think if you don’t hurry up and claim that girl soon, someone else is going to.”
Chapter 8
Talley knew she’d felt worse in her life, but at the moment she couldn’t remember when. Sleeping on Jase’s floor had left her with aches and pains stretching from the crick in her neck down to the bruise she got where her ankle rested on Jase’s PS3 all night. She felt icky and gross since waking up thirty minutes late on the wrong side of campus meant she had to skip her morning shower, and she was pretty sure the cutesy barrettes she’d slipped in her hair weren't fooling anyone into thinking it was actually fixed. But none of that compared to the hollow, empty feeling in her chest where her heart was supposed to be.
Her mom had called as she was walking to her first class of the morning, and as soon as she heard Talley’s voice, asked what was wrong. Talley told her it was nothing, but the exact opposite was true. Everything was wrong. Nothing was like it was supposed to be. Scout was running for her life, Charlie was in a hospital and living off a steady diet of morphine, and she and Jase were spying on the most powerful people in the world. And then there were the visions of dead Shifters and Scout’s ultimate murder that invaded her mind, the fact that someone was slipping Sarvarna information about Toby, and the feeling that her heart was in so many pieces it had crumbled into dust and blown away. It all left her with a hollowed out sensation that made concentrating on Dr. Pace’s lecture about the genius of William Faulkner utterly impossible.
She shouldn’t have turned down Walker’s offer to give it a try. She realized that now. It was stupid to turn away the only guy who had ever shown any genuine interest in her. Who knows, after a while, she might have forgotten her feelings for Jase and actually have been able to make it work. Now, it was too late. He was probably halfway home by now, and even if she called him back, he would know the truth. She was in love with someone else. It didn’t matter that he would never love her back. She loved Jase, and nothing was going to change that.
Her mind drifted to the dream she was having before she was ripped out of it and into the nightmare of her vision. In this one, she could see herself lying back on a bed. Her hair was long and fanned out around her face. There was a knowing smile on her lips, and even though the room was dimly lit, her eyes were clearly visible. It was as if they were glowing as they gazed up at him.
“You are so beautiful,” Jase’s voice had said, and her heart nearly exploded at the words. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
“About half as much as I love you?” she’d teased. She hadn’t noticed how closely they were pressed together until she felt his laughter vibrate through them both.
“Try doubling that and sending it to the tenth power, and then you might be halfway there.” She was going to argue, but then her mouth got busy doing other things. It wasn’t possible for people to kiss that much in real life without fainting from a lack of oxygen, but this was a dream, and their lips and tongues could slide against one another for an infinite amount of time. It had been perfect until she slammed back into her own body and Jase disappeared. She had tried to snap out of the vision once she saw the ground littered with bodies, some of them in middle of the Change, and others covered in gore and unmoving. But like always, she had to stay until the end. No matter how hard she tried, she was forced to watch Scout approach Sarvarna. She screamed as they talked, but only silence came out. Then, Sarvarna would bury a knife in Scout’s stomach. And still, Talley was forced to just stand and bear witness until the knife was pulled out and Scout’s body slid to the ground.
You don’t have visions.
Yet, no matter how many times her mother said it, Talley couldn’t deny the truth. Of the three visions she’d had of Scout, two had already come true. In April, her damaged body had been carried out of the woods, her blood saturating not only her clothes, but the skin of the man who held her. In August, she’d stood before a guillotine, awaiting execution. Both visions had started months before they happened, and when they played out, it was exactly as Talley Saw it.
Talley was so startled she nearly fell over her own feet. It was only Jase’s Shifter reflexes that kept her laptop from crashing to the ground. “You know, I never took you for the kind of girl to have a one night stand and then completely ignore the guy the next day, even when he goes to the trouble of skipping a class to see you. I guess you never really know someone, huh?” His hair was getting too long, the curls flipping up over the edge of the baseball cap he had on.
“What are you doing here? You’ve got math at eleven.”
“You did hear the part where I skipped class to come see you, right?”
The temperature and humidity had finally decided to take a vacation day and the promise of autumn whispered across Talley’s skin every time the wind blew. As she and Jase made their way down the hill that led back to her dorm, Talley noticed girls glancing in their direction. It was always like that when Jase was around. Girls couldn’t help but notice him. It wasn’t just that he was attractive - which was certainly true with his grass-green eyes and easy smile - but even people without a drop of supernatural blood could recognize his dominance. The same thing that made other guys naturally defer to him made girls want to see him with his clothes off.
Not that Talley wanted to see him with his clothes off. That would be wrong. She was a good girl who had no desire to run her hands down his naked chest just like the dream version of her had. Nope. Not at all.
Do you think people go to hell for lying to themselves? It wasn’t the normal my-thoughts-are-coming-to-me-in-Scout’s-voice voice, but a memory. Scout had asked her that question forever ago when she was finally coming to terms with her feelings for Alex Cole. Unfortunately, Talley couldn’t seem to remember what sage words of advice she’d offered her friend.