He looks at me for a minute as if deciding whether or not to bother talking to me. “You’re awful dressed up,” he says finally, taking in my coat and the black dress and the knee-high black boots, the way my hair is done up in a loose chignon at the crown of my head. His mouth twists into a mocking smile. “Let me guess: you’re magically teleporting to some fancy Stanford party, and you lost your way?”
“I came from a funeral,” I say tightly. “At Aspen Hill.”
Right away his face sobers. “Whose?”
“Walter Prescott’s.”
He nods. “I heard about that. A stroke, wasn’t it?”
I don’t answer.
“Or not a stroke,” he surmises. “He was one of your people.”
My people. Nice. I start to walk away, because that’s the wise thing to do—just leave, don’t engage with him—but then I stop, turn back. I can’t help myself. “Don’t do that,” I say.
“Don’t do what?”
“I know you’re mad at me, and I understand why you would be, I get it, I do, but you don’t have to be like that. You’re like the kindest, sweetest, most decent guy that I know. Don’t be a jerk because of me.”
He looks at the floor, swallows hard. “Clara …”
“I’m sorry, Tuck. I know that might not be worth much, me saying it. But I’m sorry. For all of it.” I turn to walk away. “I’ll stay out of your way.”
“You didn’t call,” he says before I can flee.
I blink up at him, startled. “What?”
“This summer. When you got back from Italy, before you went to California. You were home for two weeks, right? And you didn’t call. Not once,” he says with accusation in his voice.
That’s what he picks to be mad about?
“I wanted to,” I say, which is true. Every day I thought about calling him. “I was busy,” I say, which is a lie.
He scoffs, but the anger fades from his face, becomes a kind of resigned frustration. “We could have hung out some, before you had to go.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur again, because I don’t know what else to say.
“It’s just that … I thought maybe we could be …” His throat works for a minute before he gets the word out. “Friends.”
Tucker Avery wants to be my friend.
He looks so vulnerable right now, staring at his boots, his ears slightly red under his tan, his shoulders tight. I want to reach over and put my hand on his arm. I want to smile and say, Sure. Let’s be friends. I would love to be your friend.
But I have to be strong. I have to remember why we broke up in the first place: so that he could have a life where he wouldn’t be attacked by a fallen angel at the end of a date, where he could kiss his girlfriend without her literally lighting up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, where he wouldn’t be constantly kept in the dark. He needs someone normal. Someone who will age when he ages. Someone he can protect the way a man protects his woman, and not the other way around. Someone not me. I mean, five minutes ago I was being blackmailed by a Black Wing, for heaven’s sake. I’m being hunted by a fallen angel who means to “collect” me. I’m going to have to fight. Possibly die.
I take a deep breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He looks up. “You don’t want to be friends.”
I try to meet his eyes. “No. I don’t.”
For once I’m glad he can’t read my mind the way Christian does. He’d see how much I think about him, how I dream about him, how even after all this time apart my heart still aches to see him, touch him, hear his voice. He’d see that we can’t be friends. He’d see that every minute I’m with him I want his arms around me. I remember his lips on mine. I’ll never, never, be able to see him as a friend.
It’s better this way, I repeat to myself. It’s better this way. It’s better this way. He has to live his life, and I have to live mine.
His jaw tightens. “All right,” he says. “I get it. We’re done. You’re moving on.”
Yes, I need to say to him. But I can’t make my lips form the word.
He nods, flexes his hands like he wants his cowboy hat to put on now, but he doesn’t have it. “I should go,” he says. “I have chores to do back at the ranch.”
He moves to the end of the aisle, then stops. There’s something else he wants to tell me. My breath hitches in my throat.
“Have a nice life, Clara,” he says. “You deserve to be happy.”
My hands clench into fists as I watch him walk away.
So do you, I think. So do you.
9
BACK, BACK, YOU FIEND
“You’re distracted, Clara,” Dad says. “You need to focus.”
I lower my part of the broom, panting. My shoulder smarts from where Christian just whacked me. We’ve been sparring in my backyard in Jackson in ankle-deep snow for the past half hour, and so far it’s been pretty even. I hit him; he hits me. Although that last hit was a doozy.
Christian looks at me with guilt in his gold-flecked eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine. We agreed not to pull our punches, and I left you an opening, so you should go for it.” I rotate my arm in its socket, wince, then roll my head from side to side, stretching. “Can we take a break for a minute? I could use a breather.”
Dad frowns. “We don’t have time for that. You must practice.”
This is our fifth training session together—me, Dad, and Christian—and every time Dad seems more tense, like we’re not making enough progress. He’s been working us like crazy all week, but winter break is almost over, and we won’t have as much free time to train once we go back to school. We should have moved on from brooms and mops by now. We should be wielding the real deal.
“I thought there’s no such thing as time for you.” I’m trying not to whine. “Come on. I need hot chocolate. My feet are freezing.”
Dad sighs, then strides across the yard to stand between Christian and me. He puts a hand on the back of my neck right under the hairline, then does the same to Christian. I don’t have time to ask what he’s doing before I feel a jolt in my stomach and the world dissolves into a bright white light, and when it fades we’re standing on a beach. It looks like the set of a deserted-island movie, all perfect white sand and blue water, nobody around but a few curious seagulls.