the least bit concerned. She just shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s Chase. Everything he does is a mystery.”
Ugh .
Why was I the only one who was worried?
Then there was the voice in my head. Because you are closer to him than anyone has ever been .
Sometimes the voice in my head could be such a nuisance.
The final bell rang on what turned out to be a very long school day. I went to my locker first to drop off my books and fished out my car keys. Stepping through the double front doors of the school, I watched stupefied from the sidewalk as a flashy silver car zoomed by.
It was impossible to mistake whose it was. I knew that car as well as I knew mine.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was the person seated comfortably in the passenger seat. Too cozy for my liking. The flaming red hair was distinctive.
Sierra.
The color drained from my face in disbelief and hurt. His eyes clashed with my own as I stood on the sidelines looking an idiot. And for a split-second, I swear I saw a spark of regret and maybe even pleading. But in that moment, I didn’t care. The lancing pain turned rapidly into searing rage.
Then I caught Sierra’s smirk as she noticed me. The gleam of satisfaction in her eyes made me want to go nuclear.
How dare he make me look like a fool? Make me think he cared.
I did the only sane thing a girl in my position would do. I flipped him off.
She was the last person in the universe I expected him to be sneaking off with. She was his so-called plans . For the first time since he saved me, I thought our bond truly, utterly, sucked ass.
It was a curse.
If he was fooling around with Sierra then this whole being linked crapola was a shamble. It didn’t mean jack, and this thing I thought we had going between us was bogus, nothing more than my overactive sick imagination and Chase’s cruel manipulation.
Damn half-demons.
He really was a heartless asshole.
In my head, I called him every colorful swear I could come up with. A sailor would have been proud.
How could I have possibly thought that a guy like Chase would be so infatuated with me ? Would care about me ? Would love me ? Especially knowing he could have any girl he wanted. He could have Sierra. Why would he want to tie himself down to me for the rest of his life? It didn’t make sense that fateful night, and it made even less sense now.
What an utter fool I’d been. Just the other day he had his tongue blissfully down my throat. Then he turned around and snuck off with Sierra. And what pissed me off the most was that he made me look like a sucker. So here I was surrounded by dust, staring after the tail end of his car, flipping him the bird. My eyes welled with tears I refused to shed.
Or more like, I didn’t want to shed on the likes of Chase Winters. He didn’t deserve an ounce of my hurt, but the heart wasn’t easy to dupe. And right now, mine was shattering into a gazillion tiny, jagged pieces.
I wiped the sleeve of my blue cardigan over my eyes, erasing a few tears that had escaped. Through the smudge of my blurring vision, I saw the flashing of his red brake lights. My heart skipped, only to fracture again with an overwhelming new surge of agony when his silvery car turned onto the main road, full speed ahead.
The lying snake was going to pay.
As soon as I was able to pick my crushed heart off the concrete and piece it back together. Not only had Chase pummeled my heart, it was also the realization that I had cared. I had more than cared. I had started to fall in love with him. And that was as much a punch to the gut as seeing him go off with slutty Sierra was.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
Pressure squeezed in my chest and everything around me went silent. My feet felt super glued to the sidewalk. I couldn’t move. It wasn’t until a girl in a lower class accidently bumped into me that I stumbled back into the present. Running a shaky hand through my hair, I walked to my car like a mummy wrapped in anguish.
The
James Kakalios
Tara Fox Hall
K. Sterling
Jonathan Maberry
Mary Balogh
Elizabeth Moynihan
Jane Hunt
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley
Jacquie Rogers
Shiloh Walker