The Cinderella Hour by Katherine Stone Page A

his scars. Snow hadn’t touched them as Vivian—and
others—had, as carved-in-the-flesh proof of how dangerous he was.
    Snow touched his scars gently, caring about his pain.
    It was instinct, not experience, that made her body move in
harmony with his.
    “You lied.”
    “It’s not a lie anymore. Don’t go, Luke! Please.”
    “I hurt you.”
    “No, you didn’t! Not really. It will be better next time.
Easier.”
    “There’s not going to be a next time.”
    “I was that awful?”
    “No, Snow. You weren’t awful at all. But we can’t do this
again.”
    “You’re angry with me.”
    “I’m angry with myself.”
    “For betraying Vivian.”
    “Will you forget about Vivian? I betrayed you , Snow.
Your innocence.”
    “I wanted you to.”
    “I shouldn’t have believed you.” His voice seemed to silence
the birds and make the breeze hold its breath.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have let this happen.
It can’t happen again. It won’t.”
    “But . . .”
    “What?”
    “Can we be friends?”
    They had been blood friends, and now they were blood lovers.
He had hurt her. Made her bleed. She didn’t care about sex. Why would she?
There couldn’t have been any pleasure for her. But she cared about him —still—and
wanted to be his friend.
    Or believed she did.
    It was time to set her straight. “I need to tell you about that
night.”
    Snow didn’t blink. “Okay.”
    “What if I told you Noah was wrong? That I killed my father
and made it look like he tried to kill me? What would you say to that?”
    “Your father was mean to you. Cruel. He starved you. And . .
. he hurt you, didn’t he? Hit you.”
    “Sometimes.” If he was lucky, that was all Jared did.
    “That’s why there were days when you couldn’t come to school.
Isn’t that right? Because he hurt you, injured you.”
    “Yes. But there are plenty of mean fathers in the world. They
don’t all end up dead. Their sons don’t all end up killing them.”
    “Just like you didn’t kill yours. Even though . . .”
    “He deserved it? You can’t say it, can you?”
    “No. I guess I can’t—any more than you could do it.”
    “I planned to kill him that night, Snow. I was thinking about
how to kill him when he poured the gasoline under the door.”
    “You wouldn’t have followed through.”
    “No?”
    “No. You don’t hurt things, remember?”
    Not things, Luke thought . Just you . But she looked
whole, not injured. Radiant, not hurt. And believing in him still. “How
do you know I didn’t kill him?”
    “Beyond the simple fact that you never would?”
    So simple, to her . “Yes. Beyond that.”
    “You would have killed yourself if you had. No matter what he’d
done to you, you couldn’t have lived with yourself if you’d taken his life.”
    Was that true? Luke wondered. Perhaps. The memories of
contemplating Jared’s death had been torment enough.
    There had been another torment, too—the worry that, without
Jared’s murderous plans, he would have acted on his own.
    Maybe grace would have intervened if evil hadn’t.
    Grace.
    Snow.
    His love, his friend.
    They were friends, for all the
world to see. The watching world viewed the friendship as strange indeed.
Vivian’s gorgeous spurned lover and the overweight brainchild with the sexy
voice.
    The relationship couldn’t be physical. It had to be a weird
brother-sister thing. True, Luke hadn’t dated anyone since Vivian dumped him
for swim team captain Harrison Wright. And he had resisted the most blatant
overtures from other girls.
    Luke’s focus was elsewhere. Grades, split times, Snow.
    The senior hunk and the sophomore chunk weren’t outcasts.
Winning was paramount to their classmates at Larken High. As long as Snow
argued the debate team to victory, and Luke swam faster than any other high-school
boy in the state, Snow and Luke could have whatever odd relationship they
pleased.
    Snow planned to lose the rest of her excess