Filed to story: Kissed by Claw and Fang
I close my eyes and roll onto my side-face toward the wall-while Macy goes to answer the door. I can hear a deep murmur from whoever is on the other side of the doorway, but I can’t understand the words.
It must be Macy’s dad, though, because she answers, “She’s fine. She just had some soup, and now she’s sleeping.”
More murmuring from that deep voice and then Macy offering, “Do you want to come in and see for yourself? Nurse Marise gave her a lot of medicine. She’s still drugged to the gills.”
There’s a little more murmuring, not much. And then Macy closes the door.
“Coast clear,” she says, but her voice sounds a little off.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to lie to your dad. If you want to call him back-“
“It wasn’t my dad.”
“Oh. Who was it, then? Cam?”
“No.” She looks a little sick as she admits, “It was Zane.”
I spring up in bed for the third time tonight. “Zane? He was here? Why didn’t you let him in?” I throw back the covers and climb out of bed, searching the room for my Chucks, but they’re nowhere to be found.
“I did invite him in. He’s the one who declined.”
“Because you told him I was sleeping.” I give up on the shoe hunt and head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Macy squeaks.
“Where do you think?” I pull open the door. “After Zane.”
No Harm,
All Foul
I charge out of our room, figuring I’ll catch Zane a few doors down. But the hallway is completely empty. Still, he couldn’t have gone far, so I take off toward the main staircase. Worst-case scenario, I know where his room is, even if a cleaning crew is currently in there.
I finally find him on the stairs, taking them three at a time. He’s not alone, though-Liam and Rafael are with him, and all three of them seem like they’re in a really big hurry.
I should probably let them go, but he’s the one who came to my room, not the other way around. Which means he wanted to see me.
It’s that thought that galvanizes me, that has me calling out his name as I move to the top landing.
He stops on a dime. All three of them do, and then they’re all staring at me out of the same blank eyes. I have a second to try to absorb the direct impact of all that male beauty and intensity-it’s a lot-before Zane is bounding back up the stairs.
Liam and Rafael watch for a second, their faces locked in that expressionless look I’m coming to hate. But then they both give me a little wave, plus Rafael adds a thumbs-up, before they turn away and bound down the stairs.
“What are you doing out here?” Zane demands, and just that quickly, he’s in front of me. Only his face isn’t blank. It’s livid with a mixture of self-loathing and regret, his eyes an incandescent black that has shivers sliding through me for all the wrong reasons.
“Macy said you were looking for me.”
“I wasn’t looking for you. I came to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh.” I hold out my arms, do a little self-deprecating shrug. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine.”
He snorts. “Pretty sure that’s a matter of opinion.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, you look like you’re going to fall down any second. I don’t know what you were thinking to come running down the halls after you nearly bled to death. Go back to bed.”
“I don’t want to go back to bed. I want to talk to you about what happened this afternoon.”
“Blank” doesn’t describe what happens to his face. It goes beyond blank, beyond empty, until there’s absolutely nothing there. No sign at all of the Zane I watched the meteor shower with. Definitely no sign of the boy who kissed me until my knees buckled and my heart nearly exploded.
He looks like a stranger. A cold, emotionless stranger, one who has every intention of ignoring me. But then he finally answers. “You got hurt. That’s what happened.”
“That’s not all that happened.” I reach for his arm-I want to touch him, feel him-but he steps out of reach before my fingers can so much as brush against his shirt.
“It’s the only thing that happened that matters.”
Ouch. My heart falls straight to my feet as I struggle with the fact that he’s grouping our kiss in with all the things he thinks don’t matter.
For long seconds, I don’t know what to say. But then I ask the one question that’s been burning inside my brain since I woke up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
“But I am worried about you.” It’s a lot to admit-especially when he’s working so hard to shut down everything between us-but that doesn’t make it any less true. “You look…”
His eyes meet mine. “What?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Not okay.”
He looks away. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” It’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk to me right now, so I take a step back. “I guess I-“