Page 137 of Fractured Fates

He tips back his head and laughs, the sound making my stomach spin. “Yeah,” he says finally, “it isn’t very pretty.”

“A trail of men and women who’ve left you heartbroken?” I smirk at him. “No wait, that would require you to own a heart.”

He lays his palm over his left pec, and my eyes drop there automatically, unable to help but notice the way his muscular chest strains at the fabric of his shirt. “Blackwaters, you’ve wounded me.”

I laugh myself and he smiles at me, the starlight catching in his pale eyes.

“And you?” he says softly.

“Me?”

“Have you ever been heartbroken?”

I shake my head slowly. No, I haven’t, not in the way he means anyway. I swallow and force a more jovial expression back onto my face. “Oh well, we’ll both have to hope there’s a fated mate out there somewhere waiting for us both.”

The smile on his lips falters before he seems to check himself.

“You believe in that stuff?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know what to believe half the time.” I think of that deep bruise on Spencer’s stomach, of what they’d told me about scarlet magic.

“What?” the professor says, suddenly right in front of me, grabbing at my wrist. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” I say, attempting to shake off his grip as I focus all my mental energy on raising my shields.

“It wasn’t nothing. Tell me.”

“Honestly, it was just something I read about in a book.”

“It looked like a memory.” He examines my face, his grip on my wrist tight, his fingers pinching my skin. “Did you do that?”

“You’re hurting me,” I hiss, attempting to twist my arm away.

“Rhianna, I’m not fooling around here. You need to tell me if–”

“I did tell you. I read it in a book.”

“You’re lying.”

The hook in my stomach twists and for a moment I think I might vomit.

“Get off me,” I hiss. “Get off me before I scream!”

“No one’s going to hear you even if you do. No one is even missing you. Do you see that?” He jerks his head in the direction of the common room. “They’re all in there. And you’re out here.”

“If you’re going to tell me I don’t belong here, you’ve already told me that countless times.” I glare at him. “But I’d wish you’d make up your mind. Do you want me to stay or do you want me to go?”

“I want you to tell me the damned truth!” He tugs me close to him and the hook in my stomach spins with excitement. I can feel the heat of his body, the whisper of his breath by my ear. I can taste his scent. Masculine. Woody. Deep.

I gasp as I feel him pushing against the shield in my mind, trying to force it down.

“Don’t!” I gasp, pain piercing through my skull. “Please don’t.”

“I don’t want to,” he pants. “But I need to know this, Rhianna.”

I screw up my eyes, rocking my head from side to side, clinging to the shields with everything I have.

I don’t know why I don’t want to tell him. Why I don’t want him to see the truth. But every part of me screams to keep him out.