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In a second, I saw her once more, lying on the road, not moving and absolutely helpless. My chest tightened painfully. I pushed the image aside, wondering when I would stop seeing it.
Kat appeared to be holding her breath. Her question cycled around my thoughts. Why do you care? I shouldn’t. I didn’t.
“Daemon?” she whispered.
The sound of my name, spoken without rancor, was a rarity, and it had an electrifying effect. Those pretty pink lips spoke my name perfectly. I wanted to know what my name tasted like on her lips and tongue. Had I thought about kissing her before? I must’ve, because the sudden need, the almost overwhelming desire to claim her mouth didn’t surprise me.
Would she let me kiss her?
Probably not.
Should I kiss her?
Probably not.
If I went ahead and did it, would it blow up in my face?
Yep.
I dropped my hand and took a step back. When I dragged in the next breath I really didn’t need, the scent of peaches and…and vanilla surrounded me.
I didn’t say anything as I turned around and walked off the porch. And Kat didn’t stop me. I didn’t look back, but I also didn’t hear a door close. I knew she was standing there, watching me.
And I also knew that there was a part of me that cared.
Later that night, long after Dee was home and asleep, I sat in bed with my laptop open. My finger drifted along the touch pad as I scrolled through the blog.
Katy’s Krazy Book Obsession .
I laughed under my breath.
Good name.
This wasn’t the first time I’d checked it out. The night Dee had returned from the colony, I’d been taking a look at it. Since then, Kat had added ten more reviews. How in the world had she read that many books in that short period of time? Plus she did these other things. Something called Teaser Tuesdays, which were really just a few lines from some book she was reading. There was In My Mailbox, where she filmed herself talking about the books she had either bought, borrowed, or received from a publisher.
I’d watched five of those damn videos.
And every time she picked up a book, her entire face transformed into a wide, brilliant smile, the kind I had yet to see in person and probably never would. She loved those books. No doubt about it.
I clicked on a sixth video, one that was filmed before she moved here, and was shocked to see a different Katy. She was the same, of course, but there was a light in her eyes that seemed to be out now. I wondered what had turned off Katy’s inner light. I swallowed. It was probably me, treating her like an asshole, interfering in her life and almost getting her killed.
I closed out the tab and winged my laptop across the room. Before it slammed into the wall, I lifted my hand, stopping the shiny metallic piece of crap before it shattered into thousands of dollars’ worth of tiny pieces. It hovered in the air as if an invisible hand caught it before I slowly lowered it to my desk. I exhaled roughly.
This evening I had wanted to kiss Kat. There was no fooling myself. And it hadn’t been the first time. Knew it wouldn’t be the last time. I’d already accepted that I was attracted to her, so wanting to act on it made sense. No BFD there.
Wanting something and doing it were two different things.
Wanting something and really wanting it were also two different things.
Kind of like how you can want someone when you don’t even like them?
Then again, that wasn’t entirely the truth. I did like her. Reluctantly. She was smart. The nerdiness was cute. Her fiery attitude was admirable.
But I hadn’t been lying when I said that things weren’t like they were for Dawson and Bethany. Those two had…they had been in love with each other and neither of them had stopped for one damn second to think about the consequences.
The consequences were all I thought about. The memory of Kat in that last video haunted me, telling me more clearly than all of my arguments that I was just no good for her.
Too bad my body wasn’t getting the message.
This was going to be a long night, I thought, as I slipped my hand under the sheet and closed my eyes. A very long night.
Chapter 12
The first day of school wasn’t exciting to me. For Dee, it was a big deal. The first day of our last year of high school at PHS—that was what she yelled at me when my alarm had gone off for the third time, and we had forty minutes to get ready, eat something, and get to class.
To me, it was stupid that we started school on a Thursday, had two days of classes, and then had the weekend off. Why didn’t they just start on a Tuesday?
I barely made it, lucky that I found a pair of jeans and a shirt that was clean. Hell, I was happy that I found a notebook in the back of my car.
PHS was a small high school compared to most. Only a couple of floors, it was beyond easy to get from one class to the next. Through homeroom and first period, I wondered how Kat was doing. Being the new kid had to suck, especially when you moved to such a small town where everyone had grown up together. Kids around here were friends since they were in diapers.
It was when I walked into trig class that I saw Kat near the back of the classroom. I spotted a couple of seats empty on the other side of class and knew that’s where I should go.
Instead, I switched my notebook to my other hand and headed straight down the aisle where she was seated. She kept her eyes glued to her hands, but I knew she was aware of me. The faint blush along the tips of her cheekbones gave her away.
Remembering how her breath caught the other night on her porch, I grinned.
But then my gaze slid to the awkward splint covering her slender arm, and my grin faded. Potent rage swept through me at the reminder of how close she’d come to becoming an Arum’s play toy. My teeth gnashed as I stalked past and fell into the seat behind her.