for the same reason guys couldn’t stay away from her. It had been just the two of us since the seventh grade, when her mouth and her brand-new C-cups intimidated the entire female half of the student body.
Second of all …
“Why is there a senior in your junior English class?” Nash said it before I could.
Emma shrugged while she chewed, then swallowed and dipped her crust again. “She got behind somehow, and they’re letting her take two English classes at once, so she can graduate on time. I mean, would you want to be here for a whole ‘nother year, just to take one class?”
“No.” Nash stabbed another green bean he probably wasn’t going to eat. “But I wouldn’t want to read Macbeth and To Kill a Mockingbird at the same time, either.”
“Better her than me.” Em bit into her crust again, then twisted on the bench as footsteps crunched on the grass behind us. “Hey, here she comes,” she said around a full mouth.
I started to turn, but stopped when I noticed Nash staring. And not at me. His wide-eyed gaze was trained over my head, and if his jaw got any looser, he’d have to pick it up off his tray. “Sabine?” he said, his voice soft and stunned.
Emma slapped the table. “That’s her name!” She twisted and called over her shoulder. “Sabine, over here!” Then she glanced back at Nash. “Wait, you’ve already met her?”
Nash didn’t answer. Instead, he stood, nearly tripping over his own bench seat, and when he rounded the table toward the new girl, I finally turned to look at her. And instantly understood why she wasn’t intimidated by Emma.
Sabine was an entirely different kind of gorgeous.
She was a contrast of pale skin and dark hair, where Em was golden. Slim and lithe, where Em was curvy. She swaggered, where Emma glided. And she’d stopped cold, her lunch tray obviously forgotten, and was staring not at me or her new friend Emma, but at my boyfriend.
My kind-of boyfriend. Or whatever.
“Sabine?” Nash whispered this time, and his familiar, stunned tone set off alarm bells in my head.
“Nash Hudson. Holy shit, it is you!” the new girl said, tossing long dark hair over one shoulder to reveal a mismatched set of hoops in her double-pierced right ear.
Nash rounded the table and walked past me without a glance in my direction. Sabine set her tray on the nearest table and ran at him. He opened his arms, and she flew into them so hard they spun in a tight circle. Together.
My chest burned like I’d swallowed an entire jar of hot salsa.
“What are you doing here?” Nash asked, setting her down, as she said, “I can’t believe it!”
But I was pretty sure she could believe it. She looked more thrilled than surprised. “I heard your name this morning, but I didn’t think it would really be you!” “It’s me. So … what? You go to school here now?” “Yeah. New foster home. Moved in last week.” She smiled, and her dark eyes lit up. “I can’t believe this!”
“Me, neither.” Em stood and pulled me up. “What is it we’re not believing?”
And finally Nash turned, one arm still wrapped casually around Sabine’s waist, as if he’d forgotten it was still there. “Sabine went to my school in Fort Worth, before I moved here.”
“Yeah, before you ran off and left me!” She twisted out of his grip to punch him in the shoulder, but she didn’t look mad.
“Hey, you left first, remember?” Nash grinned. “Not by choice!” Her scowl was almost as dark as her grin was blinding.
What the hell were they talking about? I’d already opened my mouth to say … something, when Tod winked into existence on my left. Fortunately, I was still too confused by the arrival of Nash’s old friend—please, please just be a friend!—to be surprised by the sudden appearance of his mostly dead grim reaper brother.
“Hey, Kaylee, you …” Tod began, running one hand through pale blond curls, then stopped when he saw Sabine and Nash, still chatting like long-lost relatives, while the rest of us watched. “Uh-oh. I’m too late.”
“Too late for what?” Emma asked, but I could tell from the lack of a reaction from either Nash or Sabine that Em and I were currently the only ones who could see Tod. Selective corporeality was one of several really cool reaper abilities, and now that Emma knew about him, Tod rarely appeared to me alone. For which I was more than grateful—Em was one less person who thought I went around talking to myself when I was really talking to the reaper.
“To warn you,” Tod continued. “About Sabine.”
“She comes with a warning label?” Em whispered.
I crossed my arms over the front of my jacket. “Well, it can’t be sewn into her clothes, or we’d see the outline.” Sabine’s black sleeveless top was so tight I could practically count her abs.
Emma raised one brow at me. “Catty, much?”
“Well, look at her!” I whispered, both relieved and very, very irritated that neither Nash nor Sabine had given us a second look. A strip of bare skin showed between the low waist of her army-green carpenter pants and the hem of her shirt—an obvious violation of the school dress code—and she wore enough dark eye shadow to scare small children. And—most grating of all—the look worked for her. And it obviously worked for Nash. He couldn’t look away.
“I don’t think it’s her you have a problem with,” Emma whispered. “It’s them.”
I ignored her and turned to Tod. “I take it they were involved in Fort Worth?”
Tod nodded. “Yeah. If you’re into really dramatic understatements.” Great.
“Hey, you two, care to introduce those of us on the periphery?” Emma called, betraying no hint of Tod’s presence. She was a fast learner.
Nash looked up in surprise. “Sorry.” He guided Sabine closer. “I’m guessing you’ve already met Emma?” he said, and the new girl—his old girl—nodded. “And this is my …” Confusion flashed in Nash’s swirling eyes, and he dropped his hand from Sabine’s waist. “This is Kaylee Cavanaugh.”
Sabine truly looked at me for the first time, and I caught my breath at the intensity of her scrutiny. Her eyes were pools of ink that seemed to see right through me, and in that moment, the certainty—the terror—that Nash would want nothing to do with me now that she’d arrived was enough to constrict my throat and make my stomach pitch.
“Kaylee …” Sabine said my name like she was tasting it, trying to decide whether to swallow me whole or spit me back out, and in the end, I wasn’t sure which she’d chosen. “Kaylee Cavanaugh. You must be the new ex.”
Resisting the overwhelming urge to take a step back from Sabine, I shot Nash a questioning look, but he only shrugged. He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t even known she was there until she walked into the quad.
“I …” But I didn’t know how to finish that thought.
Sabine
