known each other.” I should be discussing this with Cole, and only with Cole, but curiosity—and maybe a little anger—urged me onward.
“Cole dated her before me. I’ve heard rumors, but I’m not one hundred percent sure why they broke up. He never said.”
Keep it together. Something about her tone... She knew something she wasn’t telling me. “When he broke up with you, how did he do it?”
She stared at me as if I were a bug under a microscope—already dissected, ready to be sold for parts. Finally she averted her gaze, but not before I caught a glimmer of pity. “It was a few weeks after Bronx and I moved into his guesthouse, and a few months before you showed up. He got me alone, sat me down and told me we were over. I was absolutely blindsided. Even the day before, we were pretty into each other. Or so I thought.”
Blindsided.
Into each other one day, but not the next.
Keep. It. Together.
Kat sidled up beside me, saying, “There you are.”
She would help me, despite her problems.
“Well, well. Hello, Ally Kat.” Mackenzie smiled with saccharine sweetness.
The two had never been friends, and probably never would be. Mackenzie, so protective of “her” boys, had tried to ruin Kat’s relationship with Frosty a time or ten.
“Hello, Love Button,” Kat replied, using the same tenor of falseness. Then she turned to me, putting her back to Mackenzie, as if the girl were of no consequence. Her cheeks were colorless, and her lips chapped from being chewed. “I’m blowing lunch and my last few hours and taking off. I’ll pick you up for tonight’s game. And I know you want to spend a few minutes explaining why you can’t go, but I’ll save you the time since there’s no way you can win this argument. You’re going and that’s final.”
I opened my mouth, but she kissed my cheek and bounded off before I could get out a single word. “What if I have to, I don’t know, help Cole?” I called. A few slayers had to patrol the streets nearly every night, just in case.
She never turned back.
“You don’t. You haven’t been put on rotation,” Mackenzie said, and bounded off in the other direction.
Cole still hadn’t added me.
Trembling, I entered the lunchroom and headed toward the table I shared with Reeve and the slayers. Halfway there, I slammed into a brick wall. Or rather, a brick wall that went by the name of Justin Silverstone.
“Move,” I commanded.
Big brown puppy-dog eyes peered down at me, beseeching. “Why would I? I’m right where I want to be.”
“That’s odd, considering your location might just get your testicles knocked into your throat.” I wasn’t falling for his innocent act. Not again. He’d once used me for information to feed to Anima. He might even have helped them bomb my house. No telling what he’d do next.
“Give me a chance to explain my side of things, Ali. Please. I had nothing to do with—”
“Save it.” I took a step to the side, intending to brush past him, then stopped as a thought occurred to me. “First, answer a question for me. Did you talk to Cole on the phone last Saturday night?”
An emotionless mask descended—the same one Cole had been donning lately. “No. Why?”
If he was to be believed, I’d dreamed their conversation. My mind really was a mess.
“Watch me as I don’t discuss that with you.” I marched to the table and sat with more of a slam than I’d intended.
“What did Justin want?” Frosty asked, looking ready to commit murder on my behalf.
“To chat about old times.”
Bronx ran his tongue over his teeth. It was his way of telling me he would be at Frosty’s side, inflicting major damage on the boy. With his spiked hair now dyed an electric blue rather than green, and the piercings in his eyebrow and lip—and, okay, the tattoo peeking from under the collar of his shirt—he didn’t have to say anything to scare the crap out of most people.
Frosty crossed his arms over his chest. “Want me to break his face?”
“That’s sweet of you to offer,” I replied, liking that I had such fierce protectors, “but if there’s going to be any face-breaking, I’m going to be the one to do it.”
“Well, if you change your mind...”
“I’ll let you know.” I picked at the lunch I’d packed—a bagel with cream cheese—and wondered where Cole had gone, what he was doing and if this day could get any worse.
* * *
What a stupid question, I told myself later that evening. Of course the day could get worse.
By five, a cold front had swept into Birmingham, and by eight I felt like a Popsicle despite my winter wear. I huddled on the stadium bleachers between Kat and Reeve. Neither girl seemed to notice the frigid temperatures. They were too busy bouncing up and down and celebrating. The Tigers had just scored their first touchdown of the game.
As the second quarter kicked off, Kat said, “So, get this. I’m, like, way more mad at Frosty than ever before. I may not ever forgive him.”
“Why?” I asked. She was paler than she’d been at school, and despite her excitement over the game, her eyes were a little glassy. “What’d he do?”
“Last night he kissed some skank—right in my front yard.”
“Oh, Kat. I’m so sorry.”
“That snake!” Reeve exclaimed. “He deserves to die a thousand painful deaths.”
Kat nodded, saying, “And that’s not even the worst part. He put her on the back of his unicorn and rode off into the rainbow. He’s never taken me to a rainbow.”
Wait. “What are you talking about?”
“My dream last night,” she said easily, then sipped her hot chocolate.
“Your dream.” Reeve shook her head. “You’re more mad at him than ever because of a dream?”
“Hey! I always behave myself in dreams,” she said. “He should, too. And if he can’t, he needs to apologize with more than my favorite flowers.”
“He actually brought you flowers?” Stunned, I blinked at her. “For what he did in a dream?”
“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you?”
At the moment, I couldn’t get Cole to say more than seven words to me. In real life.
Gavin suddenly plopped into the seat in front of me and though he grinned at me, he didn’t look me in the eye.
Was this a nightmare?
A
