“Yeah. He’s something. ” I tore my eyes away. He belonged to Amanda, whereas all I had was a vampire with a bruise fetish.
Childish, sure, but it annoyed me. Also annoying was how she was treating me like a silly schoolgirl who didn’t know better. I spoke without thinking. “Maybe you should be careful of your relationships. Maybe you should operate within the system a little more. ”
She glared at me. “You presumptuous little slag. Where the hell did that come from?” She took a step back, as if she couldn’t stand to be near me. “I’m not sure what you think you know, but Trinity was right. You forget yourself. Just because I’ve been friendly doesn’t mean that I’ll put up with your nonsense, or go out on a limb for you, or really, that anyone will. There are no teams here. No alliances. You are alone. So time to start guarding your tongue and minding your business. ”
Ronan had spotted us and was headed up the path. “Ladies. ” His tentative greeting matched the question in his expression.
“Ladies yourself. This one’s all yours. ” Amanda brushed past him, storming down to the beach.
“Wait,” he called to her.
After a beat, Amanda did, but with a huff. She held her shoulders tight and hands fisted. She seemed super pissed. I must’ve really hit a nerve.
Ronan reached behind his back and pulled the toggle of his zipper, unpeeling the top of his wet suit. The muted light cast charcoal shadows along muscular arms and broad shoulders. Not knowing where to look, I decided simply to pay extremely close attention to his fingers digging in a hidden pocket, because watching his hand was an entirely different thing from checking him out, right?
But my mind blanked when I saw what he’d pulled out. It was a tarnished brass key—one of those old-fashioned skeleton keys—long and thin with an elaborate loop at one end and jagged, misshapen teeth at the other. It was like something you might use to unlock a haunted house.
He held it out to her, offering it. The whole thing made me desperately curious. What on earth was it to? A dungeon? The city? His heart?
She glared at it, shot me an icy look, then glared back at Ronan. Finally, she snatched it from his hand and slid it into her coat pocket. She gave him a brisk nod of thanks, tossing another sneer my way for good measure. “Do me a favor and tell this nutter she shouldn’t be kissing any vampires. ” She stormed off to join the others down on the beach.
“What was that about?” he demanded, his face suddenly shuttered of emotion. His green eyes, unexpectedly vibrant in the steely light, were focused hard on me. His hair, jet-black when wet, jutted in messy spikes along his head.
As I caught the boyish sight of it, an errant pang of affection twinged my chest. Was he angry? Or was this him giving a damn?
I didn’t let myself think twice—I just dove in. “Alcántara almost kissed me. ”
Those green eyes froze into a hard stare. “Walk with me. ”
He set off briskly down the other fork in the trail, not looking to see if I followed, toward the small dirt lot where he’d parked the Range Rover.
I followed in silence. Suddenly, it felt too much to bear. Maybe it was the fault of the Dimming—I was desperate to feel the sun on my face, or to see the blackness of night around me—but this constant twilight was making me crazy. It was making me emotional.
I was learning some hard lessons about myself, among them that I was a hormonal teenager who liked to flirt with danger. But I wasn’t proud, and this profound burst of self-knowledge didn’t stop me from trying to get a rise out of Ronan. “He’s been friendly. Alcántara, I mean. Just chatting and stuff. ”
“It’s the and stuff that worries me,” he said through a clenched jaw. “I’ve warned you about getting close to the vampires. ”
He stood at the back of the SUV, and I stayed at the front, leaning against the hood to give him privacy. I heard the splash of fresh water he kept in a jug for rinsing, followed by the rustle of clothing. I waited till it grew quiet, then said, “Alcántara and I aren’t close. ”
“You have no notion what you’re toying with. ”
I crossed my arms tightly at my chest. “Please give me a little credit. Contrary to popular opinion, I wasn’t born yesterday. ”
“No. Not born yesterday. But you could die tomorrow. If you go on like this. ” He sounded angry. Maybe his relationship with Amanda clouded his judgment, or worse, was a sign of bad judgment to begin with. I wished I could challenge him on it, but I’d learned my lesson from my chat with Amanda: Don’t go there.
He came around the front, towel drying his hair. His T-shirt clung to his still-wet torso. “Are you attracted to him? Is that something you want?”
“No…I…” The tight T-shirt coinciding with a question about attraction threw me, and I cringed at my faltering reply. Not only was I a hormonal teenager; I was also an awkward hormonal teenager.
But I saw in his eyes that I’d taken too long to reply.
“Never mind,” he snapped. “Don’t answer that. ” He tossed his towel in the back, standoffish now, as though he’d made up his mind about something.
I wanted to tell him to wait, that we could talk it through. That it was something I wanted, just not with a vampire. I craved attraction and all the things that came with it—stupid stuff like sharing jokes and French fries and secrets. The feeling of someone caring if I lived or died. I wanted to tell him how I worried I might really die before I ever experienced it. That he was the closest thing to someone who’d ever cared about me—and how messed up was that? That I thought about relationships all the time, speculating about vague boys I’d never met, or him, or Josh, or vampires, too, but it was because I was young and healthy and normal, with normal, young, healthy urges. That I worried about him and Amanda, and speculated about Emma and Yas, and wondered how people even found themselves in relationships in the first place, since all I ever seemed to do was heal from bruises and sprains, and evade death as best I could.
But he didn’t give me the chance to tell him any of that. He simply said, “I’ll see you back on campus. ” Then he got in the truck and drove away.
And he didn’t even offer me a ride.