Chapter 2 Class Warfare
She gasps, and it’s just a little sound—just a quick, indrawn breath—but it rockets around the room like a shot.
Jaxon’s head comes up, eyes narrowed and hands clenched into fists. Flint looks up, too, and so does everyone else in the room.
Which is the last thing Grace needs right now. So even though I have a million things I want to say to her—a million things I want to hear her say to me—now isn’t the time.
So I keep moving toward the door. But I’m not strong enough to tear my eyes away, and apparently neither is she. Which just makes walking away harder. But I do it all the same.
Eventually I make it to the front of the classroom and shove my way out the door.
It closes behind me with a whoosh, and I start making my way down the empty hallways.
Classes don’t officially end for five minutes, which means I’ve got just about that long to get my shite together.
Which might be easier if my blood wasn’t roaring in my bleeding ears while every instinct I have screams at me to go back in that room and get Grace.
Because she’s my mate.
She belongs to me the same way I belong to her.
The need to do it is a beating in my blood, a sinking in my stomach, and it takes every ounce of willpower I have to keep walking. To just—
“Hudson!” The door flies open, slamming against the wall so hard, the bang echoes through the hall. “Wait!”
Fuck waiting. I’m already whirling around and fading back down the hallway straight to her while my heart beats like a fucking marching band. “Grace.”
There’s a tiny part of me that can’t help thinking this is it. She finally remembers what happened between us. She finally remembers that—
“You didn’t have to say that to Jaxon,” she says, and it douses every hope I have. “He’s going to be beating himself up for hours because of it.”
And just like that, every defense I have slides right back into place. Because how is this happening? How is my mate seriously going off on me for clapping back at Jaxon after he talked about murdering me like he deserved a fucking medal?
“You’re giving me too much credit,” I tell her coolly. “Jaxon’s never spent longer than thirty seconds thinking about anything I say.”
“You don’t know that. Jaxon is a lot more sensitive than he looks.”
“And here I didn’t think that was possible,” I scoff.
“Why do you have to be like this?” She makes a frustrated sound deep in her throat.
Maybe because you keep ripping my heart out of my chest and stomping on it? The words are on the tip of my tongue, but while I’m masochistic enough to think—and feel—them, I’m sure as shite not masochistic enough to say them.
“Because arseholes never change their spots,” I finally answer. “I would think you’d have figured that out by now.”
Grace studies me for long seconds, her golden-brown eyes I love so much drifting over my own eyes, my mouth, the hands it’s a fucking effort not to clench. And then she just shakes her head, like she can’t believe any of this is happening.
I feel the same way, though I’m fairly certain it’s for different reasons. So I shake my head right back and start to turn away. I don’t know what to say to this Grace, the one who is soft and confused and just a little accusing, like somehow it’s my fault that things have turned out as they have.
Then again, maybe it is. I don’t know anything anymore.
“I came out here because I wanted to say thank you.”
Grace’s words hang in the air between us, surprising me enough that I turn around. “For what?” I ask incredulously.
Now she’s the one looking at me like I’m confused. “For saving my life yesterday—twice. For lending me your powers for Ludares. For…everything you’ve done for me.”
She waves her hand with that last bit, as if trying to encompass everything from the last four months, including the stuff she doesn’t remember. But without her memory, her gratitude only makes things worse—and a hell of a lot more awkward.
And since it also feels like a second gut punch—or a third, who can keep track at this point—all I can think about is getting out of here. I need to be as far away from her and Jaxon as I can get right now.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” I say the first thing that I think will get me out of here quickly and turn around again. I don’t fade because I don’t want her to know how much this whole thing is fucking with me, but I’m not slow, either, as I start to walk away.
“It was a big deal to me,” she calls after me. “Considering I’m still alive because of you.”
I wave a hand in acknowledgment and keep walking. I can’t think of anything else to say right now, and I don’t want to make the mistake of saying something wrong that will come back to haunt me later. We’ve got more than enough things between us that do that already.
Except, apparently, Grace does have more to say, because she races down the hall until she can get in front of me. When I shift to try to walk around her, she puts a hand on my chest to physically stop me.
The second she touches me, it’s like my whole body goes on red alert. Heat slams through me, electric sparks dancing along my every nerve. I don’t know if it’s our new mating bond doing this or just muscle memory from before, but for one solitary moment, it feels really fucking good.
But then Grace jerks her hand away, and everything goes back to how it was. Or almost how it was, considering there’s an awareness in the air now. An electricity that neither one of us can deny.
At first, I think she’s going to try. Grace is nothing if not good at burying her head when she doesn’t want to deal with something. But in the end, she just looks at me and whispers, “How did this happen?”
There’s a part of me that wants to tell her, that wants to talk about everything that went on when we were trapped together. The words are on the tip of my tongue, all the emotions from that time tearing through me and setting my blood aflame.
But then I see her face—and all the pain and fear swirling just below the surface—and know that I can’t say anything to her.
At least not yet. Not when learning everything we said and were to each other in another life will only drive her away, will only sit between us like a wall, confusion and anxiety and expectations piling on brick after brick, day after day, until it’s eventually too high for either of us to scale.
Telling her would be giving up on us, and I’m not ready to do that yet. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the loss of her like a drowning man misses oxygen.
So, in the end, I let the memories and all the emotions they evoke stay exactly where they are. And instead whisper, “It’s going to be okay.”
Then, because I can’t stop myself, I reach a hand out and stroke it down her hair, pausing to tuck a few stray curls behind her ear.
Her whole body trembles at my touch as she lets out a long, slow sigh. And for a second, I think maybe she remembers something. Especially when she turns her cheek so that my palm brushes against the softness of her skin.
But then the bell rings—this time with the chorus of “I Put a Spell on You” because some things never change around here—and Grace pulls back, obviously stricken. “I need to go,” she tells me, stumbling over the words as she pulls open the classroom door just as Jaxon walks out.
My brother’s eyes meet mine even as he hands Grace her backpack, and in them is a deadly warning that I have absolutely no intention of heeding.