Chapter 7 #2
No. Get a grip, Gwenna. I give my head a swift shake. What the hell was I even planning to say, exactly? Going to beg them to form a protective circle around me? Because they’re not the solution. Or even the problem.
I just need to…get out of here.
Escape, calm down, and figure out some Plan B for proving how carefree and well-adjusted I am.
This whole thing was a mistake.
I clutch my drink a little tighter.
“Thanks for the…” I trail off, realizing I don’t know what, if anything, I have to thank them for. “I’m going to…”
But they’ve already disappeared.
“Gwenna!”
Blonde hair, a tart little smile. It’s Claire.
“I’m so surprised to see you here,” she says, in a tone of voice that suggests this isn’t precisely a compliment. She swings her hair over her shoulder, revealing collarbones dusted with shimmer above a bronze-colored tube-top. “The caps are pretty…lively early in the year.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “You can say that again.”
We’re on the edge of the dance floor, not mixed into the crowd but just beside it, and the pumping of the music and writhing of the dancers makes it feel as claustrophobic as an iron maiden.
Next to her, Elena sips her drink, shifts her weight toward me, smile tilting just a little too slow, like her center of gravity isn’t quite cooperating. Her drink sloshes over the rim as she takes a step closer.
“So you’re Little Miss Thing,” she whisper-shouts in my ear. “What’s your deal ?”
I blink. “I’m…sorry?”
“You come out of nowhere, show up weirdly, like…late,” Elena says, glancing at Claire, “you show off in French?—”
My chest clenches. I wasn’t showing off.
I hate that. Hate that so much. Any time I show enthusiasm, get into what I’m doing, it’s always Gwenna, stop showing off.
Like that’s why I’m doing it. For attention.
Is it so hard to believe that maybe I just like it?
That I’m good at it?
Elena’s still talking. “…and somehow you’re in with the fencing team?” The incredulity in her voice has strayed from gossipy-casual to genuinely harsh.
I grip my glass harder. “I’m not in with them, ” I say as evenly as I can. “And I wasn’t showing off.”
“ Sure ,” Elena drawls. “You’re just carrying around that little handkerchief for no reason. No reason whatsoever.”
“I…” There’s no easy explanation for why I have it. I’m not even sure why I have it.
“They don’t date, you know,” Claire interjects. “They’re sworn not to. For…focus and stuff.”
“Okay?” I say. “I don’t want to date them.”
Elena laughs. “Oh, really? Then why were they all over you just now?”
Is she serious? “ All over me? Come on.” I laugh, trying to break the tension. But it backfires. Hard .
“Don’t fucking laugh at me,” Elena says, voice shrill enough to draw a few stares. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
I shrink, instinctively, from the sudden attention. “Nobody,” I say. “No one. I just?—”
“Hey, knock it off.”
I whirl around to see who’s speaking.
It’s him. The pierced guy from earlier, with the tattoos—Kai. Leaning against the bar, eyeing us.
Elena is not pleased at being interrupted. But her voice is sweet as ever. “Excuse me?”
“I said knock it off,” he repeats, cool and calm. “Take it down a notch, eh? And maybe lay off the G&Ts.”
“You’re one to talk.” This, from—to my surprise—Morgan, who’s at the bar just a few people away. “Cool it, Kai.”
“Cram it, succubus,” Kai fires back at her.
Elena’s face goes instantly blank, placid as a sunny day. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but this is a private conversation. Do you mind?”
Before Kai can object, Claire expertly sidesteps, boxing him out. Morgan, wherever she was, appears to have disappeared, too.
Then Elena turns back to me.
“Listen,” I say hastily, spreading my hands wide. Maybe I can reason with her. Girl to girl. “I get it, okay? You like Lanz. Fine. Cool. I am… so not interested. Like, truly, I promise you. No issues here.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Elena’s face contorts. “Who said I liked him?” she hisses, face pink. “Stop spreading rumors about me.”
“I…what?”
“I’d never try to get them to break the rules. And risk our winning streak? How could you say that?”
She sets her jaw, narrows her eyes at me.
And smacks the drink from my hand .
“Oops,” she says flatly, not even pretending to look sorry. “My bad.”
A thousand pieces of glass scatter across the floor, earning yelps and omigods from the crowd.
Now everyone’s looking.
“Maybe you should lay off the drinks, sweetie,” Elena says from above, breath hot in my ear. “Maybe?—”
“Maybe you should step the fuck off.”
This time, Kai doesn’t let Claire block his path. He practically shoulder-checks her out of the way, sweeping a gaze up and down my whole body. “You okay?”
I can’t move. Can’t even nod.
“Oh my God,” Claire murmurs, a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Elena, for her part, takes a moment—lips parted in shock—before she snaps back to standing. It’s astonishing—from quivering emotion to calm and collected in just two dabs of the eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Things just got a little?—”
“Save it,” Kai barks. In a single, swift motion, he kneels and returns, something clear and glimmering now in his hand.
It takes a moment to register. A piece of glass.
“Oh my God!” Now Claire leaps backwards, drawing a chuckle from Kai, who jabs the glass after her.
“Yeah? I know how to use it, too.” He pivots to Elena, cocks his head. “You wanna go?”
“Kai. Stop. ” Lanz barges in from Kai’s other side, grabbing his wrist with surprising ease. “Just stop.”
“What?” Kai says, trying and failing to shrug him off. “I’m just coming to the aid of a damsel in distress .”
His words are loose, sloppy. Behind him, Callahan looms, thick arms crossed, as Lanz’s grip flexes with the effort to keep Kai’s hand immobile. And all around us, the crowd is getting louder and louder, murmurs into the occasional shout, the heat of more and more eyes burning into my skin.
“Let me go,” Kai says, yanking away from Lanz again. “Let me?—”
“ Drop it. ”
That voice.
Clear as glass, cold as ice.
Kingston.
He cuts through the crowd effortlessly, people simply parting for him to cross, mouths falling open and eyes goggling in astonishment, and I catch snatches of words:
Is that…
…but he never …
…can’t believe, holy shit…
Claire lets out a frightened meep sound. Elena cowers, but not without a glance at Lanz. Lanz, for his part, is impassive—blue eyes trained on the middle distance—as is Callahan just behind him. Kai is sneering, flings the chunk of glass to the ground with a faint tink tink sound.
But Kingston…
Kingston is looking at me.
Standing at attention, arms crossed, his golden eyes steady, focused.
And I have never, ever wished to be invisible more than right now.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I shake my head. Noncommittal. Can’t speak . I swallow the rasp in my throat and try again.
“Fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” someone mutters. It’s Morgan, threading her way to the front from the same direction Kingston just came from.
But Kingston seems satisfied with my answer.
He breaks his gaze away. Sweeps a look around the room. Something—disgust? Disappointment?—curls in his top lip. The most emotion I’ve ever seen from him.
He straightens his posture.
“Get out,” he cries. “Everyone. Party’s over. Go home.”
Murmurs of disappointment, even a light groan of protest, but everyone obeys, and frighteningly quickly.
Claire rushes to Elena’s side, handing her a purse and staring fury at me as they leave through the main double doors, and the tides of humanity sweep out person by person, no one’s eyes ever leaving me.
Finally, finally, it’s empty. Just silence. I look for them—for Kai, Lanz and Callahan, Kingston—but they’re already shadows in the doorframe.
And I…
I’m…
My blouse is still dripping, my heart is still pounding, and my fingers are sticky with whatever’s left of my cocktail.
I’m a disaster.
“Come on,” someone whispers, a perfumed arm draping over my shoulders. It’s Morgan. “Let’s get you out of here, roomie.”