Chapter Twenty-Six #3
“It’s not fine. You know it’s not fine. And you know it’s not your fault, right? It’s not your fault.”
“They said something was wrong with the brakes.” His eyes flicker between mine frantically. “They said they found something strange under the hood of the car.”
I shake my head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
He blinks, once. Twice.
“I’m just saying,” he says, changing the subject. “You don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into.”
“What?” I ask, exasperated by the sudden shift.
His tone is harsh, and his foot is tapping wildly underneath the desk. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Malachi—”
He flinches.
“Stop being like this!”
“Like what?”
“Ugh!” I groan, turning back to the front of the room and gripping the side of my desk until the wood cuts a bruise into my palms.
From behind me Malachi’s whispered words slither into my ears. “He’s not who you think he is. He’s changed just as much as we have.”
His words are reminiscent of our argument that last night together. His tears splashing against his shirt. What does Malachi know that I don’t?
I churn over his words, but they ring false. “No,” I say, twisting to face him again. “You’ve changed, and I’ve changed, but he’s the same. I’m only just now seeing him how he’s meant to be seen. Now that you no longer eclipse him.”
He’s tense, the lines between his furrowed brows every bit as defiant as they’ve always been.
His head tilts to the side, teeth grazing his bottom lip. “Okay.” He shrugs mockingly.
I can’t resist searching his eyes for evidence of the past. Does he remember it the way I do?
The way it was before? He stares at my face plainly.
Openly. The ache in his expression a painful reminder of all that has changed since last summer.
Despite the anger filling my chest with the heat of a thousand dying stars, the quickening of my heart is completely unrelated.
God, why does he have to look like that?
I sigh. “Just leave me alone, okay?” My fingertips accidentally brush his as I lean forward, my necklace slipping from beneath my shirt.
We both snatch our hands back with a hiss.
I shiver against the shock shooting through me at his touch.
“My life and who I’m close to is none of your fucking business. ”
His eyes drop to the gold swinging in front of my chest, a look like recognition on his face as he reaches forward to grip the round pendant, his fingers barely grazing the skin at my throat in the process. It doesn’t matter though, because my breath hitches as fire burns in their wake.
His words are a deadly mix. Both hot and cold, a growl that doesn’t scare me but instead pulls at something deep within. They are a promise, or a curse, I cannot tell. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he murmurs. “You are my fucking business.”
His gaze slides up my throat before meeting mine, something harder there now.
He releases the pendant, glancing down to my lips.
His throat bobs as he looks away, a flush spreading up his neck, spilling across his cheeks.
I can hear nothing beyond my heart drumming in my ears.
His knuckles are white as he grips the pencil in his hand.
I watch as it cracks beneath his touch, the wood splintering slowly.
Time has come to a stop.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see some of the other students staring. They have been this whole time. They whisper to one another, their mouths hidden behind their hands.
We sit there for longer than we should, electricity buzzing between us.
“Ms. Scott!” Dr. Rogers’s voice breaks through the spell and I jump, turning just as she finishes smoothing back her hair.
She’s winded, and her eyes are wide and bright, her scarf half unraveled. She’s also fifteen minutes late.
“Would you mind turning around in your seat, please, so we can get started?”
Murmurs from the class send heat to the tips of my ears as I face the front of the room.
This is the second time my necklace has caught Malachi’s attention. Does he know what it means? Does he know about the witches? There was something else in the set of his mouth. I just can’t figure out what.
Idly my hands draw the symbol in the margins of my paper. Again and again as Dr. Rogers drones on.
I stop when I feel a light brush against my hair.
The softest touch at the back of my neck like a breeze.
Malachi gently pulls one of the spiral curls, just like he used to, sliding his fingers down until it elongates into a pin-straight strand before releasing it and watching as it springs back into a coil.
I stiffen and lean forward, avoiding the tenderness of his touch.
You are my fucking business.
Even if he is a part of all this somehow, even if everything I’ve ever known about him was a lie, he will know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’m not someone he’s going to walk all over.
I might not know exactly what’s going on, but I do know one thing for certain—I feel a change happening deep inside me, and I’m not going to back down from it anymore.
If anyone needs to be scared, it’s him.