Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
The next month is a whirlwind. I don’t see Duncan on the full moon, mostly because he’s convinced he’ll kill me. He’s probably right about that, but I also think he’s kind of embarrassed to shift in front of people. That’s fine. I can wait.
It’s hard to imagine that he’d actually kill me when he kisses me like the hero of a romance novel, all burning passion and eagerness, but I’m woefully ignorant about shifters. I don’t want to push it.
Besides, it’s midterms, which means that I’m so stressed that I feel like I could die. It’s so bad that sometimes I actually think I might.
In Prophecy and Prediction, I conjure endless images of blood—filling crystal goblets, spilling across stone floors, dribbling down walls, pouring like rain.
It doesn’t matter what I’m supposed to see, the mirror and the marble only show me blood.
Jordan laughs at me, but I’m more unsettled with each passing day.
What if this means something? It can’t be anything good.
“Think of it as wine or Kool-Aid or something,” Jane suggests, when I share my worries with her one afternoon in the library. “Don’t let it freak you out. Divination just isn’t your thing.”
And that would be incredibly practical advice if it weren’t for the dreams.
I spend my nights haunted by faces in the ocean, hidden just beneath the surface.
Human, or human enough, with wide, horrified eyes and mouths full of teeth, open mid-scream.
I just know something terrible has happened to them, that they’re all dead or about to die.
There’s nothing I can do to help. The surface of the ocean is like glass, and I can’t break through it.
I can only pound my fists and shout until they drift away one by one.
Sometimes, I see glowing red eyes, peering out from the rotting wood of a shipwreck.
Others, a pale figure in an endless, shadowed hallway.
She looks kind of like my mom, but I can never get close enough to tell.
I get the feeling she wants me to follow, but she’s too fast, disappearing as soon as I round the corner after her.
They’re just nightmares, I tell myself.
The thing is, I’ve never been prone to nightmares. These feel ominously real.
As we approach midterms, they ramp up in intensity, until I wake up one morning in Duncan’s bed, soaked in sweat. It’s two a.m., and I’m panting like I’ve just run a marathon.
Duncan lifts his head, opens one eye just a slit, and mumbles, “‘ominic?”
“It’s OK,” I tell him. “Go back to sleep. I just had a nightmare.”
But he’s blinking his long lashes and rolling to throw one arm over my chest in what I assume is meant to be a comforting gesture. “‘Bout what?”
“Dead people.”
“Ugh. Gross.”
I snort. “Among other things.”
“You OK?”
“Yeah. Go back to sleep.”
Almost immediately, he resumes snoring in my ear.
But I’m not OK. I lay awake until three-thirty, then give up on sleep entirely. After I tell Duncan goodbye, I leave a note. He’s out of it enough that I don’t think he’s going to remember me leaving, and I don’t want him to worry.
“It’s just anxiety,” I tell myself out loud as I cross campus. Nobody is out yet, but the gym opens at five a.m., and I have nothing better to do. Besides, cardio always makes me feel better. I can’t outrun my problems, but I can run until I’m too tired to worry, and that’s usually good enough.
Because apparently a note isn’t sufficient, I text Duncan. Couldn’t sleep. Miss you already.
An hour later, Aleo arrives at the gym, and we spend the next couple hours lifting weights. By the time classes start, I’m ready to nap at my desk.
One week till the next full moon, Duncan is on edge.
He doesn’t mention it, but I notice that he hovers a little closer, sleeps a lot harder.
I accidentally-on-purpose leave my dirty shirt in his room, then track its movement.
I find it balled up on his desk, then in a laundry basket, then tangled in the sheets.
I’m afraid to ask if it helps, but he’s definitely sniffing it when I’m not around, which I find endearing on a weird, primal level.
My situationship is a werewolf. I’m allowed to think his weird quirks are cute, OK?
At lunch, Jane drags me away from Aleo and April, insisting she needs someone to keep her company in line. I dutifully follow.
“So,” she says, when we’re alone and she’s scooping mashed potatoes onto her plate. “What’s going on with you and Duncan?”
After a month of increasingly obvious public displays of affection and relentless texting, I should’ve expected this, but I have no idea how to answer her. “Um…”
She sighs, grabs a saran-wrapped sandwich out of a display case. “Are you dating or what?”
I shrug, then grab a sandwich, too. “I don’t… actually know,” I admit. “Kind of?”
“Are you fucking?”
I nod. “Definitely that.”
Exasperation unfolds across her face. It’s the same look my mom used to give me when I tried to lie about leaving the back door open or who ate all the candy out of the bowl. I’m embarrassed to have put it there. “Do you want to be dating him?”
The answer comes to me before she even finishes the question, an emphatic yes. I’m confused by him—there’s definitely something he isn’t telling me, and it keeps me up at night. But I fucking love hanging out with him. He’s low maintenance, easy to get along with, attentive, excellent in bed.
But I wasn’t lying about the serial monogamy. Being alone sucks. I’m way happier in a relationship. Even a bad one.
Or at least, that’s what I always tell myself when I’m getting shouted at for the third time in a week, obsessively counting calories, detailing the inside of a car that was “destroyed” when the groceries spilled in the backseat.
I put up with it until they do what they were always going to do and dump me.
And then I move onto the next guy and tell myself it’s going to be better this time.
I have a hard time imagining Duncan getting upset about a busted jar of spaghetti sauce or shouting at me that I’d better fit into that suit for the gala next week, but at this point, rose-colored glasses are my default. I know better than to trust my own judgment.
The words, “I think so,” spill out of my mouth.
Jane isn’t impressed. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t actually know what’s wrong. I don’t think it’s Duncan’s fault. It’s probably years’ worth of terrible relationships catching up to me after an extended period of celibacy.
“I just… I need to take things slow,” I say finally. “You know, after the whole Jeremy thing.”
At Jeremy’s name, she makes a face. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”
Oh, shit. “Yeah,” I say. “Of course.” And then, because she’s still scrutinizing me, I add, “Duncan hasn’t done anything wrong.”
I shouldn’t have told her those stories about my exes. Now she knows I’m an idiot, and she’s never gonna trust me.
Her green eyes narrow. “Tell me if he does.”
Lunch goes on as normal after that, but her question follows me around all day, echoing in my head. “Are you dating or what?”
I want the answer to be yes. Even if I don’t trust myself, I trust Duncan.
A few years ago, I might’ve found him boring.
But there’s nothing wrong with steady and dependable.
He answers texts in a reasonable amount of time.
Returns phone calls. Overthinks everything.
Brushes my hair out of my eyes and cups my face when he kisses me.
The sight of him lights up my entire day.
But I get the feeling there’s a bunch of werewolf stuff he isn’t telling me, and that makes me nervous. Would he appreciate it if I did my own research? Or would he think I was too nosy? Is he keeping secrets on purpose? Does he think the details aren’t important?
“Hey,” I ask Duncan when we’re alone after dinner. “Are we in a relationship?”
He turns startled gray eyes to me, looks almost betrayed. Pained. I feel kind of bad that I caught him so off-guard.
Mostly, I’m just worried. I wasn’t expecting him to look like this, gut-punched and bewildered.
It takes him a moment to respond. “Do you want to be?”
I nod. All the excitement has fled the moment. Now I’m just anxious and embarrassed, wishing I could disappear so I don’t have to bear the weight of his gaze. “If you do.”
He purses his lips, gives me an apprehensive look. “Of course I do.”
My knees are shaking. “OK. You just seem kind of… unhappy?”
Now it’s his turn to look down at the pavement, his cheeks pinking. “I thought we already were.”
Shit. I stop in my tracks, completely mortified.
It’s not an unreasonable assumption. We’ve been doing all the things people in relationships do. With gusto and consistency. I already agreed to be exclusive.
Am I an actual idiot?
Panic climbs up my throat. I can’t breathe. I just stand there, completely frozen.
I force myself to say something. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
When he tilts his head, his eyes flash yellow. “You look like you’re freaking out.”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“What’s wrong? If you need to wait—”
“No!” I cry, surprising myself with how much I don’t want to wait. “I just—I should’ve asked sooner. Did I hurt your feelings?”
He takes his hand in mine, runs a thumb over my wrist. “A little bit, but we never talked about it, so I can’t be upset.”
When I don’t say anything, he adds, “I’m not mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
He wraps his arms around me, sighs. “No. Are you OK?”
I close my eyes, lean against him. “I’ll be fine. I’m just having a bad day.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
I shake my head.
“Wanna get a drink?”
That’s tempting, but I have a mountain of homework to catch up on, and I kind of just want to be alone. Everything I’ve been avoiding lately has come up to the surface. I probably need to acknowledge it before it drags me under. “Not tonight.”
“OK,” he says, and presses a kiss to my temple. “I’m not mad at you. We should’ve talked about it sooner. If you want it to be official, it’s official, all right?”