Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Izzy
The banging on my bedroom door surprises me. I swing it open to find an aggrieved-looking Beth, her arms filled with packages.
“Been doing some online shopping?” she asks through gritted teeth.
“No…” I say.
“I don’t think this stuff arrived for Mr. Wilder, unless he’s taken a sudden interest in evening wear and Sephora,” she shoots back. “Help me carry it in, at least.”
“I didn’t order anything,” I promise her, but I’m curious enough to follow her once she’s dropped the armful of packages on the floor to my room.
Outside the dorm, there’s a mail cart parked haphazardly on the sidewalk. Beth’s voice is irritated when she says, “Nothing can be delivered past the gates, so I had to go get all this stuff. It’s not enough to be gods? You’ve got to bring the mall home?”
“Maybe it belongs to the female godslayer,” I point out.
Beth shoots me a skeptical look, then hands over a teal blue bag. There’s a tag looped around one side, addressed to me. “Unless you don’t want it.”
“I don’t know what all this is! I really don’t. I can’t afford to buy anything from Tiffany’s. I can’t afford to buy anything from Target.”
Beth regards me skeptically for one second, then her mouth tilts up at one corner. “I think it might have something to do with those handsome idiots you run around with, Izzy. At any rate, help me carry it up.”
I’m not sure when she started calling me Izzy instead of miss, but I like it. “Yes, ma’am.”
Together, the two of us carry a ridiculous assortment of stuff up to my room.
Then she leaves, and I’m surrounded by bags and boxes.
I crouch to sort through them. There’s gorgeous jewelry, a dozen new pairs of shoes from sneakers to stilettos, high-end jeans and tops and a cocktail dress, not that I know where I’ll ever wear that.
It’s all so pretty that it takes my breath away. But where the hell did it come from?
The face of the richest person I know rises in my mind. Van Wellington.
Half-exasperated, half-delighted, I head down the hall and push open the door to his room. “Van, did you rob a shopping mall?”
Four guilty-looking, handsome faces stare back at me.
The guys are all sitting on the floor in Van’s room, cross-legged like they’re kids in elementary school again.
“I didn’t rob a store,” Van says, which is a level of precision that makes me worry what kind of felonies he’d been wracking up. He flashes me a smile that’s more gorgeous than any jewelry. “Just my parents. They deserve it.”
“Van…”
“I think I’m getting written out of the will. It seems only fair.” He shrugs, but I’m not sure that Van’s family is something he’s as immune to as he pretends.
I stare around at the guys. Making a mental note to thank Van later--as well as make sure he knows that, no matter what his family expected, he doesn’t have to buy my affections--my first priority is to figure out what trouble they’re getting into.
Because we’ve only been reconnected for a little while, but their faces of mischief-and-mayhem haven’t changed even if their jaws have gotten bigger and their shoulders broader. “What are you up to, anyway? Is this about the godslayers?”
The four of them exchange glances. “Nope.”
“So you’re not planning to add murder to today’s larceny?” I ask.
Van spreads his hands as he shrugs. “The night is young.”
They’re up to something--I can tell from the tension in the room--so I cross to their little circle and plop down cross-legged too. “All right, boys. Spill.”
My voice is light and teasing, and I’m not sure I’ve ever called them boys before. I sound so confident, so sure of myself, that it makes me stumble once I’ve spoken. Is this me? Or Loki?
Or are the two of us combined now?
“Now or never,” Aiden says.
“You’re making me nervous.” But my voice comes out smooth. I don’t sound nervous at all.
Reid licks his lips, as if he’s the one with the nerves. “Do you remember that night we played Spin the Bottle?”
“We’d been drinking.” Van jumps to his feet suddenly. “We should recreate it.”
“Why?” I ask.
Van crosses to the corner of his room, and Wilder cocks his head to one side. “When did you manage to get a bar cart and what appears to be all the fixings?”
“I’m resourceful,” Van reminds him.
“Resourceful is one word,” Reid says. “Reprobate is another.”
Van grins. The tension between them is energetic, not…angry. It’s weird, but the four of them feel bonded tonight, close, in a way that I’m not sure I always feel between them.
“You want a Cosmo, Iz?” Van asks.
I throw my hands up in the air. “Surprise me.”
I have a feeling they will.
Everyone is silent as Van makes us all a round of drinks with all the finesse of a professional bartender.
My gaze roams over sweet Reid, who refuses to make eye contact with me, Aiden, who is staring at a spot above my head, and Wilder, whose gaze locks with mine the second I glance in his direction.
What the hell is up with them?
Van carries a tray over and hands me a bright pink drink, then hovers over me, as if nervous. Which is weird. He’s not exactly a high-strung guy.
“We were way too young to be drinking that night,” I muse as I take a sip of the pink concoction that Van’s made for me, watching them all closely.
“We were all chronically under-supervised,” Reid agrees. “But we probably would’ve found our way into trouble together anyway.”
Van leans down and tries to offer Cosmos to Reid and Aiden too. Aiden rolls his eyes, pointedly picks up Van’s crystal glass of Scotch from the floor, and downs it.
Reid accepts his drink and shrugs. “It’s delicious.”
“No point in worrying about being cool, might as well like what you like,” Wilder says, smacking his knee.
“It’s endearing how even when you’re trying to be nice, you’re still a condescending jock,” Reid says, but without rancor.
I have to laugh at the banter between the four of them. “I missed you guys.”
Wilder tilts his beer back and forth idly. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about, Izzy.”
“You wanted to talk to me?”
“No.” Van sits again with easy grace, leaning forward to set an empty liquor bottle in the center of our little circle. “Talking’s not required.”
My eyebrows arch. “I do remember that night.”
I remember brushing my lips against Aiden’s in a tentative first kiss, how narrow his mouth was, how butterflies fluttered frantically in my chest. I remember Van saying, “Hey,” frowning as he pushed his hair back from his eyes with his hand. And I remember giggling before I kissed him too.
“It was one of our last good nights,” I say, and then frown, because there’s a reason they remember that night too. Part of me wants to demand to know what exactly they’re thinking about.
And part of me is just curious enough to watch it all play out. I can almost feel Loki’s amusement inside me, this sheer curiosity about how the night will unfold. Maybe the god of mischief loves these boys. They’ve always made enough chaos, no matter how good their intentions, to be Loki’s saints.
Reid licks his lips again, the movement drawing my attention to his kissable mouth, right before he leans forward and flicks the bottle to spin it around. I don’t know why he’s nervous. He’s kissed me so many times before.
It points to me. Of course it does--I don’t think Hel would have it any other way.
He looks at me, a question in his eyes, and I shift toward him. Reid moves toward me, his hand cupping my jaw before his lips brush mine.
“Well, that one’s kind of a given,” Aiden mutters to Van, so softly I’m not sure I’m meant to hear it.
“You next, twin.” Reid looks at Aiden pointedly.
Aiden cocks an eyebrow back, but then he spins the bottle. I’m not sure if his god is helpful for once, or if Aiden is just a master of sleight-of-hand; he used to do little tricks to make me laugh when we were kids.
A faint smirk tilts Aiden’s lips up. It would make me want to slap him except I know it’s his default, not necessarily cocky so much as defensive.
“Well, Iz,” he starts, and before he can say whatever smartass remark he’s about to, I grab his t-shirt and pull him in close.
His lips part in surprise, for once, not sarcasm, and then his mouth meets mine. It’s tentative at first, and then he deepens the kiss, and my lips open against his. Aiden kisses me with all the passion that burns bright under his cool exterior.
When the two of us finally break apart, he rubs the back of his hand across his mouth, and he nods, as if that was exactly what he expected. But there’s a flicker of relief across his face, as if he didn’t know for sure that I would choose him.
“Oh fuck it,” Van says, ignoring the bottle, and he catches my jaw in his fingertips. Van’s grip is firm and possessive as he turns my chin up to his face.
But he pauses, just for a second. A smile darts across my lips--he’s so Van--and then, as if that’s the permission he needed, he claims my lips with his.
“You never play by the rules.” Wilder’s voice is amused. He leans back on his elbows, his posture as relaxed as his easy smile. “I think it’s Izzy’s turn to spin the bottle.”
“I know what I want,” I say. “I always have.”
Wilder tilts his head to one side, just before I straddle his hips in one quick move. His hand strokes up my back, then catches the back of my head. Our lips sear together without hesitation.
When I break away, Wilder’s smiling, but there’s something troubled in his eyes. “We’ve got to tell you something.”
‘“I knew it,” I said. “It was larceny and murder tonight, wasn’t it?”
Wilder doesn’t smile at my joke for once, which isn’t like him. “We wanted to remember this night for a reason.”
My heart falls, and I scramble off Wilder. “What is it?”
“After we played Spin the Bottle,” Van says slowly, “Wilder and I got into a fight.”
“You two always got into fights,” I remind him.
Wilder shook his head. “Not like this.”
“We both wanted you.” Van looks away as if he’s ashamed for once, his lips pressing together. “We really went after each other.’”
“And I said, if they couldn’t figure out how to kiss you without killing each other, that we should stop,” Aiden said. “The way we felt about you… I was a dumb kid; I couldn’t figure out what to do with all my feelings. I didn’t know what I’d do if I lost all of you.”
“So we gave up on you.” Wilder rakes his hand through his hair, a distraught look crossing his face. “We abandoned you.”
“It was my fault,” Aiden says.
They all look so miserable that it twists my heart, even as I remember how lonely and lost I’d been when I walked into school and they were cool and polite. The years that I’d spent watching them flirt with and kiss other girls could have crushed me.
“We should’ve chosen you,” Reid says suddenly. “We should’ve figured it out.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I tell them. I’ve been so scared to have this conversation, but right now I look around their faces and I feel safe enough to be reckless. “Because I choose you. All of you. And this time, you can’t get rid of me.”
Grins ripple around the room.
Then Van says, “Not without a godslayer, at least.”
Wilder reaches out and slugs him, and Van tackles him. I grab my Cosmo and lift it above my head, holding it out of the fray as their muscular bodies tumble over each other’s. But this time, when they fight, it’s all friendly.
I mean it.
They’re my family, my home. Now we’re all grown enough to know what we want, and to claim it.
Nothing can pull us apart again.