“Yes.” I forced a smile out.
She eyed me a minute longer then conceded. “Fine. It’s dropped.”
She turned to Chase. “You her new partner?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said flashing her his dimples embedded in a charming grin.
She grunted at him, unmoved by its high wattage. “Then you better be good for more than trying to get into her pants in a damn locker room. If she gets hurt while y’all are out there together it’s your ass. You got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again with a salute.
She scowled at him then left us alone.
I didn’t give him the opportunity to restart what we’d been doing or myself the opportunity to want him to. I brushed passed him and headed for the locker room door. “Come on,” I called over my shoulder. “Or we won’t make it to Centennial Park by sundown.”
We completed our patrol without further incident of the sexually charged kind. We didn’t come across any Brethren, which Chase was on the lookout for, but we did dispatch three daemons back to where they belonged.
I was thankful for the fact that we’d both rode our bikes to the area, because it provided me a valid excuse not to need to hop on the back of his and to make my way home by myself.
At least I thought it did. I avoided riding pressed up against Chase on his bike, but I didn’t get out of him accompanying me to my apartment.
I used the remote control to open the garage a few feet before I approached it and abruptly zoomed into it and parked my bike in my assigned spot. By the time Chase followed behind me and found an open parking spot for his, I was already swiping my remote against the keyless entry pad to open the glass door that led to the lobby of my building.
“Thanks for seeing me home. I’m good from here,” I called out behind me as I walked into the lobby and closed the door. My head turned to the right a fraction to catch him in my peripheral. I pretended like I didn’t see that he’d dismounted his bike and had started in the direction of my building. I quickly pressed the button to call the elevator then pressed the button to manually close the doors sooner than they would have shut on their own. I got off at the top floor and damn near sprinted to my apartment door. I unlocked it and slammed it shut maybe a little too forcefully behind me. I
crossed my living room to the closed door that led into my bedroom. I turned the knob, walked inside, and collapsed face first onto the bed. I forced my mind to remain a neutral slate. I recalled functional groups of organic compounds until I fell asleep.
My mind was neutral when I went to sleep but I had no control over what topic it wandered to when I first woke up. Blue eyes, and deep dimples, and strong arms braced around me were the first things it conjured when my alarm clock drug me out of unconsciousness. Then long, expert fingers were the next thing it thought about and I caught my own hand mid creep on its path up my thigh. No. I was not doing that again. Especially not while thinking about
him.
I dressed, went for a run, then came back and showered and left for class. Instead of going home afterwards I stayed on campus. I went to the library and made myself get some real studying done. My test was three days away. I spent the remainder of the day locked away in the book stacks.
I only emerged when my stomach started to grumble too loudly for me to ignore. I grabbed an espresso and a sandwich from the coffee house on campus and went back to memorizing functional groups and all of the many ways they could react with one another. When my stomach grumbled again it was ten minutes until six. I stared down at my phone wandering if Bennett would let me get away with playing hooky for a couple of days if I pretended to be sick. I couldn’t hide from Chase forever, but I figured if I didn’t come in contact with him for a few days it would sober me up.
I dialed Bennett’s number and coughed into the phone when I heard the line pick up. “I don’t feel well. I think I’m coming down with something.”
“It has to be a pretty nasty something to put a Nephilim under the weather,” Charissa’s amused voice traveled through the phone.
I coughed again. “I know right. I don’t think I’m in any shape to patrol tonight. Can you call my partner and let him know he’ll be going at it alone?”
“Um hmm. And you can’t because…?”
“Because my throat is on fire and it hurts to talk.” I was aware of how lame my excuses sounded. I sucked at lying on the spot.
“Ah got it. I’ll phone your partner and let Bennett know too. How many days do you think you’ll be out of commission?”
I hacked into the phone again. “Three maybe four.” I groaned weakly for good measure. “I’ll come by headquarters on Sunday to check in. I should be better by then.”
“Gotcha. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it. Thanks.”
“No problem. See you Sunday.”
I could have sworn I heard Charissa’s faint laughter in the background as she hung up the phone.
I dialed a second number as I left the library and walked back to my apartment nearby. The phone picked up on the third ring. I gave my grandfather the same story I’d given Charissa and as I knew he would, he insisted that I come home and rest for the remainder of the week. The cook could make me soup and I could recuperate in my old room. As a bonus, he added that my grandmother was in New York. She served on one of the committees that helped organize the Met Gala. I planned to agree to his offer all along but knowing that she was out of town was the icing on the cake.
When I walked in my apartment I packed a small duffel bag with a few days worth of clothes and texted Whitney so she wouldn’t worry when she came home and I never showed up. I hadn’t seen her since the charity ball but that wasn’t odd. I’d expected her to stay over at her date’s place and I was shut away in my room unconscious Sunday when I was at the apartment. She’d probably left by the time I woke up and headed out or was taking a late afternoon nap herself. Our schedules never intersected on Mondays until early in the evening, after she’d finished with a full day of classes and work-study in between them. She loaded her Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays up, preferring a heavier load at the beginning of the week than at the end of it. Thursday through Sunday were for partying and chillin’ in her words.
I grabbed my book bag I’d sat down along with my keys and left for my grandparents’ house in East Paces Ferry. If Chase showed up at my apartment to check on me after Charissa told him he’d be going at it alone for a few days I wouldn’t be there.
My grandfather was still at his office when I arrived, but as promised their housekeeper, Ingrid, had my old room ready and a hot bowl of soup waiting for me. She made the most delicious homestyle chicken noodle soup ever. I hated nearly never getting sick when I was younger because it meant that I didn’t get the soup much. Every now and again I would feign illness just so she’d make me a pot. I think she eventually caught on because she started working chicken noodle soup into her weekly meal rotation. I scarfed the soup down and went back for seconds and then admittedly thirds.
“And that is why I never fret about making a whole pot just for you,” Ingrid told me as she cleared the empty bowl from in front of me at the dining room table. “I know it’s not going to go to waste.”
I smiled at her. “It was delicious as always. Thanks Ingrid. You don’t have to wash my dishes. I can do that myself and wash whatever you used to make the soup too.”
“Pfft.” She waived her hand dismissively at me. “Nonsense child. I can do my job. It’s what I get paid for.”
I knew from experience not to argue with her.
“Thanks,” I said again.
I left the dining room and settled into one of the big, comfy suede recliners in the theatre room. A projector screen the actual size of one you’d see in a movie theatre hung in front of them. I picked up the remote and turned it and the cable box on, flipping through the channels. I settled on reruns of Gossip Girl, one of my all time favorite shows. And yes, I know how contradictory that sounds when I was from a blue blood family myself and rejected everything about it and being a socialite. Still, the constant drama and antics the main characters found themselves in was always entertaining to watch. And Nate and Chuck were too hot not to look at on a weekly basis.
Before I could really get into the episode where Blair loses her virginity to Chuck in a limo at the end, my phone rang.
“What’s up!” I said by way of greeting.
“Funny. You don’t sound sick,” a familiar male voice laced with skepticism said over the line.
What the fuck,
I mouthed silently. I yanked the phone away from my ear and stared at its lit screen. The number that sprawled across it was an unfamiliar are code and damn it why hadn’t I looked at the caller ID before I answered it. I’d assumed it was Whitney calling me back from when I texted her. My grandmother was out of town and my grandfather was working. She should have been the only reason my phone rang.
I coughed into the phone’s speaker then brought it back to my ear. “Well I am.” I tried to distort my voice, making it sound raspier and speaking low into the phone.
A beat ticked between us. “Okay, well feel better,” he drawled. “This is my number. Save it so the next time I call you’ll know who it is before you pick up.”
I pictured his lips twitching in amusement, in line with what I heard in his voice. Then I heard the click of an end button being pressed.
I cursed and typed
Chase
above his number. Next time I’d see his name and know not to answer it.
My phone rang again and I wisely looked at the screen before picking up. It was the person I’d been expecting the first time.
“What’s up Alex? How come you’re at your grandparents house until the weekend?” She sounded just as suspicious as Chase had, but for a different reason. Whitney knew how much I preferred being in my own space and usually out of the confining one of theirs. It wasn’t their actual house that was the problem as much as it was the suffocating world that it represented and that came with being so close within my grandmother’s reach.
“Nothing. I’m just not feeling too well and I wanted some of Ingrid’s soup.” I went with the same lie I’d told everyone else. I wasn’t yet ready to fess up to her about the real reason I wasn’t at our apartment. I needed to mentally prepare for the badgering that would undoubtedly follow it.
“Uh huh, sure,” she snorted. “Do you being there have anything to do with Chase? What happened after the Fox? Did y’all do it and now you’re hiding from him?”
What in the hell? Was she psychic or something? She always hit the nail on the head with her conclusions about the reasons behind my actions.
“No we did not do it.” It was the truth. We only almost did it. Kind of. “And you know by saying
do it
we sound like we’re back in high school right?”
She laughed into the phone. “Whatever. I was trying to be sensitive to your born again virgin ears.”
“Like you ever bother any other time?”
“True,” said still laughing.
I laughed too. And damn it felt good to do so. It made me feel a little less heavy.
“Since you are
sick,”
I imagined her making air quotation marks with her fingers when she stressed the word, “does that mean you’re not working either?”
“Yes, why?” I asked cautiously. She sounded like she was up to something.
“Because I have this rush thing to go to and—“
“Oh no. Absolutely not,” I cut her off before she could finish the question. It was something she’d been trying to persuade me to do with her since Freshman year. I declined then and I was declining now. “I am not doing it. So if you have been waiting on me to change my mind, stop, or you will never rush. It’ll be a college experience you miss out on.”
“Come on, please Alex. It’ll be fun. And good for you. You need to socialize with people more and stop being such a damn introvert all the time. Think about all the parties, and sexy guys, and fun events.”
“I am. Which is exactly why I am saying no.”
“Okay fine,” she sighed exaggeratedly into the phone. I knew she rolled her eyes as she did so. “You don’t have to rush with me. But can you at least come to informational event with me tonight? I don’t know anybody that will be there and it will make me feel less awkward. Besides, you owe me. The guy I’ve been secretly in love with since the sixth grade is the guy you are supposed to end up marrying.”
She played her ace in the hole. The one thing she could hold over my head to make me cave to almost anything. She’d crushed on Ben throughout all of middle school and throughout all of high school. She had even hooked up with him a time or two.
But Ben’s family and my family had ties to put it mildly and my grandmother had been scheming since I’d graduated high school to make us a matched pair. He was her hand picked perfect husband for me. I had nothing to do with my grandmother’s actions and no control over her outlandish ideas. I didn’t even like Ben all that much. He was too perfect to the extent that it made him perfectly boring. Still, I felt guilty about it and whenever Whitney brought it up I always caved in to whatever she was using it against me to get.
“Fine,” I mumbled. “I will go. But I am not rushing. Alright?”
“Yeah, yeah. I hear you. The informational starts at 8:30. Can you make it to the Kappa Lambda house by then?”
I groaned, smacking my forehead with my hand. Why me? “Yeah, I think I can.”
“Alex,” Whitney caught me before I hung up the phone.