I nodded faintly, touched by her gesture. “Right.”
She got to work, blending flesh-colored creams and liquids together and dabbing them ever so gently onto the mess of bruises all over my face. The cut was more difficult to cover, but I knew she’d at least make it a little less obvious.
“I should warn you, though,” she murmured as she worked, “peopledoknow something happened with you, Claudette, and Brandon.”
I startled. “What? How?”
Her lips pursed, showing her annoyance. “Well for one thing, Claudette apparently bragged to her bitchy friends Kara and Rose that she arranged to have you beat up. This was before Rafe broke off their engagement. And for another…” She trailed off with a heavy sigh, giving me alook. “There’s a video.”
A fuckingwhat? “Come again?”
“I don’t know for sure; I haven’t exactly seen it myself. But Nolan told me that Luca told him that Brandon showed Keith a video of him beating you up. Anyway, the guys are crazy pissed off, so I figured better that you know now.” Mattie wrinkled her perfect little nose as she eyed me. “But can we talk about how you seriously need to take some lessons in self-defense? For some reason I’d thought you were kind of a badass, but the state of your face looks like you didn’t lift a finger to defend yourself.”
I grimaced, thinking of how fucking hard it had been not to defend myself. Not to strike back and pound Brandon’s smug face into the floor. But what Mattie was saying confirmed my suspicions. He’d been filming that room, and if I’d struck back, if I’d betrayed my secret life as a trained fighter in possession of a highly illegal weapon, I’d have been totally fucked.
Some small condolence for the ass-kicking I’d submitted to.
“Yeah, I’ll get on that,” I replied. “Jordan offered to teach me a thing or two.”
Mattie snorted and rolled her eyes. “I just bet he did. Okay, you look good. Ready for breakfast?”
Giving my reflection a quick glance, I nodded. “Impressive work. Thanks.”
She beamed at the compliment, then waited while I slipped on my shoes and grabbed my school bag. “Couldn’t let that slimy little prick think he’d actually hurt you,” she commented as we headed towards the dining room. “Besides, I was getting all kinds of lonely with Alex dominating all your time in your room. What did you guysdoall weekend, anyway?”
Unable to resist the urge to tease her, I grinned and winked. “You really want to know?”
Mattie gasped, stopping dead in the middle of the hall. “Shut up. Did you? You didn’t. Or did you?” Her eyes were wide as she tried to work out if I was messing with her. “If you did, I’m fucking impressed. I’d be willing to bet money your body looks worse than your face.”
I snickered a laugh and shook my head. “No, Mattie, I didn’t have sex with Alex while nursing a zillion and one injuries.” I paused, pursing my lips thoughtfully. “Not that the idea didn’t cross my mind, though.”
My friend laughed and started walking again, looking more than a little relieved. “Okay, well I can’t blame you there,” she commented. “He is fine as fuck, I’ll give him that.”
I gasped dramatically. “Did you just say something nice about my boyfriend? I’m stunned.”
“Whatever, bitch,” she grumbled. “He did take really good care of you this weekend, and he seemed genuinely worried…”
“He’s honestly not badat all, Mattie,” I told her seriously. “I think I could be kind of falling for him. Sort of. A little bit. Maybe.”
Her brows shot up, and her expression took on a bit of an uneasy slant. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t know what I believe about Alex now, but I really don’t want you getting your heart broken if he turns out to be a total backstabbing skeezeball, okay? Or, you know, you getting killed when he decides he’s bored.”
I snorted, but deep down I knew that if Alex turned out to be anything even close to what my friends thought he was, I’d be totally crushed. I was that far gone already. This weekend … it had built something real between us. I could almost feel it pulsing in the air every time we were together.
“Did you end up asking him about it?” Mattie pushed, her brow furrowing. “About the night Jasmine died?”
I swallowed hard, thinking back to the tense moment I had brought this very topic up to Alex. I had no idea why I’d done it … I hadn’t planned on it, but the timing felt right. We’d been sharing secrets. Growing closer. And no matter my surety that he hadn’t been involved, I’d had to ask him.
“Yeah, I did actually, “ I said softly, and Mattie all but ground to a halt.
“You did?” She shook her head. “And he didn’t kill you.”
I snorted before punching her not that gently. “Shut up. Bitch.”
Mattie shrugged, not at all concerned by my insult.
“He explained what happened, and he was really shook up about it,” I continued, not wanting my best friend to continue hating my boyfriend. “He said they had a huge fight, and that Jasmine ran from him. She was sobbing, missed her footing on the stairs, and fell. Alex was two steps behind her, Mattie. Two freaking steps short of being able to grab her before she fell.”
In my head I recalled his eyes when he choked out the words, how red and shiny they were. His grief was palpable. He described all the details so clearly, right down to the two story curved staircase that took his fiancée’s life. My chest grew tight again, just as it had last night.
