“Hey, hey, a lot of angry energy over there. I’m going to need you to bring it down a couple notches. I’m really not feeling your vibe. You, pretty lady.” Tony points at Sable then throws his thumb in my direction. “How’d you get linked up with this sad sucker?”
“She summoned me,” I snap, seeing the ounce of fear leaving her eyes. Sable is none of his concern. “It’s time for you to go.”
Tony holds up his hand for a high five, and Sable, very slowly, lifts hers, watching him wearily. My eye twitches when they touch. “That’s sick. I didn’t know that was possible. Wait, wait. Was that when you disappeared? Dude, I was worried.”
“How did you get here?” I ask, wanting to tell Sable to fuck off so he’ll stop flirting with her.
Tony shrugs. “Felt a pull from our dorm. Decided to follow it.”
Sable raises a brow, glancing between me and the hellhound. “Dorm?”
“Don’t answer?—”
Tony cuts me off. “Yeah, we bunk together. I called dibs on the top one two minutes before he came into the room on induction week.”
Fuck this day.
Is he going to spill every bit of detail on our lives? To this human? To this fuckingstrangerhe just met?
Before he can attempt to embarrass me further, I step forward. “That’s enough. Let’s go,” I say to Tony, gesturing to the door. “I’m sure you have a lot to tell me.”
“Why can’t the hot girl hear?”
My temper rises, veins bulging in my neck. “Tony,” I warn.
Instead of heeding my tone, he nudges me and looks at Sable. “Just ignore him if he’s giving you a hard time. We were working on some breathing techniques before we left to help him chill out. Don’t think it did anything. But Lincoln—trust me, you don’t wanna call him Lynx. He has always been a grumpy bastard.”
“Your name is Lynx?”
“Lincoln.” She doesn’t get to call me that. Only my little brother can.
“I prefer Lynx.”
I flinch at her words, like my soul is glass starting to shatter, and my mind rockets elsewhere.
“Lynx,” Dylan whispers, refusing to call me by my real name because it’s harder for him to pronounce. “Can we play?” He holds up a little toy dog I made him; there’s another one beside him that doesn’t have any legs.
“Sure,” I reply, taking the broken one and grabbing a piece of chalk. He follows the line I draw on the wooden flooring with his toy, both of us crawling on our hands and knees until we reach our mom’s bed.
We both pause, the animals no longer moving, as we hear her heaving on the other side of the cloth we hung up to act as a wall. The sound grows louder as she coughs and chokes, then goes silent.
I press my finger to my lips. She doesn’t need to know we can hear her. Mom always tries to hide her illness from us andputs on a brave face, but I know it’s getting worse. Being the big brother, I do as I’ve been told when she’s like this and pick my brother up, wipe the dust from his knees, and take him to the hallway to continue playing.
I blink away the memory that slams into me, anger still tight across my face as Tony leans his elbow against the wall near him.
Lowering his voice, he asks, “If you ain’t tappin’ this fine ass, reckon she’d want a bit of me?”
I roll my eyes. “She can hear you, fuckwit.”
Sable doesn’t exactly tell him to get fucked, and the way she chuckles at him makes my heart accelerate.
Why is she chuckling? He isn’t funny. He’s an asshole who never knows when to shut up.
“You have a girlfriend,” I point out.
“Fuck me sideways. We aren’t a thing.” Casually, like this is an average, normal interaction amongst friends, he asks her, “Have you ever had a threesome?”
That’s all I need to grab him by the ear and drag him the fuck out of the room and away from her.
