He nods but his focus is on Piper. Checking, assessing. Worrying.
“I’ve got her. Don’t worry too much,”
We leave quickly, making sure to avoid Stacey as she stands trying to talk to Jacob who ignores her. After buckling Piper into Asher’s, way too expensive for me to drive, car. I race back to the Academy.
Holy shit. It’s only month two in my first term at Marrowton and it has been nothing but drama, secrets and heartbreak.
I still need to confess about Marlowe, which I was going to do tonight, but with all this coming out I will have to postpone thingsagain.
Argh. Tomorrow. I will tell Asher first thing tomorrow.
THIRTY FOUR
ASHER
“This is all insane,” I knock back the shot of whiskey I moved onto when Ruella and Piper left. Corden followed alone, feeling a little out of his depth not long after Jacob told Stacey to leave him alone, she did just that but not before she gave him the date for a scan.
The man is having a baby with someone who isn’t my sister. I always assumed when they both figured out themselves, they would be together forever, and now he will be tethered to Stacey for the rest of his life.
I thought I was going to have to murder my best and oldest friend in the world, the man I would trust with my life and my sisters, but he is now the man who has destroyed what little of my sister I fought tooth and nail to get back. She was starting to recover and open up again, her panic attacks over the past two weeks have been manageable. Now I have no idea what damage has just been done.
“I know,” Jacob looks as defeated as Piper did when she left. The urge to murder him vanished once I learnt the whole story. It has all been a huge mistake, one that he will be paying for greatly once his parents find out, they have been planning the wedding between him and my sister since Jacob held Pipers hands when she was a baby, helping her toddle to the fridge for juice when I wouldn’t do it. “She’s never going to speak to me ever again,”
“Give her some time,” I tell him as Daylan’s phone starts to buzz on the table. “Once she hears the full story, she might come around. I can’tsay she will be able to be as close to you as she was. But she won’t cut you out of her life completely,”
Daylan answers his phone and starts to talk fast and low, he speaks in Italian, so we have no clue what he is talking about.
“I should have told her when I found out. Rue warned me this would happen. I deserve whatever comes,”
My brows furrow. “Rue knew?” There she is keeping secrets again, it’s like a compulsion at this point, but one I understand to a certain degree. With what she has been through and her fragile trust, she just never thinks to share anything with others, like she has never had anyone to depend on.
I am going to be that person.
“Yeah, but don’t blame her, I asked her to keep it a secret until I figured out how to tell Piper,” He huffs. “Even gave me a bloody deadline,”
I chuckle. “Yeah, sounds like Ruella,” I bump my shoulders with his, attempting to shift the conversation from my sister now I have changed my mind about killing him. “I thought you didn’t like Rue, now you care if I lose my shit at her,”
He sighs, knocking back his own three fingers of whiskey. “She’s growing on me,”
Daylan’s voice cuts through the growing noise around The Hollow Lantern, his eyes narrow, lips curling around each word in fury.
More Italian.
I really need to start learning the language so I can figure out what the hell him and his family are always dealing with. It’s always secretive and urgent, but the bloodlust I have seen first-hand from him makes me think this whole Duke crap is connected to something more.
“Non Mandare tutti a puttanesca. Ciao,” Daylan snaps and ends the call before he stands. “Come on lovesick fools. Time to go, I have stuff to sort out,”
“Hmm, wanna share with the group. Three heads are better than one,” I suggest knowing he won’t share anything.
“Nah it’s all good. Just some stuff with the family is all,”
“Okay,” We pay the bill and head for Daylan’s Porsche, where he takes another call in Italian on the way back to the Academy, this one not as urgent, but I hear a woman’s name being mentioned and the grip on the steering wheel increases to the point I think he might leave marks in the leather.
After saying my goodbyes and giving Jacob a reassuring hug I head to Ruella’s room exhausted. The days keep coming at me hard and if I didn’t have Ruella to come back to, I honestly don’t know how I would cope anymore. She’s quite literally, the best thing in my life. I don’t care that we have only known each other for a short space of time, it doesn’t feel that way to me and I think it’s the same for her.
I knock and wait. The door pulls open and a tired white-haired beauty stands before me in thick knee-high socks, barely there shorts andmylacrosse jumper.
Devine.
