“Please, Nikolo, I?—”
“He said no, didn’t you hear?” Mia cuts Willan off, baring her fangs.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Well, I’m talking to you, daywalker.” Mia continues, busting out a slur for non vamps I haven’t heard in years. “He said no, so rack off.”
Willan scoffs and turns his attention back to me. “Nikolo?—”
“I said no, Willan. There’s nothing to talk about.”
Willan flinches, hurt flashing in his eyes. It’s almost the same look he got when we were kids and his brother and I turned him away and shut him down. My guts churn violently to see the echo of that rejection now. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Mia stealing herself for another verbal attack and I can’t stomach it.
“Mia, leave it.” I snap at her, then swallow hard to meet Willan's eye again, raising my chin and slapping every ounce of arrogance I can muster onto my face. “There is nothing to say. The past is the past. I’m over it. You should be, too.”
It’s total bullshit. I think the complete and total wreck I’ve become over this has shown that I’m very muchnotover the past. Willan can see it, too. He chews on his lip like he’s going to argue, while his eyes bore holes into my spirit. I’d squirm in Colby’s lap, but he’s already hard as a rock beneath me and it’s getting uncomfortable.
“Fine.” Willan snaps, and I swear I can feel a tremor vibrate in the ground beneath us. Without another word or goodbye he turns on his heel and stalks through the crowd, out of the courtyard, his ponytail swishing like its namesake.
My friends laugh like it’s a fun time. And for them, I guess it is. They might be oblivious to my shame and regret—but that’s a good thing. It means they’re more than happy to keep downing drinks with me. The knot in my stomach never loosens, but with enough alcoholised blood, I can barely feel it.
Everything just feels good, and eventually, I forget why it’s a bad idea to rub up against Colby, or let Stacey blow her smoke into my lungs or follow one shot with another and another until they all blur together.
Somewhere near the end of the night, my drama doesn’t even matter anymore. The ongoing saga of Finn and Kai takes the main stage of Hearts Gate. And their drama is more than enough to distract me from the inner turmoil roiling my conscience. At least for tonight.
WILLAN
“I can’t believe allthis drama happened and I missed it.” Lusce pouts, putting his hand to his forehead and slumping in his chair. From across the small table, Finn rolls his eyes, but I can see the embarrassed smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“Yeah, well. Notentirelyunhappy that you missed me making a drunken ass of myself. It wasn’t exactly my finest moment.”
It’s been two weeks since that night at Hearts Gate and with how busy we’ve been with classes here at the shop we haven’t been able to catch up with our usual post night debrief. Jax couldn’t even make it tonight, something about having to stay late at work for some client thing, and Bedeer and Jesminda have gone away to go visit her parents on the other side of the country. Getting older really does suck.
Though, after Finn’s story about getting wasted on assassin shots—partially my fault—and having an absolute meltdown over his relationship status with Kai—something that could have been resolved long ago with the simple conversation we kept telling him to have—and Lusce being extra squirrely about what he and Jax got up to, maybe it has nothing to do with gettingolder. Maybe we’ve all just been avoiding having to come clean about our bullshit.
Even now the memory of Nikki’s cutting rejection makes my cheeks burn and my stomach turn.
“At least Nikolo helped you out. That was nice of him.” Lusce manages to say Nikolo’s name without any of his usual horniness, but I’m too busy reacting to give him credit.
“Pah!” I smack the table so hard it makes my hand sting. “FuckingNikolo. Stuck up dickhead. Fuck him.”
Two sets of eyes swing to me, confused.
“What? It’s true! He was a dick all night, from start to finish. Letting you stay at Hearts Gate on his membership or whatever doesn’t make him some shining fucking hero.”
“Um. You know I hate to defend Nikolo, on account of him being a dick to me. But, uh, you okay bud?” Finn’s head cocks to the side and he winces, accidentally baring his blood covered fang.
“Finn has a point. You’re kind of, uh, intense about him?” Lusce phrases it like a question to ‘ease’ the blow of his correct observation. “Is this about some shit from when you were kids?”
I really don’t like when Lusce is astute about things. It’s unnerving.
“No.” I say emphatically, covering the partial truth by taking a sip of my tea. It’s scalding hot still and I burn my tongue. A ridiculous rookie mistake. At least it gives me something to look at, focusing on chilling the air around the cup rather than my friend’s eyes while I correct myself. “A little bit. It’s complicated. I wanted to talk to him, but he shut me down. Was really fucking rude about it, too. And the people he was with—absolute wankers! Just who the fuck do they think—oh.”
My tea is now rock solid ice in the cup, and I really haven’t done anything to clear up Finn and Lusce’s confusion.
“Okay then.” Lusce says slowly, drawing out the syllables as he drags my cup away from me. He sits up straighter and flips his long hair over his shoulder. “I’m not saying that I’m not entirely on your side, because Iam,of course. But are you sure you’re not, I don’t know? Being unreasonable or something?”
“How is this my fault?” I’m aware that my voice has gone high pitched, but I can’t bring it down. “I was nice! I’m always nice—shut up, Finn.” I jab a finger at our unfortunate third who’s been caught in the crossfire here. It’s his own fault for pulling that face. Iamnice, Godsdammit. “Nikolo was a first-class jerk to Finn—to all of us. You’re just defending him because you want to get in his pants.”
