How the hell do I explain that?
“I’m not sure,” I hedge. “There’ve just been things that’ve happened, like they’re trying to scare me.” Like hurling a car into the other version of me. Skipping past that… “Notes, texts. I don’t know how serious the threat is, but I’d rather sort things out now than wait for the situation to get worse.”
“You really think that someone connected to the club has been harassing you?”
I splay my free hand in a noncommittal gesture. “Maybe? Some other connections I’ve made pointed here… but they point to other places too. I’m covering all the bases as well as I can.”
Byron studies me with his penetrating gaze, as if he’s trying to read my trustworthiness through my skull. For all he knows, I have a totally selfish agenda and I’m making up this story to get him off my back.
“Look.” I dig out the phone I had on silent in my pocket and flick through to the menacing text that arrived the other day. “This is just part of it. I swear that otherwise I have zero interestin what you stuck-up pricks talk about without the women-folk around.”
As I hold up the phone so Byron can read the screen, his mouth twists skeptically—possibly because I briefly forgot that in this reality,I’mone of the stuck-up jerks too. But as he takes in the message, everything falls from his expression except concern. “What the hell? And your family is okay with you poking around?—”
“My family doesn’t know,” I break in. “I don’t know enough yet for anyone to help. I don’t want my dad to overreact. MaybeI’moverreacting, and it’s a stupid prank from someone at school.”
Byron’s gaze slides back to me. “I don’t think anyone would dare pull a prank like that on you, Elodie.”
Right. Messing with one of the top-ranked students with plenty of supposed magical skill—and a host of prestigious relatives to back her up—would seem like an exceptionally stupid idea.
A muscle ticks in his jaw. A sudden rawness colors his voice. “You weren’t thinking thatIhad anything to do with?—”
He sounds so taken aback that guilt knots my stomach. “No, of course not. What I told you last time is true—I wasn’t trying to talk to you at all. It just… happened.”
“All right. All right.”
Doubt still etches his face, but his thumb glides across my wrist, a caress I’m not sure he even knows he’s offered.
My heart flutters at the contact. A pang forms deep within it.
Byron has always given every situation his all, taken on more responsibilities than anyone should have to carry. What’s he going to think when I vanish in what I hope will be just a few more days, when Aunt Daphne finally announces my double’s murder?
Will he wonder if he should have done more, if he could have saved a girl he won’t realize was already dead? Will he blame himself for not doing enough?
This isn’t my Byron, but he no longer has his Elodie. I’m going to abandon him, all of them, to a life without a match, without a glim sparked alongside it.
They have no way of knowing that’s for the best. That it could be so much worse.
The words wrench out of me. “I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch to you before. At school and everything. You deserve the top spot. You shouldn’t have to work harder than the rest of us just to keep it.”
Byron blinks. “I’ve never complained?—”
“I know. Because you just do what you have to do. And you do it well. It hasn’t gone unnoticed. Everyone can see it, even if they don’t want to admit it like they should. You’re one of the most skilled lucents I know, and definitely the most determined, and… and you should be proud of that.”
My voice falters in the last sentence with Byron’s startled stare. I realize abruptly that I reached for him without meaning to, my gloved hand resting against his arm with a delicate stroke of my fingers over his sleeve.
Heat flares to life in his eyes, and my pulse hitches with a mix of answering desire and panic. My thoughts scatter like they did the moment I laid myself across Cole’s lap.
Byron dips his head toward mine, and one clear, panicked impulse breaks through the clang of longing. My hand whips off his arm to clamp across my mouth, warding off any chance of a kiss.
At least, that’s the idea. Byron looks down at me as if through a haze, and then the softest of smiles lifts the corners of his lips.
He tips the rest of the way forward and kisses the back of my hand.
The hot but gentle contact floods through the silk of my glove and tingles all the way across flesh and bone to my own mouth. A stutter of a sigh escapes me, echoed by a rough noise low in Byron’s chest.
He presses another kiss to my hand while his fingers sketch down my side to my waist. I can’t stop my hips from swaying toward him, can’t swallow the needy sound that works from my throat.
My pulse thrums on, beating out a rhythm that says he belongs to me and I to him.
