He shook his head.
His mind had been made up.
And even if I knew in my heart his accusations weren’t true, my actions said otherwise. I was selfish. So selfish.
Unredeemable.
I whispered, “What do you want from me, Jav?”
One side of his mouth quirked up in an easy, dimpled, smile, and for a second, I thought I might be hallucinating.
“Honestly, nothing. Now go,” he ordered. “And please… just… don’t come back.”
The pain struck me like a gut punch, sucking all the wind from my lungs, hollowing me out.
Palm cupping my mouth and tears slipping down my face, I backed into the hall, stumbling past a smear of white coats and blue scrubs and automatic doors that didn’t open fast enough?—
I burst onto the sidewalk, the day too bright, too warm, too promising. I gulped down air as if I was starved of oxygen, each inhale burning.
Javi’s words, Chet’s stare, Ryder’s betrayal, the gravity of the night before crashed into me with a flash of a pearly white object and a flare of tainted magic.
I didn’t know where I was going, I just had to run, had to get as far away as possible.
As I stumbled around like some kind of idiot, my shoulder clipped the person walking past me.
“Ow! Seriously?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, hand shooting to my arm, rubbing at the soreness.
“River?”
It took effort to draw my gaze up from the ground. When I did, surprise shot through me—the person I’d run into was Javi’s older sister.
I swayed to the side, still unsteady on my feet. “Jade.”
“What is wrong with you?” Narrowing her violet-sparkle-dusted stare, she said, “Are you high or something?”
“Of course not.” I wiped the salt from my face with my sleeve. “Just tired.”
At one point, Jade and I had been friends, but all I got from her now was a frigid glare.
There were bags under her eyes, and her warm copper cheeks were sunken like she was equal parts sad and haunted.
“Shouldn’t you be at Berkeley?” I blurted. Anything to fill the awkward silence, although I’m pretty positive we both heard the frantic pounding of my heart.
“I should,” she said, “but I’m not.”
“Javi’s up.”
Pursing her lips, she raised a brow. “Why do you think I’m here?”
Of course, duh. She must have driven down from school at like four in the morning, right when she got the news. “I’m s?—”
“Save it.” Her jaw worked back and forth. “I need to get inside. I know my mom went to grab him some clothes and his comics, and I don’t want him to be alone. But I want you to know one thing.” With a slow, controlled step, she closed the distance between us, her stare boring into me with a special kind of fury. “You leave my baby brother alone.”
I didn’t move, didn’t so much as breathe.
“I don’t know exactly what happened that night, but I know Javi, and I know you.” She jabbed a hot-pink nail into my collarbone. “The recklessness isn’t what gets me. It’s the audacity to think my brother wouldn’t come running after you.”
