Covet (30 page)

I picked up nothing. Not even a stray word or image from her thoughts. No static or music or any hint that she was actively trying to block me out.

I tried harder, staring straight at her now, focusing all my energy on the effort.

She sucked in air through her nose and rubbed her forearms as goose bumps appeared all over her skin.

Crap. I’d forgotten to keep my energy under control.

Sorry,
I thought, pulling the energy level back down.

“It’s okay,” she replied, then froze, her eyes wide.

“What’s okay?” the teacher asked from her desk two yards away.

“Oh. I, um…” Savannah began.

“I was apologizing to her for forgetting our study session,” Ron said.

Which was total bull. Savannah hadn’t even been looking at him.

Ron was covering for her. But why?

She had been going to the library with him during lunch a lot lately. To study together?

Why not study together in the cafeteria instead where everyone could see them?

Ron went out with Anne last year. Maybe Sav was dating him now and trying to hide it from Anne?

No, Savannah wouldn’t do that. She would never hurt her best friend by sneaking around with Anne’s ex.

Then again, Savannah had spent months secretly dating me last year. Maybe she’d grown to like that kind of thing.

When the lunch bell rang, I took my time grabbing my stuff so Ron and Savannah could leave first. Then I followed them into the main hall. I stopped by my locker, pretending to need to switch out books while watching them walk together down the hall. Ron must have said something funny, because Savannah laughed. She bumped shoulders with him. Then he stopped and opened the library door, holding it so she could go in first.

I stood there, frozen, while the only girl I’d ever loved disappeared into the library for a lunchtime date with someone else. But this time, watching her with another guy was way worse than when she’d dated Greg the soccer jerk. Because this time, I knew what it felt like to hold her, kiss her, see her blush and know I’d caused it. This time, her being with someone else meant I’d truly lost her.

Savannah had moved on.

* * *

That afternoon at football practice, I watched Ron. The guy actually had the nerve to nod hello at me as we headed out to the back practice field.

I didn’t nod back.

Ron was a running back, and I was an offensive lineman. Technically my job was to help him catch or carry the ball for a touchdown. I’d worked my butt off for months to earn my spot back on the team after missing half of last year.

But even the risk of ticking off the coach couldn’t help me resist the urge to miss a few key blocks that were supposed to clear Ron’s path. As a result, Ron got creamed several times. After the fourth time, Ron finally got a clue.

“What’s the deal, man?” he growled as he yanked chunks of grass and mud from his face mask.

“Whoops. I just keep on forgetting that darn play. Is it sweep right, or sweep left?” I said with the fakest smile I could manage.

He stared at me for a few seconds then stomped off.

When practice ended, he didn’t nod goodbye as we headed out the field house exit at the same time.

I was so focused on resisting the urge to magically smack him in the back that I nearly ran over Bethany waiting outside the door.

“Oh. Hey.” Confused, I stared down at her. Had we agreed to meet up and I’d forgotten? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d told her something then spaced out on it later. Why she never got angry was beyond me.

“Hi.” Smiling, she tucked her hair behind her ear. “Um, I’m sorry to have to ask, but could you give me a ride home? My car won’t start.”

“Yeah, sure.” A ride home was the least I could do for her after she’d helped me so much all summer, first in bringing my homework to me and prepping me for last year’s final exams while I was in the hospital after my wreck, and then taking me to physical training sessions for weeks afterward. I couldn’t even count the hours she’d spent cheering me through the sometimes painful recovery.

“Thanks.” Her smile turned from embarrassed and hesitant to grateful.

We walked together through the coaches’ lot to the parking lot by the sports and arts building where I’d started parking lately.

“Everyone else gone for the day already?” I asked just for something to say. Bethany never seemed to mind the frequent bouts of silence between us, but I did. Savannah and I had never had a problem finding stuff to talk about. The silences with Bethany were my fault. I didn’t pay close enough attention to think up stuff to say.

“Yeah. Savannah’s still here somewhere, though. I was going to try and find her if you were gone already.”

My feet slowed like they had a mind of their own. I glanced toward the front parking lot partially visible between the cafeteria and math buildings. Sure enough, Sav’s small primer-gray pickup truck was still there, the only vehicle in the lot’s growing gloom. Which meant its owner was probably up on the third floor of the sports and arts building, locking up the dance rooms. Alone.

Unless Ron was with her…

At my truck now, I unlocked the driver’s side door, tried to hit the electric button on the inside handle to unlock the passenger side for Bethany, then remembered. My new truck was actually an older used vehicle and didn’t have quite the number of upgrades my previous one had, including power locks.

Sighing, I leaned across the single cab’s bench-style seat and jerked up the lock so Bethany could get in. While she did, I glanced around us.

Ron’s stupid black Mustang was already gone. Which meant Sav really was all alone on campus.

I shouldn’t care anymore. She’d dumped me. Twice, even though I’d all but begged her not to. And she had a new boyfriend. I should let him worry about her now. She’d made it more than clear that I was the only one still hung up on the past.

Not to mention she was a vampire. They could handle themselves. Supposedly. Heck, she was practically the enemy now, one of the only monsters on the planet that I was supposed to fear.

All of that made for a long list of good reasons that I should drive out of here without a single look back.

Except I couldn’t do it.

Cursing under my breath, I threw my door open.

“Tristan?”

Crap. I’d forgotten about Bethany. “Uh, I forgot something. Lock the doors. I’ll be right back.” I started the truck and turned on the heater. Then I headed back to the field house, taking my time and keeping one eye on the sports and arts building’s foyer doors where Sav would have to exit when she left.

At the field house, I realized I didn’t have a single reason to be there. So I pretended to look for something in my locker for a few minutes. Then I headed back, taking my time crossing through the back lot. At the corner of the girls’ gym, I paused, feeling like an idiot, hands shoved inside my wool letterman jacket as the early evening steadily grew cooler now that the sun had finished setting.

Mercifully, I didn’t have to wait long, as Sav emerged a couple of minutes later.

I took my time returning to my truck as Sav headed down the cement ramp that led away from the building’s foyer doors. We had to be at least a hundred yards or more away from each other, the lot barely lit by a couple of lights. And yet she still looked right at me. She hesitated at the end of the ramp for a second, like she didn’t know what to do. And even knowing she didn’t care anymore couldn’t stop my heart from taking off like a jackhammer.

Her hands fisted around the shoulder strap of her duffel bag as she turned in the opposite direction and walked across the grass past the math and cafeteria buildings.

I returned to my truck, and Bethany leaned over to unlock the door for me.

“Did you find it?” she asked as I slid in behind the wheel.

“Find what?” I put on my seat belt, fiddled with the heater and the radio. Finally, headlights shone from the front parking lot then swung away.

I shifted my truck into gear and followed those taillights at a distance.

“Whatever you were looking for. Did you find it?” Bethany patiently repeated.

“No, I didn’t.”

CHAPTER 21

SAVANNAH

The look on Tristan’s face was burned into my mind. The memory of it kept flashing before me when I least expected it. He’d looked so…hurt. And angry.

I’d thought he had moved on. He’d been dating Bethany for months. How could he still be mad at me for making the right call and keeping him safe?

Maybe it was the fact that I was one of the few girls who had broken up with him, instead of the other way around. Maybe it was just his ego that was hurting and not his heart.

Whatever the reason for his anger, now that he’d figured out I could read his mind, he seemed bent on using it to punish me every chance he got.

By the second week of being loudly tortured by his never-ending variety of mental imagery, which ranged from memories of him and me together to memories of him with Bethany, I’d lost all sympathy for his side of the situation. He was acting like a spoiled brat. If he kept this crap up, I would have to call Emily and beg her to make me a memory confusion charm or whatever it was Tristan used against my gaze daze stalkers last year to keep them away from me.

And then if he ended up flunking English and getting benched from the football games because of it, well, that would serve him right for being such a horse’s rear!

Worse, Bethany’s car was still in the shop, so now I couldn’t even escape seeing him at Charmers practice. Every morning and afternoon, there he was, the golden prince of Jacksonville, sweetly walking Bethany to and from the edge of the track that circled the practice field where the dancers practiced all football season when the weather allowed it. And on days when rain drove us inside to practice in the girls’ gym in the basement level of the sports and arts building, Tristan was even closer, walking Bethany right up to the gym doorway just yards away from where I was setting up the sound system.

If he’d used the same torture strategy every time, maybe I could have learned to ignore him. But Tristan was diabolically creative. Knowing me as well as he did no doubt helped. He knew that just seeing Bethany hanging on his arm was enough to set my teeth on edge. So he saved the mental imagery for English class, and simply let me “listen” in on their conversations at Charmers practice.

I’d given up on ever getting the ink stains off my writing hand. I’d broken six pens in English class. Thankfully two of the perks of my vampire genes were speed-reading and a nearly photographic memory, so I could read from the textbook what I missed in the class lectures.

That didn’t exactly help my steadily rising stress levels, though.

The week of Halloween, I decided to get smart about English class. On Tuesday, I started taking notes with a pencil instead. Every time Tristan’s thoughts managed to make me lose control and break it, I simply used a sharpener I’d also brought so I could keep using the broken pieces to write with.

By the time class was nearly over, my pencil was down to only two inches. Which Tristan of course found vastly amusing.

Boy, you vamps really have anger management issues,
he thought, lounging in his desk with his arms crossed over his chest and his long legs stretched out in front of him.

If only the ESP was a two-way thing, the piece of my mind that I would give him…

Do y’all have a group for that?
he thought, one corner of his full lips kicking up.
A vampire therapist could make some serious dough teaching that. If he survived the sessions with his clients, that is.

Okay, now that made me smile a little. Maybe that was a good career option for me. Vampire therapist, specializing in anger management issues. If I could learn to control my own temper first, that is.

How would a vampire therapist go about advertising her services? Probably by word of mouth. Maybe I could take referrals from the council, offer counseling to help rehab rogue vamps who lost their cool in public…

Of course, maybe I should sign up for a few sessions myself,
he thought, the words quieter now in his mind. Was he still “talking” to me?
Man, the other day when I learned about you and Ron, I wanted to…
The words faded away, replaced by vivid images of Tristan pummeling the crap out of Ron’s face.

I didn’t know what was more shocking…that he thought Ron and I were dating and was upset about it, or how quickly my own fury rose up and out of control.

“Do it and I’ll—” I snarled, leaning over the armrest of my desktop, my nails digging into the wood.

“You’ll what?” Tristan murmured, barely turning his head to look at me with raised eyebrows.
What would you do to protect your precious boy toy?

Someone was grabbing my shoulders from behind, but I couldn’t see them. All I could see was the way Tristan’s eyes crackled with heat like twin emeralds held before a roaring fireplace. Eyes I wanted to poke out right now.

“Savannah, chill out,” someone murmured against my ear. Ron leaning across the aisle at my left. But that wasn’t what finally brought me back to earth. Nor was it Mrs. Knowles standing at my side, also demanding that I calm down.

It was the two fangs pricking at the inside of my lower lip. That sensation alone sent a cold wash of fear cascading down my entire body, effectively drowning the fury. And right on its heels came the stupid tears to fill and burn my eyes like poison my body refused to process. They spilled out and down my cheeks faster than I could wipe them away with my hands.

Furious embarrassment over crying in front of Tristan only made the tears fall faster.

“Why don’t you take a bathroom break and cool off,” Mrs. Knowles said, her tone making it more an order than a suggestion.

My fangs still hadn’t retracted, so I opted for nodding silently and making the fastest exit I could while still hopefully appearing human.

In the restroom, I used toilet paper to mop up the mascara tracks on my face. Then I just stood there gripping the edges of the porcelain sink.