Deadly Crush (Deadly Trilogy, Book 1) (8 page)

Dominic hadn’t looked at me.
 
And he didn’t look back while he trailed
after Erika, head held high, and shoulders stiff and straight.
 
He left me there, tears streaming down my
face, in the dark, alone.

I looked down at the big black wolf, his
head still in my lap, and ran my hand along his fur, scratching lightly behind
his ears.
 
He huffed, a content kind of
sound, and his sad looking, golden eyes met mine.
 
I smiled a little and muttered, “I’m sorry I
kicked you out earlier.”

~ JADE ~

Monday came too
soon.
 
I wasn’t ready to face
Dominic.
 
Not after confessing that I
missed him, even if it was true.
 
He
always had a way of making me forget my anger, and as it turned out, even after
two years, he could still worm his way into my heart.
 
When he had whimpered, looking up at me with
those sad dog eyes, I don’t know, I had just … caved.
 
Part of me wanted to run to him and catch up
on everything we had missed, but a bigger part of me wanted nothing to do with
him.
 
The pack had ruined him, and if I
let him in, I was sure they would ruin me, too.

Dominic had followed me around as a wolf
for the rest of the weekend.
 
He had kept
his distance, but I could feel him watching my every move.
 
He had sat at the edge of the woods while Mac
and I had lunch at Lucy’s Diner on Sunday, and he was there, waiting, when we
had left the boutique.
 
His presence had
been comforting and nerve-racking and annoying all rolled into one.
 
Why he felt the need to stalk me as a wolf, I
had no clue, but that was exactly what he had done.

My alarm clock’s insistent beeping started
again, and I smacked the snooze button for the third time.
 
For a split second, I thought about faking
sick, but deep down, I knew that wasn’t really an option.
 
Sooner or later, I’d have to face him, and I
figured it wasn’t going to get any easier with time.

Marcy was waiting in the kitchen when I dragged
myself downstairs.
 
She was back to her
old girly girl self, decked out in a cute, and way too short, pink dress that
ruffled around her thighs.
 
She was
perched at the island with a jumbo-sized jar of strawberry jam and a plate of
toast in front of her.
 
She was giving me
an odd look, as if she had something to tell me, but couldn’t decide if she
actually wanted to say it.

“You stay here last night?” I asked, too
groggy to try to figure out what the look was about.
 
I padded over to the coffee pot and dropped
my backpack to the floor. After our shopping trip yesterday, I had hidden in my
room, tackling a stack of homework, and frankly, I couldn’t remember hearing
her leave.

Marcy, I assumed, had set out my travel mug
and prefilled the mandatory three heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
 
I snagged the coffee pot and filled it to the
brim with steaming goodness, before switching off the coffee maker and dumping
the last little bit down the drain.

“Nope, came in about twenty minutes ago,”
she said.
 
She opened the jam, and
slathered a thick layer onto her toast and then took a bite.
 
“Mom left while you were in the shower,” she
continued after she swallowed her mouthful.
 
“She’s back on mornings this week.
 
Oh, and Dad’s coming home today.”

“Huh,” I said, as I made my way over to the
fridge, and rummaged through the crisper.
 
Mom being gone already wasn’t really a shock.
 
Being an emergency nurse at the hospital
meant that she often left the house before me.
 
But Dad on the other hand, well, I was dying to know where he had been
all weekend.

I glanced over my shoulder at Marcy, and
didn’t miss the fidgety way she was sitting.
 
She crossed and uncrossed her legs, and slid the butter knife around;
she just couldn’t sit still.
 
Her lips
kept parting as if she was about to say something, but then instead of
speaking, she shoved the last of her toast in her mouth.

“You ready to go?” she asked, around
another mouthful of toast.
 
She gave me
an overly bright smile, popped up from her chair, and made her way over to the
fridge, putting away the jam.

I snagged an apple from the crisper.
 
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, and shut the
fridge.
 
I dragged myself over to my
coffee, and snapped the lid onto my travel mug.
 
I shouldered my bag, and with a quick glance around, finding nothing
that could delay leaving, I followed her out the door, and locked it.

Not having a car sucked.
 
It wasn’t a bad day outside, but this whole
walking to school thing was not for me.
 
I really wasn’t an exercise kind of girl, especially not in the morning.

The air was relatively warm for September,
although by no means was it hot.
 
I could
already see the small goose bumps popping up on Marcy’s bare arms as we walked
against the breeze.
 
The forest was a bit
more red than it had been on Friday and a few leaves had already fallen,
scattering the gravel path with rich fall colors.

“I talked to Dominic,” Marcy said casually,
breaking the silence.

Hearing his name made a vein at my temple
throb like a pulse, and I really didn’t know if it was because I was nervous
about seeing him, or if it was because he talked to Marcy about me.
 
I cut her a look and said, “Don’t want to
hear about it, Mac.”

She grabbed my wrist, pulling me to a
stop.
 
“He told me about this Aidan guy.”

I groaned and shook her hand off.
 
“He’s over reacting.
 
I met the guy for like thirty seconds and I
haven’t seen him since.”
 
I shrugged my
shoulders, and took a deep gulp of coffee as I started walking again.
 
The gravel crunching under my shoes suddenly
sounded too loud.
 
“And besides that, Aidan
was only trying to foil Dominic’s kidnapping attempt.”

Marcy laughed.
 
Hard.
 
So hard that she actually
snorted.
 
“Wow, seriously?
 
And you say I’m dramatic,” she said, and shot
me a rueful look.
 
I opened my mouth to
snap out a defense, but she threw her hands up and silenced me with a hard
glare.
 
Her laughter died instantly.
 
“Don’t even try it.
 
Dom told me the whole story.”

Two years had gone by without so much as a
glance from my former best friend, and now this.
 
I huffed noisily.
 
And men said women were confusing.
 
“Why does he even care?
 
If I
was
into this guy, what does it matter to him?”

“Jade, he loves you,” she said, solemnly,
giving me one of those looks that said that I should have already known it.

Ha!
 
Loves me.
 
What a joke.
 
I didn’t even bother to acknowledge that comment, and thankfully, Marcy
didn’t push it.
 
If Dominic loved me so
much, then where the hell had he been all this time?
 
Ignoring me.
 
That’s where.
 
Or playing cruel pranks on me and then pretending he couldn’t remember
my name.
 
Sure, the cruelness wasn’t only
directed at me, it was directed at all the
outsiders
,
but still … one weekend of playing nice didn’t make up for all the nastiness.

We broke through the trees, stepping off
the gravel path and into the parking lot, just as the warning bell rang
out.
 
The lot was full of empty cars with
only a few stragglers rushing into the school.

“We need your car back,” Marcy said, as we
both began to sprint across the parking lot.

The hallways were packed with students
rushing to their lockers, or darting into homerooms.
 
Marcy and I quickly parted, both mumbling ‘
See you
,’ before taking off to our
lockers.

Dominic’s locker was only a few down from
mine, and I heard his laughter even before I rounded the corner and he came
into view.
 
He was leaning against the
wall of metal, with Aidan and they were laughing.
 
Laughing!

I was stunned, gawking at them.
 
Aidan was the first to notice me, and he
smiled and winked at me.
 
The way he
looked at me was as if we shared a secret.
 
And darn it, but those pesky butterflies started to wake up in my
stomach.
 
What was it about this guy that
made my nerves all jumpy?
 
He was cute,
he had helped me out, but really, this was a bit ridiculous.
 
I wasn’t, and would not become, one of those
boy crazy girls just because a boy winked at me, even if he did have a
knee-melting smile.

Aidan hadn’t shaved.
 
That was the very first thing I noticed after
getting over the shock of seeing him acting all buddy-buddy with Dominic.
 
He was in dark blue jeans and a deep green
hoodie that almost looked black.
 
His
hair was messy, not in a messy style, but just messy, flipping up at the
sides.
 
Everything about him, the way he
held himself, the way he dressed, said that he didn’t care what people
thought.
 
And that alone made him, well,
it made him seriously attractive.
 
I
loved confidence, and he emitted it like a tidal wave.

I snapped my mouth shut, realizing that my
jaw had started to drop, and steeled myself, letting the thick doors within me
slam shut, sealing off my emotions.
 
It
was something my father had taught me.
 
‘
Just imagine big doors, honey,’
he had
said.
 
‘
And when you want to hide, just pull them closed.’

It worked for about two seconds.

All the doors were sealed tight.
 
I took a deep breath, gripped my travel mug a
bit tighter, and I started down the hallway again toward my locker, focusing on
my footfalls instead of staring at them.
 
I could figure out why they were suddenly friends later.

I focused on walking, counting the tiles as
I went.
 
Anything for a
distraction.
 
I didn’t get
far.
 
A pair of bright red heels came
into my line of vision and I looked up.
 
Erika.
 
The black leggings and a
black, frilly empire cut shirt made her look extra-thin.
 
Her pouty lips were painted to match her
shoes, which, personally, I thought seemed like way too much effort for school,
and her jet-black hair fell straight over her shoulders.

“I’m only going to tell you this once,”
Erika said, drumming her fingernails on her hips.
 
“Stay away from them.”

My eyebrows lifted so high it felt as if
they were in the middle of my forehead.
 
I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about.
 
It was clear by the way she stood in front of
Dominic and Aidan, as if she was trying to block them from my view.
 
“And if I don’t?” I asked, with a strangled
laugh.
 
I don’t know what made me say it,
but it came out before I could stop it.

She made a
tsk
sound and wagged her finger from side to side.
 
“It’s really not up for debate, Jade.
 
I know you’ve been sneaking around, trying to
get Dom’s attention.
 
And I saw you
checking out Aidan.
 
They’re mine.
 
Both of them.”

Erika held my stare and she looked …
threatened, as if I was standing in her way and all she had to do was knock me
over and the prize would be hers.
 
And
that was confusing as all hell.
 
Out of
the corner of my eye, I noticed that Aidan was watching me intently with a half
smirk and curious eyes, and Dominic, well, Dominic looked as if he was about to
burst out laughing.
 
I couldn’t say if it
was at me, or at Erika.
 
His eyes were
darting too quickly between us to really tell.

I smirked.
 
“We’ll see about that.”

Her jaw dropped, and I stepped around her,
feeling almost giddy from the dirty look she shot me, and I went straight for
my locker.
 
I know it was a horrible
thing to think, but honestly, I was absolutely thrilled (and royally pissed
off) that one of the
she wolves
was
considering me a threat, even if I really had no clue why.

~ AIDAN ~

Jade was livid when
she stormed past me and it was the cutest thing I had ever seen.
 
It was also the most confusing thing I had
ever seen.
 
She shot me (or maybe — hopefully
— it was to Dominic) an ice-cold glare.
 
It was penetrating, and
commanding,
and my
inner-wolf clawed at my stomach, wanting to run after her and make her happy.