Lovely.
I kept my expression bland out of respect for her and her brother sitting across from me, but a meet-up with Ash was not something I needed right now. “Last I heard, she wasn’t very happy with me, so I’d be kind of surprised if she showed up.”
He snickered. “You’d be surprised? Really? You’ve known Ash your entire life. The girl thrives on confrontation.”
That much was true.
“So do you,” Andrew added, smiling slightly when I lifted a brow. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two.”
“And that’s not something I’m really going to talk about with you, Oprah.” Besides the fact that they were siblings, so come the hell on, it was also hard to put into words. I liked Ash. Hell, I genuinely cared about her, but I was bored with that whole thing, the expectation of our people that we’d of course end up together. I didn’t do predictable.
Andrew ignored that. “But you know what’s expected of us.” His voice lowered as his gaze met mine. One of the waitresses here was a Luxen, but 99 percent of those around us were human. “There aren’t many of our kind around our age, and you know what Ethan wants—”
“The last damn thing I care about is what Ethan wants.” My voice was deadly calm, but Andrew stiffened across from me. Nothing pissed me off faster than dealing with the Elder known as Ethan. “Or what any of them expect from me.”
His lips curled up on one side. “Something’s done crawled up your ass today.”
Yeah, and that something had a name that reminded me of a little furry, helpless animal.
“So what’s your deal?” he persisted. “Right now you just got this look on your face that said you’re either really hungry or you want to kill something.”
Shaking my head, I draped my arm along the back of the booth. The Thompsons obviously didn’t know about that girl moving in next door, and for some reason I figured it was better if it stayed that way for as long as possible. Not because I cared or anything, but because once they did realize there was a human living next door, I was going to have to deal with them bitching about it.
And I was pissed off enough for all of us already.
We ate and then I headed back home. Andrew’s sarcasm had a way of lightening my mood, but I was back to doom and gloom as I pulled up in my driveway again.
It was the Thompsons’ night to take patrols, but I was too restless to just sit inside. Our families were the strongest of all the Luxen, hence why the colony was already planning Ash and my nuptials, so it was upon us to run most of the patrols and train the new recruits.
I spent half the night out there, finding nothing to work off the building frustration. Building? Hell. That was laughable. More like constant state of anger that had been present ever since Dawson… Since he’d died. Very few things eased it. Certain things with Ash had, but the peace was always fleeting and it was never worth all the strings attached to it.
I crashed somewhere around three in the morning and woke up way too damn late, near eleven, the pent-up energy still humming in my veins. Dragging myself out of bed, I brushed my teeth, then pulled on a pair of sweats and sneakers.
Dee was already gone when I left the house and stepped out into the muggy summer weather. Her car was in the driveway, but that girl’s was gone. Hell. They were together. Of course. My anger hit near stroke levels.
If I could actually have a stroke.
I kicked off the porch steps and started jogging down the driveway. Once I reached the end, I crossed the street and then made my way around the trees. I kept myself running at a human pace so I could burn off as much energy as possible and forced my mind to empty. When I ran, I tried not to think about anything. No Arum. No DOD. No expectations. No Dee. No Dawson.
No girl next door.
Sweat ran down my bare chest and dampened my hair. I had no idea how much time had passed when I finally started to feel a burn in my muscles and I headed back home. By the time I came up the driveway, I could probably eat an entire cow.
And the driveway wasn’t empty. Her car was back.
I slowed down to a walk as I spied a pile of bags sitting behind the trunk of the car. Frowning, I reached up and shoved my hair off my forehead. “What in the hell?”
They were bags of mulch and soil—heavy-ass bags of mulch and soil.
Stopping, I glanced up at the house with a narrowed gaze. Ah, yes, plants for the flower bed that sort of looked like something straight out of a horror movie. Was Dee seriously with her? A chuckle rumbled out. Dee was going to help with the flower bed? Now that was freaking hilarious. She couldn’t tell the difference between crab grass and the real deal, nor was she a fan of dirt under her nails.
I rounded the back of the sedan and then stopped. Lifting my gaze to the skies, I shook my head and laughed out loud at myself in genuine humor. God, I was pathetic. Thought myself all badass but couldn’t seem to walk past a heavy box or bag and not help a girl out. I wheeled back around and gathered up the bags, grunting at their weight. Moving incredibly fast, I deposited them in a neat stack by the pathetically overgrown flower bed and then headed inside to shower.
It was then, as I stood under the steady spray of water, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed in real amusement.
Just as I walked out of the shower, my cell went off, ringing from where it sat on the nightstand. I walked over to it, brows rising when I saw it was Matthew.
Matthew wasn’t very much older than all of us, but he’d become sort of a surrogate father, since our parents hadn’t made the trip here. Like us, he lived outside the colony, and he taught at PHS. I knew without a doubt he would do anything for the Thompsons and us. He wasn’t a phone guy, though.
“What up?” I answered, snagging a pair of jeans that I thought might be clean from a pile on the floor.
There was a pause. “Vaughn was just here. Without Lane.”
“Okay.” I whipped off the towel and tossed it into the bathroom. “You want to add more to that?”
“I was getting ready to,” Matthew said as I dragged on the jeans. “Vaughn said they were tracking unauthorized Luxen movement near here. You know what that means.”
“Shit,” I muttered, snapping the button closed on the jeans. “We have incoming Arum.”
After all this time, the DOD couldn’t tell the Luxen and Arum apart, and our two kinds really looked nothing alike. Dumbasses. It was probably because they’ve never actually captured one of the bastards, since we always managed to take care of them before the DOD had a chance to start rounding them up, like they did with us. It was imperative that the government didn’t realize there was a difference, because even though the DOD had crawled up our asses, they didn’t know what we were fully capable of. It needed to stay that way, but it wouldn’t if they realized Arum were an altogether different species.
“Do they know how many?” I asked.
“Sounds like a whole set, but when there is one group of them, you know there’s always more.”
Well wasn’t that wonderful fucking news. My stomach rumbled, reminding me how absolutely starving I was. Outside my bedroom, I took the stairs two at a time and started for the kitchen. Changing my mind at the last minute, I walked outside onto the porch.
And I saw them.
Both girls were hard at work in front of the flower bed, and I had to admit, from where I stood, the thing already looked better. A lot of the weeds and dead plants had been removed, filling the black trash bag by the steps.
Dee looked absolutely ridiculous, delicately tugging the leaves on a new planting as if to turn the plant already stuck in the dirt, and I had no idea what she was attempting to do. Probably trying not to get dirt under her nails. My gaze drifted toward the other girl. She was on her knees, one hand planted in the fresh soil, her back slightly arched with her ass right up in the air. My lips parted, and yeah, my mind immediately went there, picturing her roughly in the same position with less clothing.