I didn’t have to worry about keeping a story straight with Logan. It was refreshing. Freeing. Relaxing—when he wasn’t storming into a classroom to save me from a demon, that is. And at the same time, our connection was intense, developing into a deep friendship that turned into romance at what felt like a breakneck speed, even though I’d known him for nearly three months. If I continued down this path, I knew where it was going to end. It was going to end in the word that was way too soon to even be thinking about. The word Logan all but said in his letter.
His wonderfully poetic letter. Damn, that boy can write.
He promised to protect me no matter what, and I believed him. If I decided this was too much, and I needed to pull back from him, he’d understand. He gave me an out.
I rolled over and covered my face with my pillow—the pillow I’d cried into for two nights, terrified that he’d been taken from me, from this world.
It’s not going to get easier. Walk away now. Walk away and protect your heart—what little part of it you can salvage.
The scared part of me found the idea tempting. I was standing on a cliff. Logan hadn’t exactly promised to catch me. But he’d promised to hold my hand on the way down.
And the next morning, Logan replied with a shy, endearing smile when I squeezed his hand, and I knew I made the right decision to fall.
Chapter 11
“CAN I BORROW a pen?”
I looked to my left where Logan leaned across the aisle, his hand outstretched and his fingers flicking backward in a “gimme” gesture. I reached into my bag, my fist first closing around a boring ballpoint pen before dropping it in favor of the glittery pink one that I had stuck in my notebook.
This one had a fuchsia plastic flower on the top.
“Here you go,” I said sweetly, returning his smirk as I dropped the sparkling pen in his palm.
“Oh, good. Pink flowers. My favorite,” he drawled, turning back to face the front of the classroom where our English teacher, Miss Doyle, was droning on about Shakespeare.
It had been a month since Aiden attacked me and disappeared. A month since Logan had left me that letter. And my life had been pretty normal for the past four weeks.
Well, if by normal you meant that my demonslayer boyfriend spent every spare moment teaching me self-defense, sparring with me on my rooftop with our magical swords, and my dead best friend spent most of her free time making out with her brand-new, also-dead boyfriend.
When it came to my life, normal was a relative term.
After English we headed to the library to meet up with Dottie and Travis. My last class was a free period, but the school wouldn’t allow students to leave early for some ridiculously archaic insurance reason. The rule was annoying—especially because it was Friday, and I really wanted to go home early with Logan. He had the same free period— actually, he and I had all the same classes now except for gym, which was split up by gender, thanks to another ridiculously archaic rule. After Aiden’s attack, Logan had used his talents to have his class schedule rearranged so it aligned with mine. I teased him about being a stalker, but it was nice having someone to talk to in class. Even nicer when that someone had a way of making me laugh, melt and roll my eyes, all in the same five minutes.
And, you know, save me from demons—especially considering that we didn’t know what had happened to Aiden, since Logan hadn’t heard from Ajax since I was last at his apartment.
Rego had also been scarce, not that Logan complained about that.
We found Dottie and Travis making out behind the last stack in the library, his hands sweeping through her previously shellacked hairdo. Logan cleared his throat loudly, and they gasped, jumping apart.
“You guys really seem to love getting frisky in the reference section,” I teased, crossing my arms and leaning against the bookshelf.
“Like you don’t do the same thing when no one is looking,” Travis replied, mirroring my pose and tilting his head to the side. I blushed furiously—not because we did, but because we didn’t. While Dottie and Travis were setting up camp in R-rated territory, Logan and I were barely visitors to PG-13 land, sharing a few steamy kisses on my rooftop in between sparring with swords. Not that I was complaining, but...well, yeah. I guess I was complaining a little.
“What’s up with your neck?” Logan asked abruptly, gesturing to Travis. I stared, fascinated, as the purple hickey on his throat slowly faded to red, then pale pink, until it disappeared entirely.
“Is something wrong?” Dottie asked, and then I was gaping at her as her disheveled hair slowly crept back into place.
“You—your hair is all neat again—and his neck—the hickey,” I stammered, gesturing back and forth between them.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too,” Travis admitted, a faint blush creeping across his freckled cheeks, and I wondered just how many hickeys he and Dottie had seen vanish. “Guess we can’t change our appearances for long.”
“At least I died on a good hair day,” Dottie said flippantly, patting her bangs and grinning. Her uncharacteristically cheeky comment shocked me, but Travis was unfazed, kissing her on the cheek.
“Damn, Dots. You’re the best,” he said, a love-struck grin on his face. She gazed back at him with an equally adoring look, and I suddenly felt like we were intruding on a very private moment.
“So...we’ll be over at the usual table,” I muttered, grabbing Logan’s hand and leading him over to the corner spot that we’d come to claim as ours over the past month. After Aiden and Della had accosted me in the hallway, hanging out in the usually empty third-floor bathroom wasn’t much of an option anymore. It was too deserted—and Logan couldn’t exactly explain away his presence in the girls’-only room. The library was usually packed—and now that Logan sat with me, I could talk to Dottie without appearing to talk to myself.
“So, how long do you think until they forget about us?” Logan asked, his eyes twinkling at me as he stretched back in his usual chair. Always on guard, Logan preferred to sit with his back facing the corner—so he could observe everyone entering the library.
“They’ve already forgotten, I’m sure.” I gave Logan a knowing wink as I pulled out my books, setting them on the table with a dull thud. I wanted to get some homework done so I wouldn’t have to deal with it after Logan and I sparred on the roof, which usually wiped me out. Thanks to a healthy dose of my signature pout—I practically sprained my face giving my dad doe eyes and a mournful frown—my dad had finally agreed with my mom to extend my after-school curfew to seven-thirty.
Seven. Freaking. Thirty.
Yay, I’m almost eighteen and I finally get the curfew of a thirteen-year-old. Go, me.
“You don’t seem annoyed by it,” Logan observed, picking at the frayed edge of the wood-printed laminate that was peeling off the edge of the table.
“By what?” I asked, flipping through my notebook.
“By your best friend getting all wrapped up in her new boyfriend and starting to ditch you. I thought this was the kind of stuff that pissed girls off.”
“This isn’t exactly the kind of situation that gets played out in a ‘very special episode of an important teen drama,’” I said in a deep imitation of an announcer’s voice, making finger quotes around the words. “I’m not going to tearfully confront Dottie, weeping something like, ‘I want you to be happy! I just want to be important to you, too!’” I bit my knuckle dramatically and looked away with a fake anguished expression on my face.
“All right, I see what you mean,” Logan said, biting back a smile.