by Tate James
Luckily I was saved from further questioning by the arrival of an extremely pissed off Lucy.
“What the hell, Kit? I have been calling you all fucking morning! Are your fingers all broken or something?” she screeched, red-faced and uncaring about where we were.
I tried not to smile; she really was cute when she was mad. “Ahhh nope, fingers are all fine, thanks Luce!” I held them up and wiggled them at her to demonstrate.
“Then I can’t think of any other reason why you wouldn’t be answering your phone!” She practically seethed.
Right, still haven’t checked my phone. In fact, it was probably still sitting on the passenger seat of my car. Luce had every right to be upset. We had protocols in place for a reason, and I’d gone off the grid without letting her know I’d made it back safe and sound. For all she knew, I had been caught on my way home and might currently be rotting in a cell or getting the snot beaten out of me.
“I’m sorry, Luce; I really didn’t mean to worry you.” I gave her my very best puppy-dog eyes. I really did feel awful for breaking protocol, and I knew she was probably dying to look at the stolen memo. “Come and join us? Caleb’s buying. Aren’t you?” I gave him a pointed look, and he sighed before passing Lucy a menu.
“Sure, just sit down, Luce. I may be already used to your unique way of yelling obscenities with love, but the rest of the diner is looking at you like you might start throwing plates.” He snickered at her as she looked around in shock, as though she was only just noticing all the other customers, and quickly slid into the booth beside me. Snagging a passing waitress, she placed her usual order of a burger and fries with a coke.
“What were you doing this morning that would have Lucy so worried about you?” my far too observant new friend questioned, and Lucy froze beside me. She always was pretty awful at lying when asked a direct question. Luckily he had asked me instead because I had no issues with my poker face.
“Sleeping,” I replied with confident eye contact. “You know that; you rudely woke me up, remember?”
“Woah, what?” Lucy coughed on the glass of water a waitress had just delivered for her. “Why was Caleb waking you up, Kit?” Her scolding glare spoke volumes to why she clearly thought Caleb had woken me up, and I threw a fry at her.
“Not like that.” I laughed. “I was asleep, and this asshole decided to knock like crazy on my door, then let himself in and kept annoying me until I got up.” Caleb grinned broadly, and Lucy snorted.
“Good work, Cal. She would probably still be passed out if you hadn’t.”
“I live to serve,” he teased.
The waitress returned with Lucy’s soda, and as she placed it down, a small spark seemed to fly off her fingers, hitting a condensation ring on the table and hissing into a little puff of steam. I gasped and looked around to see if anyone else had seen it, but neither Caleb nor Lucy were paying any attention to the waitress. She herself had clearly seen something though, as her face had drained of color and her eyes were like saucers.
“M-must just be static electricity,” she stammered, meeting my shocked gaze with her own and hiding her hands behind her back. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.” It was an obligatory statement but not one she intended to wait for a response on as she scurried back to the kitchen.
“What was that about?” Caleb asked, looking confused. “You can’t get a static shock from a wet glass.” I had absolutely no idea how to explain what had just happened without sounding insane, so I just shrugged.
Lucy’s phone vibrated loudly on the table, and she picked it up to read the message. Her mouth twisted with disgust as she scanned the words, then looked up at Caleb through narrowed eyes.
“Did you seriously sleep with Anna Greengate on Friday?” she exclaimed. “God damn, Cal. I know she’s hot but that girl is just plain nasty! Even I wouldn’t go there!”
Caleb rolled his eyes and sighed. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s all over school; she’s apparently telling anyone who will listen. What gives? I thought she was with your brother.”
“She is,” a whiny voice interrupted us. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t double down right?” As though she was Beetlejuice, there stood Anna herself at the end of our booth with her perfectly styled blonde hair, fake tan, and permanently stuck-up facial expression. Worse yet, she seemed to be sporting her new favorite accessory.
“Hey, bro.” Caleb greeted his twin. “We were just talking about you. It seems Anna here has been telling people about our study session on Friday.” There was a thread in his tone that clearly told Austin to sort it out. Austin just shrugged and sat in the booth beside Caleb, dragging Anna into his lap and giving me yet another unreadable look.
“Like I care what anyone in this shit show of a town thinks of me.” he sneered, dismissing me and turning to his brother. “I don’t understand what the hell we are still doing here anyway.”
“You know why we are here: because our cousin says we should learn more about the people of Cascade Falls and what makes this town so special.” Caleb’s words were delivered through gritted teeth, and I watched them with a frown. There was definitely subtext to that statement; I just didn’t know what.
“Special?” Austin snorted. “There’s nothing special here except a couple of kids who are good at sports and some pretty little rich girls who are easy lays.”
I half-expected Anna to be offended by such a callous statement from her boyfriend, but she just giggled and batted her heavily mascara-clad eyelashes at him.
“And then of course there’s Kit,” she said, shooting me a nasty smile.
Here it comes… She was probably about to out me as a poor, damaged orphan. Anna and her like loved to rub it in my face that I didn’t belong at CFA, but before she could continue, Austin cut her off with a cruel laugh.
“There is nothing special about Christina, unless you count either her ability to look good in that hideous school uniform or her skills in spending her daddy’s money on ridiculously expensive shoes as some sort of talent? God knows she and Lucy can’t have two thoughts to rub together in those vapid little brains of theirs or they wouldn’t be a year older than the rest of the senior year.” Austin’s eyes were cold as he spat these words out.
“Except,” she managed to squeak out between giggles, “Kit doesn’t have a daddy, do you Kit? You don’t have any family. No one loves you because you’re a giant freak.” Austin went still and frowned, even as Anna continued her cackling.
“Austin,” Caleb barked, “shut your girlfriend up. No one wants to hear this verbal trash, from her or from you. I think you owe Kit and Lucy an apology.”
Austin just glared back at his brother, making no move to deliver the apology, but he did clap a hand over Anna’s glossy lips when she opened them to speak.
I clenched my jaw. It was none of their business, yet Lucy seemed to think it needed explaining. “Jonathan adopted Kit when we were thirteen.”
Dammit. Tears threatened at the pained quiver underscoring Lucy’s words. Every time I think I’m used to it, something rips open the wound which won’t heal.
“And for your information, Austin,” Lucy snarled at the darker twin, the shake in her voice warming to anger. “We are behind because we had a shitty fucking upbringing. And I have an IQ of one hundred and forty three, you asshole. Come on, Kit.” After shoving away her plate, she grabbed my hand. With a tug, she pulled me from the booth, and we left.
I didn’t look back, not even when I heard Caleb swear in a low, almost inaudible voice.
10
Following our run in with Austin and his bitchy girlfriend over lunch, both Lucy and I managed to successfully duck Caleb for a couple of days. We needed the space. Although it was his brother who was at fault, it just seemed easier to avoid both of them. We went to lunch in town and switched up our after school study location. By Wednesday, I was actually getting a bit sick of it and kind of missed my sexy new friend, but I wasn’t will
ing to forgive and forget with Austin so easily.
Between Lucy and me, we had spent hours poring over the memo which was my first ever lead on finding out what made me unique. To my crushing disappointment though, it seemed like one giant dead end, and Lucy, for all her computer genius, could find nothing further for us to pursue.
“I think I have one more avenue to try,” she announced while we walked down the hill into town. We hadn’t even been talking about the disappointing lack of clues, but she was unnaturally attuned to my thoughts, as always.
“Oh? Do tell,” I prompted, eager for any suggestions.
She nodded, chewing her lip, “I’m sending it off to some dark net friends.” My step faltered at her statement. She had made some waves in the “dark net,” the illegal underworld of the internet, with her hacking skills, and several organizations had been trying to recruit her lately. The fact that she was asking for their help was huge, but I knew better than to try and talk her out of it. She reacted really badly to me wrapping her in cotton wool—her words not mine.
“Okay… let me know how it goes?” I frowned, trying to convey my concern, and she just smiled and shrugged. I guessed that was that.
Just then, a sleek, silver car pulled up alongside us, and the passenger window rolled down.
“Hi, Kit!” The driver called out, and I bent to see who it was, as I didn’t recognize the car.
“Uh, hi… Mr. Gregoric?” I frowned in confusion and glanced at Lucy to see she was equally confused, with raised brows.
“Did you girls need a lift somewhere?” He smiled in what was probably intended as a friendly way, but I could swear his teeth were looking awfully sharp again. The effect it had made me feel a bit too much like Little Red Riding Hood for comfort.
“Uh… no. No, we’re fine. It’s a nice day for a walk,” I politely declined, biting back my instinct to educate him on how wildly inappropriate it was for a male teacher to be offering lifts to female students.
“Are you sure? I’m heading to town anyway, and you wouldn’t want to be late back to class after lunch!” He delivered the words with a laugh, but it just served to send an uneasy spike through my gut.
“We’re sure, Mr. Gregoric!” Lucy chimed in, “Have a nice day!” Grasping my elbow, she started walking again, and his car idled for a minute before taking off once more.
“So weird,” I muttered to Luce.
“Totally agree,” she responded.
Lucy and I had eaten at the diner three days in a row, so we decided to head to the other end of town for pizza at the little Italian restaurant owned by the least Italian people I’d ever met.
“Hey, Kit!” Hearing a masculine voice call my name as we wandered down Main Street surprised me. Pivoting, I found tall, dark, and dangerous from the gym jogging toward me. As it had when I first met him, my heart rate spiked sharply, and my palms broke out in nervous sweat.
“Hey, Conor. What’s up?” Hopefully my joking insinuation that he was Conor McGregor, current UFC champion of the world, would ease some of my own discomfort at his presence.
“Cute. But Conor McGregor is a lightweight.” He grinned, but the smile did nothing to soften his features. His gaze held mine for a beat, then he nodded to Lucy and extended a hand. “Hi. I’m Cole.”
Lucy took the offered hand, giving me a sly smile, then turned back to Cole. “Lovely to meet you… Cole, was it?” He nodded. “I can’t believe Kit hasn’t mentioned you to me. Where did you two meet?”
“At the gym, Sunday morning.” He absentmindedly cracked his knuckles, and I saw a web of old scars across the backs of them. Made sense—Rusty had said he was semi-pro in the fighting scene—but I thought they used gloves to protect their hands. A shiver ran down my spine as I watched his hands flex.
“Well, nice seeing you,” I told him with a polite smile. “We were just on our way to lunch so…” I tapped Lucy on the elbow to encourage her to say good bye, but she was still staring up at Hercules.
“Yes, we’re getting pizza. Would you like to join us?” She beamed up at Cole, and I stifled a groan. Fucking hell, Lucy. What are you playing at?
“Lucy, I’m sure Conor has better things to do than eat with us kids.” I answered before he could, giving her a glare to try and shut her up.
Rather than take a hint, Cole focused on Lucy. “I could eat.”
A small, surprised squeak escaped my throat at his response. The man was dressed for a workout but wasn’t actually sweating, which suggested he had to have been on his way in to, not out of, the gym. Holy shit, he makes gym gear look good though.
His tattoos were nothing short of beautiful, not to mention the body beneath them. Dragging my attention back to his face, my breath caught. Under his intense inspection, I began to understand how small animals felt when confronted by a hungry wolf.
Clearing my throat uncomfortably, something I seemed to be doing a lot of recently, I spun on my heel and led the way to the restaurant.
Throughout lunch, Lucy maintained an unrelenting level of chatter. Cole stoically fielded her inquiries with one-word answers, which left me plenty of time to watch him from the corner of my eye. The raised lines of several thick scars were hidden beneath the bright colors of his tattoos. What had happened there?
Toward the end of our pizzas, someone loomed into my line of sight at the corner of our table. I glanced up, expecting to see a waiter clearing plates, then let out a loud gasp, drawing Lucy’s attention.
“Holy shit,” she exclaimed. “Si?”
The young man standing at my elbow was lanky in a malnourished way, with sallow skin and limp, dark red hair, but he was still unmistakably our former friend Simon. Shock held me rigid. Neither Lucy nor I had seen or heard anything of him in five years. Our whole world had changed in a matter of hours in one single night. Yet his presence… it filled me with unrelenting guilt. Clearly, he hadn’t fared as well as we had in the aftermath.
“Did you need something?” Cole demanded with an edge to his voice, which thankfully gave me a minute to gather my wits again.
Simon ignored his question but flicked a small smile to Lucy and murmured, “Hey Luce, nice hair.” Then stared at me with his mud-brown eyes. “Kit. Hey. Can I speak with you? Outside?”
Still speechless, I nodded and followed him out to the sidewalk.
“Si, what... how... where...?” Okay, so my voice was back, but it didn’t mean I was coherent.
He smiled at my babbling then hugged me tightly. Really tightly.
“Jesus, Kit. You have no idea how good it is to see you!” He was still hugging me, and it was becoming a little awkward. I was pretty sure he’d just smelled my hair, too. Who does that?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, pulling out of his embrace as politely as I could manage. “How did you find us? Lucy looked for you a few years ago but couldn’t find anything on where you’d ended up after everything...”
He ignored my question and gave me a weird, lopsided smile. “You look real good. Guess you pulled up pretty well after we all split up, huh? And you managed to stick with Little Lucy. Good for you guys. You always were like sisters...”
“What are you doing here, Si?” I asked again gently. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t happy to see him; I was. But it was very out of the blue, and he seemed super cagey about something. He continued to stare at me, then eventually looked at what I wore. I sincerely hoped I just imagined that lecherous glint as he took in my school uniform.
“I wanted to warn you about something,” he started, making eye contact again and beginning to freak me out with how rarely he blinked. “But you look like you might need to be back at school soon? So maybe we can meet up later when you have more time?”
I nodded cautiously. “Maybe Pete’s Place around eight? It’s up the street. I just have to be back to school by curfew at ten.”
For a moment, his smile lit his sallow expression and reminded me of the caring little boy I used to know. He hugged me again,
a little longer than comfortable, before disappearing down the street.
Confused as hell, I headed back inside to rejoin Cole and Lucy.
“Kit…” Lucy started, then trailed off as though at a loss for words, her mouth hanging open and a frown pulling at her pixie-like face.
“I don’t even know.” I shook my head then rubbed my eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted with the weight of everything on my mind. “It was weird. He wants to tell me something important, apparently.”
“So why didn’t he?” Cole frowned as he cracked his knuckles, which seemed like an unconscious habit of his.
“No idea. He made some lame excuse about not having time. He wants to meet up later instead, so I guess I will find out then?” I bit into one of my remaining slices of pizza but found it stone cold. So disappointing; cold pizza sucks.
“Kit, this seems like really weird timing. Given… you know…” Lucy was wide-eyed and a little pale. She was referring to the timing of Simon suddenly turning up so soon after we stole the memo that might explain my existence; it couldn’t be a coincidence. My heart sank a little at the panic on her face. I needed to stop putting her in these situations. This whole game, being The Fox, it was my messed up way of dealing with my traumatic childhood, and I should never have dragged her into it. When it had all started though, after chewing my way through seven therapists in six months, I just didn’t want to be alone with my issues. So we had created The Fox.
“Where are you going to meet him?” Cole asked me with narrowed eyes, and I hesitated a moment before replying. His knuckles were still clenched, and from the set of his jaw, I wouldn’t put it past him to show up to try and keep me safe. Overprotective alpha male.
“Doesn’t matter.” I dismissed his question, then responded to Lucy. “I agree; the timing is way too coincidental. I’ll meet him and find out what’s going on tonight.”
My best friend knew me well enough not to try and tell me not to go, so instead she just said, “Be careful, will you? You’re too bloody reckless.”
