These Vengeful Hearts

by Katherine Laurin

  * * *

  “What’s your poison?” Chase asked while we waited in line to order.

  My typical large Americano didn’t sound as alluring as it normally did. Standing in such close proximity to Chase and the menace of the note stuffed into my pocket had my stomach in knots. My palms itched almost to the point where I couldn’t think of anything else, and I didn’t think it could handle the jolt of so much espresso.

  “I might get a café au lait.”

  “Mmm.” He glanced at me sideways. “That’s a pretty serious drink.”

  I willed myself to forget everything else and enjoy the banter. “I’m a pretty serious girl. Didn’t you know? I’m quite intimidating.” My voice was a sultry slither.

  He threw his head back and guffawed loudly. I had a feeling that everything he did required his whole self. All in, all the time. The idea of living like that, not reserving part of yourself from the world, was terrifying and a bit exhilarating. Maybe I could try it once my stint in the Red Court was over. It would be nice to go all in on something that wasn’t revenge.

  When our turn to order came up, Chase motioned for me to go first. Damien, gorgeous barista and object of Gideon’s admiration, was manning the register. I had to hand it to Gideon, Damien was a catch worth admiring. He’d graduated from another high school a year early and was currently taking classes at the community college at only seventeen.

  “Where’s your sidekick?” Damien asked.

  And he was funny.

  “He got stuck at school. I suggest you think about comping my coffee if you don’t want him to find out you called him my sidekick.”

  We chatted for a few more moments before I ordered a café au lait and grabbed my wallet out from my bag.

  “I got it,” Chase said to Damien.

  Damien raised his brows at me and shot Chase an appreciative look. “What can we get you?”

  “Can I get a medium mocha with two extra pumps of vanilla?”

  Chase paid for our drinks, I gave Damien a wave before the next customers stepped up, and we went to stand near the end of the counter, where our drinks would be delivered. After a minute, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Two extra pumps of vanilla?”

  Chase hung his head in mock shame. “Mochas are my weakness. I eat pretty clean. Food is fuel and all, but I can’t pass up a good mocha.”

  He caught his lip between his teeth, genuinely abashed. My hand lifted toward his mouth but stopped short of touching him. A now-familiar tingle hummed through my fingertips.

  Chase caught sight of the motion and grabbed my hand as I pulled it back, holding it in a light grasp. He was holding my hand. This boy, who I was not supposed to even be talking to, was holding my hand. To distract myself from the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears, I focused on the intricate dance of the baristas buzzing behind the counter.

  Whatever gene I had that made me an avid planner and chronic overanalyzer kicked into high gear. What did this mean for me and Chase? What did this mean for me and the Red Court? Of the two thoughts, my mind was most drawn to the former. I wasn’t sure if Chase was the kind of guy to hold someone’s hand casually.

  I risked a glance at his face. His eyes were asking if this was ok and telling me that this meant something. Despite the teasing and competition between us, Chase was the kind of guy who worried about his ex-girlfriend and her family. The kind of guy who didn’t like the drama that was part and parcel with me. I didn’t want the Red Court to take Chase from me, but how could I get any closer to him with all of my secrets between us? I pushed that thought aside, wanting something just for myself. Just this once.

  Our moment lasted a little while longer until the barista called out our drink order from the bar. We moved in sync, getting in each other’s way, and laughing as we collided. I’m sure we looked silly, but inside the bubble of us, it was perfect. I didn’t have much levity in my life, and I drank in every moment like it could be my last.

  As we walked out of the coffee shop, I noticed a familiar car a few spots down from mine. It was Matthew’s. I’d all but memorized his schedule by now. He should be in Mrs. Perez’s AP Chemistry class. Of every class, this would be the one I’d least expect him to skip. I looked at my watch. We had five minutes before we had to leave to make it back for next hour.

  “Hey,” I said to Chase. “I see a friend over there. I think I should go say hi.”

  He peeked around me to where Matthew was sitting in his car. “Do you want me to wait here?”

  “I’ll just be a minute.” I handed him the keys. “You can get in if you want.”

  Chase shook his head. “It’s fine.”

  It was cold, but I wasn’t going to argue.

  Cautiously, I made my way over to Matthew. There was no time for a proper plan. I couldn’t even think of what approach I should take. If he was angry at Gideon, he might be angry at me, too.

  Matthew was sitting in his car, staring down. He looked...lost. There was something vulnerable about his body language. If there was ever a time to press my advantage, it would be now. I knocked gently on his window and he startled.

  “Hi,” I said over the whir of the window rolling down. He looked like he needed a friend. Unfortunately, he was getting me. “I don’t normally see you here. Do you have this hour off, too?”

  “No.” His normally velvet timbre sounded fractured. “I decided coffee was more important than learning today.” There was a rueful set to his green eyes and his short brown hair was tucked under a wool cap.

  I made a show of peering past him to see if there was coffee in his cup holder, but it was empty. “Well, I better let you get to it if you’re going to make it back for your next class.”

  He didn’t reply but dipped his eyes away from me and back to his lap. There was something in his hands. A woven bracelet I recognized. It was a gift from Gideon. A small fissure cracked open in my heart. Pretty soon, these weak spots were going to cost me. But not today.

  I dropped down to be eye level with Matthew. “You’re not ok, are you?”

  He took a shuddering breath and shook his head. There was hurt and sadness in his expression. If the tables were turned and Matthew had broken up with Gideon, what would I say to him? I wasn’t sure, but it would be something.

  “Stay right here. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  I popped up, not giving him a chance to say no, and jogged back to my car and Chase. He lifted his brows in question.

  “So, I think I need to stay here. My friend might be in trouble.” This was a wholly accurate statement. Gideon was in trouble. “Do you think you can drive my car back to school? I’m sorry to do this to you. I wouldn’t unless it was important.”

  He smiled at me and something—my feelings for Chase maybe—burrowed deeper into my heart. “No worries. You help your friend. I can tell it means something to you, so it’s the right thing to do.”

  How wrong you are.

  “Thanks. Let me give you my number and we can meet up after school.”

  I slipped my journal out of my bag and tore a sheet out of the back. I quickly scrawled my number and handed it over.

  “See you later.” He leaned down to give me a quick kiss on the cheek.

  My skin prickled pleasantly at the contact and I lifted my hand to the spot still warm from his lips. “Bye,” I whispered.

  After Chase left the parking lot, I turned to walk back to Matthew. I had to help Gideon, no matter the cost. To me or anyone else.

  CHAPTER 28

  UNINVITED, I CROSSED to the passenger side of Matthew’s car and let myself in. Once settled, I turned to him. “I’m concerned about you. You don’t seem ok.”

  Matthew could not have looked more surprised if I’d confessed my undying love. Not my most subtle move ever. With the clock ticking, I didn’t have time for subtlety. If I had a
ny chance of using my position to help my friend, I had to do it quickly.

  “I’m fine.” His speech was stilted, forced.

  “That’s the least convincing thing you have ever said.” My aim was to appear sympathetic, but even I could see I was falling short. My nerves were frayed like the hem of an old sweater, slowly coming undone, and I didn’t want him to see how shaken I was.

  Matthew laughed, but it wasn’t the sound I remembered. It was angry and bitter and joyless. “I’m not fine, but why should you care? We aren’t friends.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t matter. You’re still someone I know and someone who is clearly in a bad place. I want to help.”

  “How could you possibly help me?” he all but sneered, his lip curling slightly.

  “I can help anyone. I’m very capable, if you didn’t know.” This at least got a small laugh from him. “Sometimes just telling someone about the thing you’re holding on to can help. Maybe not always, but you’d be no worse off. You haven’t killed anyone, right?”

  He looked up sharply, and for a panicked second, I thought he might know why I was there. Then the moment passed, and his face cleared. He may not have murdered anyone, but killing someone’s reputation was still pretty bad.

  “You can start with how you’ve been. I haven’t run into you since you and Gideon broke up.” I could do this, have a conversation with someone I used to hang out with.

  “I’ve been avoiding you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Seeing you usually means seeing...Gideon.”

  Was Matthew’s request born from a broken heart? No matter how I looked at things, with what I knew of their history, I didn’t think so. It was like relationship algebra; I had to solve for X. There had to be a factor I was missing.

  “I thought your breakup with Gideon was pretty amicable. Or as amicable as any breakup could be.” How would I know? I’d never even had a boyfriend.

  Matthew shrugged. “It was, I guess. We kept in touch for a little while after. We’d text or message, but then I couldn’t see a point to it and stopped.”

  “Is that why you’re so sad? Because you fell out of touch? That’s easy to fix.”

  “No. Other things have been...hard.” His voice trailed off and he looked out the window.

  I could take a cue from Matthew on how to be vague. My mind flipped through ideas to get Matthew to open up. Casting my eyes around his car for anything else we could talk about, they fell back on the bracelet he had clutched tightly in his fist.

  “I remember the day Gideon got that bracelet for you.”

  We had spent a day at the reservoir the summer before, the bright sun broiling the gravelly beach until it was coal hot. Despite the temperature, the water was still deliciously cool, and we spent hours lingering along the shore bemoaning the lack of a real beach with sugar-fine sand and an ocean breeze.

  “Me, too.” Matthew was quiet. Perhaps he was joining me in the warm swathe of that memory.

  A girl had walked by our trio, selling handmade friendship bracelets. I rolled my eyes dramatically at Gideon when he asked if we should get a set, but Matthew caught his eye and smiled hopefully. Gideon leapt up and produced a five to purchase a matching pair. At the time, I thought he was doing it to spite me, not realizing that the token had meant something to Matthew.

  “Gideon still has his, too,” I said, remembering it sitting on his dresser the last time I was at his house. “Just because things end, doesn’t mean they weren’t important. Both then and now.”

  A tear escaped down Matthew’s cheek. “It’s not that. I just... Things have not been the best at home. My dad left me and my mom.”

  “Oh my... I’m so... That has to be hard.” Words were failing me, and I kicked myself for thinking this could be easy. That anything could be so straightforward that I could fix it with a simple conversation. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Ember.

  “He said he found someone else, someone he couldn’t live without. He just up and left us one day like we were nothing.”

  This was more than petty revenge. It was the act of a broken heart.

  The floodgates opened, and Matthew’s words tumbled out in a torrent. “A couple weeks ago, I saw you and Gideon walking around. I don’t know what you said to him, but he laughed so hard he had to stop and catch his breath.”

  What did it say about me that I didn’t even remember that happening? There were dozens of moments just like that one in recent memory.

  “Afterward, I was upset and I wasn’t thinking clearly, so I did something—”

  He cut himself off abruptly, but I knew how that sentence ended. He was so angry that he put in a hit request on Gideon. Because Gideon’s life wasn’t crashing down around him and his was.

  “Hey.” I reached out and grabbed his hands, encircling them as much as I could with the bracelet still tucked between his fingers, like a weird Russian nesting doll. “It’s never too late to make things right. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Or what you almost had someone else do. You. Can. Fix. It.”

  As he looked into my eyes, I could see he knew. He knew what I was and how much I understood what he wouldn’t say. But suddenly, it didn’t matter. Not to me. This was for Gideon, and I would go to any lengths to help him.

  “Do you hear me? You can still fix it, but time is running out.”

  Matthew pulled his hands from mine and blinked rapidly for several seconds. That must be what you had to do when the world tilted on its axis—adjust your eyes to the new view.

  “I can?” he whispered in disbelief. I doubted he was conscious of it, but his fingers fidgeted with the bracelet as he spoke, petting it like it was a lucky rabbit’s foot. “I’ve been sick over it for days, trying to find a way to undo what I’d done. I regretted it immediately. I even tried to force the locker open to get my note back.”

  “You can walk away from this, but you need to do the same thing as before and ask to stop it. Like today.”

  He nodded. “I will.”

  I waited with my hand resting on the door until he looked back to me. When he finally did, I let my gaze harden so he would see nothing but determination and know I was not one to mess with. “I’m trusting you. Don’t make me regret it or I won’t be the only one who does.”

  The warmth of Matthew’s car faded from me quickly when I stepped out into the cold air. Ending our conversation with a threat felt wrong. Kindness wasn’t something I could give him, but there was someone else who could. I turned and leaned back in the car. “Talk to him. He’s a better person than either of us. If he knew, he’d want to be there for you.”

  “I know he would, but I don’t want his or anyone else’s pity.”

  The way Matthew said pity sounded synonymous with poison.

  “It’s not pity.” I nodded toward the bracelet. “It’s friendship.”

  CHAPTER 29

  THE WALK BACK to Heller was long and cold, but I cocooned myself in the warmth of my triumph. I grabbed my journal from my bag to record my success.

  November 16

  Even work done in the shadows can be good.

  Haley’d said she was doing me a favor by assigning this job to me. Hopefully, she’d never know how right she was. No one else could have protected Gideon. And I’d done it without compromising my position in the Red Court. Well, not entirely compromising it, anyway. Haley would have an aneurysm if she knew how it had gone down. Good thing she never needed to know.

  My real phone buzzed in my pocket with a text message.

  Unknown number: Do you want to meet up after school?

  Unknown number: It’s Chase by the way.

  Unknown number: You probably figured that out though. You’re smart like that.

  Chase was cute when he was being self-conscious. I saved his number in my phone and tapped out a reply.

 
Me: Prove it’s really you and not an impostor.

  Chase: My Lit midterm score is going to kick your score’s ass

  He was insufferable.

  Me: Fine. It’s you.

  Chase:

  Me: Yeah, let’s meet by my locker. 1120.

  * * *

  My off-hour had long since ended, and my parents were likely to get a call about my unexcused absence soon. So much for my perfect attendance record. I texted my dad that I wasn’t feeling well and needed to be excused from classes. He was more likely than my mom to buy the lame excuse without further explanation.

  With the weight of Gideon’s takedown lifted, I remembered the note in my pocket. I pulled the crumpled piece of paper out and examined it more closely. The note was slashed onto the page in hasty, garbled words. What was more alarming was that the pen looked to have punctured the paper in several places. So, the person was writing quickly but with a lot of force. And a lot of anger.

  The handwriting wasn’t familiar and the paper itself was from a generic college-ruled notebook. I couldn’t detect any traces of perfume or any other identifying marks. My mind strayed to Gretchen, but it didn’t fit. She was after the Queen of Hearts, too, but for entirely different reasons. That only left the person who asked the Red Court to break up Chase and his ex-girlfriend and then take me out as well.

  If I was looking for an admirer of Chase, the entire school was in the suspect pool. There wasn’t anything to be done without more information. I tried to push the worry to the side, but a lingering unease twisted my stomach. There was only one way I could think to draw out whoever this was. I had to keep seeing Chase. Poor me.

  * * *

  Even being excused from the rest of my classes, I fell back into the rhythm of my schedule. When the final bell sounded, I joined the flash flood of students that tumbled into the halls after French class. The hallway with my locker was abandoned by the time I made it across the school to gather my things and head home. Opening the locker with a clang, I wished I could say I was surprised to see a playing card sitting on the shelf, but I wasn’t.