Vital Found (The Evelyn Maynard Trilogy Book 2)

by Kaydence Snow

  But he hadn’t actually said he was sorry.

  “So that’s it? You’re not even going to apologize?” I crossed my arms and leaned into Tyler.

  “I was getting there.” His ice-blue eyes snapped up, his ire rising to meet mine, as it always did.

  A loud, deep groan brought all our attention over to Ethan, who was looking up at the ceiling. “Can we not get into another screaming match, please? I feel like we have bigger fish to fry.”

  I was a little taken aback that Ethan, the goofball, was the one talking sense. The others must have agreed, because we all sat down again, Alec joining us at the head of the table.

  “So how did things go with Anna?” Tyler asked, his hand returning to the nape of my neck.

  But before the guys could fill us in, Alec interrupted. “Wait, I just . . .” He looked between me and Tyler uncertainly, his knee bouncing under the table. “I need to apologize to both of you. I am sorry . . .”

  “We both made a bad call. Let’s just move on.” Tyler reached out, and they gave each other a quick hand squeeze while I stared in astonishment. That was it? Men.

  I could only give Alec a little nod. I couldn’t find it in me to speak the words. I wasn’t sure if I meant them yet.

  “Eve.” Alec directed the next part just at me. “I know this doesn’t excuse it, but I want to at least explain it. It’s not easy for me to talk about this, but I do want you to understand.”

  When I didn’t say anything, he took it as a sign to keep speaking. “Please just know it wasn’t personal. I wasn’t being malicious or deliberately trying to keep your Bondmates from you to hurt you. I just . . . you don’t know how . . . I hate my ability,” he finally spit out.

  I leaned forward. Alec was showing vulnerability, being honest and real for once. I didn’t want to blink and miss it.

  “What do you mean?” It was the best I could manage to encourage him.

  “They call me the ‘Master of Pain’ like it’s something I lord over people—like I enjoy it. But I hate hurting people, and there is nothing I can do to switch it off. Having you . . . being with you, in your Bond, it makes my ability stronger. Eve, your Light is so fucking bright it’s blinding.”

  I stared at him, at the intensity in his eyes. The way he looked at me, with so many conflicting emotions in his face, reminded me of the night in Tyler’s study.

  Even if it makes me an even bigger monster than I already am? His words rang through my mind, and they finally made sense.

  Being with me, letting my Bond deepen with all four of them, would have meant amplifying Alec’s ability—the thing about himself he despised the most. He was so stoic most of the time, so solid in his frame and posture, hard in his voice and actions. But underneath all that, he was suffering—had been for a long time.

  I stared at him, not sure what to say, how to express that I understood but it still didn’t excuse the lying.

  “You could have just told me.” My voice was low, sad. “Both of you.”

  “I should have.” He nodded. “I didn’t know how.”

  “And it wasn’t my story to tell,” Tyler piped in. “I’m sorry I deceived you, Eve. I am. But I’ve watched Alec struggle with this since we were kids. I’ve watched it bring him to the brink of destruction. It was too heavy for me to just blurt out to you. He needed to do it when he was ready.”

  “He was never going to be ready.” Had they planned to just hold off sex with me for life for the sake of Alec’s messed-up attitude? I got the sense the three of them had been letting him get away with a lot over the years. I wasn’t about to fall into the same pattern.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Alec agreed, “but it’s out now, and I’m glad, because at least now I’m not hurting you both anymore. Regardless of my ability, I’m constantly hurting people.” The last part was spoken more to himself as he sat back, dragging his hands down his face.

  “If I’m being completely honest, that’s not the only reason I held off getting physical with you, Eve.” I turned back to Tyler, frowning. “I wasn’t ready either.”

  “What?” Ethan said. He and Josh had been very quiet, letting Tyler and Alec put everything on the table, but they both looked confused at this.

  I threw my hands up. “Do guys talk about anything?”

  Tyler chuckled, catching my hand and pressing a kiss to my palm. “I never even thought I’d have a Vital. The . . . sharing thing is much more accepted in Variant society, regardless of whether you’re in a Bond or not. But I kind of always figured I’d find that one person, and that would be it. I never expected I’d have to share you—and that’s OK,” he rushed to add. “It really is. I just needed some time to get used to the idea.”

  At the mention of “sharing,” everyone went silent. I glanced around the table to see they were all looking at me, as if waiting for my lead. Josh had a smirk on his face. Fucker.

  Yes, there were worries and insecurities about how we would make this work—how we would balance all the emotional scars, needs, and strong personalities without being at each other’s throats all the time. But there were other thoughts too—dirtier, more difficult to verbalize thoughts.

  I averted my gaze and squirmed in my chair.

  “Are you guys done making out?” Dot chose the absolute perfect moment to interrupt. I loved her a little more for it, even as I wondered if she’d been eavesdropping; her timing was a little too good. “Because we really should talk about the ‘Eve getting caught kissing Josh’ debacle.” She stopped next to Alec’s chair and gave us all a withering look. “I love gossip, but you guys are doing a shitty job of keeping all this”—she gestured around the table with one hand—“a secret.”

  “Yes, we need to talk about that. Any news?” Tyler slipped back into his leader role seamlessly.

  “Oh yeah!” Dot held her phone up as evidence. “All the news. You’re trending, and it’s not even ten a.m.”

  “Trending?” Alec asked, even as Josh groaned and Ethan started softly banging his head on the table.

  “Hashtag ScandalAtTheClub, hashtag VariantSlut.”

  “Oh, Lord Kelvin.” I dropped my head into my hands.

  “What happened with Anna?” Tyler’s voice still sounded even; I held on to that to keep myself from descending into full-blown panic. “Did you catch up to her?”

  “We couldn’t find her,” Josh answered. “She left pretty fast, and we decided calling her would only add fuel to the fire, so we left it. Obviously that was a mistake.”

  “No,” Tyler assured him, “it wasn’t. Urging her to keep it a secret would only have given her more to gossip about. This way we can have some control over what we say about it.”

  “What do we do?” I turned my pleading eyes to my friend—the gossip expert.

  Her lips widened into a crafty smile, and she tossed her messy black hair. It was still unbrushed from whatever she’d been doing with Kyo the previous night, adding to the slightly unhinged vibe she had going.

  “We confuse the fuck out of them,” she declared, as if it were obvious.

  Sixteen

  As I zipped up my boots and gathered my stuff for the first day of classes since Dot’s birthday, I tried my best to remain calm. I’d woken up before my alarm, and worst-case scenarios had been running through my head all morning.

  What if Dot’s plan didn’t work? What if no one believed us?

  I hated being the center of attention. I’d spent my whole life learning how to disappear, and I much preferred the company of dead scientists. But what really had me taking deep breaths to calm my nerves was the thought of my Vital status coming out and putting us all in danger.

  I could’ve really used some of Zara’s no-bullshit straight talking—she would have told me to calm the fuck down with an eye-roll—but she’d left for an early class.

  She’d asked me what happened as soon as I’d come home after Dot’s birthday. Her stomach bug seemed to have completely passed, and she’d held her phone up to show me the
gossip all of the vulture Variants of Bradford Hills were eating up.

  I told her the whole awful story, including the bits no one else knew about—how I’d been terrible to Tyler and come on to Alec. I told her about the kiss with Tyler too, barely concealing the grin on my face.

  She agreed Dot’s plan was probably the best course of action but did try to present another option.

  “Have you thought about just coming clean?” She asked as we sat on the couch, sipping hot chocolate—it made us both think of Beth, in a good way. “I mean, maybe it’s not worth the effort anymore. And you might be more protected if it comes out you’re a Vital. They’d probably give you a Melior Group personal bodyguard.”

  She’d rolled her eyes, and we’d both chuckled, but she wasn’t far from the truth. Most Vitals were under some kind of protection, especially at Bradford Hills. The Institute was probably the safest place for a Variant or Vital to be. But after talking about it for a bit, I’d dismissed the idea. The longer we kept this on the down low, the better. Especially considering how tenuous my connection still was to all my Bond members. We weren’t steady enough to present a united front yet.

  I put on my thick coat and took one final deep breath before opening the door. Josh was standing on the other side, his fist poised to knock.

  He was in a peacoat, his dirty-blond hair parted on one side and styled meticulously, a Burberry scarf around his neck. He gave me a brilliant smile, flashing his perfectly straight teeth, and held up his other hand. “Hey. As your boyfriend, I figured it was my duty to bring you coffee.”

  “You bring me coffee all the time.” I chuckled, taking the cup and inspecting it. “And the boyfriend thing is not new.”

  I was focused on the double helixes covering my new reusable cup. When I looked back up at him, he was smiling from ear to ear.

  “What?” I smiled back, uncertain.

  “I just like hearing you call me your boyfriend.” He shrugged, taking a sip from his own reusable cup. His had the Rolling Stones mouth on a black background.

  I pulled the door closed behind me and gave him a kiss. The taste of coffee on both our lips mingled with the warm, clean smell that always clung to Josh, and I sighed. “You know you’re much more than that,” I whispered against his lips, eliciting another smile.

  Outside, I was glad for my coat and boots. The snow hadn’t arrived yet, but the chill in the air announced it was just around the corner. As we walked toward the science buildings, some of the nervousness returned.

  “What’s going through that head of yours?” Josh leaned in as people started looking in our direction, not being at all subtle about the fact they were talking about us. It reminded me of the day my blood test results came out and every Variant on campus wanted a piece of me. All the attention made my skin crawl.

  Unfortunately, Dot’s plan hinged on us gaining that attention.

  “I’m not entirely sure how to go about this,” I admitted. “I don’t like having everyone watch my every move.”

  “How about we just start with this?” He intertwined his fingers with mine, giving me another brilliant smile.

  I squeezed his hand, double-checking that my Light flow was under control. If that slipped, the whole plan would crumble.

  “It feels so good not to have to stop myself from doing that anymore.” He kept his voice low, his words just for me. To anyone looking, we were simply whispering sweet nothings to each other, our hands locked and our sides pressed together, our steps synchronized as we walked.

  “Guess this means Ethan’s single again,” a girl said to her friend, throwing me a smug look.

  “It was only a matter of time,” her friend responded, and they moved off, not waiting for a response. Not that I was going to dignify them with one. But my hand did tighten around Josh’s, my baser instincts driving me to defend what was mine.

  “Deep breath,” Josh whispered. “We know the truth.”

  I nodded and did as he said, letting the cool air in my lungs push the mean comments out of my mind.

  “I’ll see you at lunch.” He leaned in and kissed me. It was a chaste kiss in comparison to some of the others we’d shared, but it was still intimate, and it was in front of all the people walking past us into the building.

  We separated, but before he had a chance to walk away, Dot marched up to us in black thigh-high boots and her polar bear coat, with a confidence I hadn’t seen in her for a long time. She stopped right in front of me, a devious smile on her face.

  “Hello, lover,” she said at a volume that wasn’t trying to be heard or hidden. Then she draped her arms over my shoulders and pressed her lips to mine in an over-the-top kiss.

  I chuckled against her lips, and the kiss ended as abruptly as it had begun. She pulled me into a hug, and I returned it, but I wasn’t expecting her to rub her whole body up against mine in a deliberately sexual move. If people hadn’t been paying attention earlier, they certainly were now.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered into her ear. “I don’t recall this part of the plan.”

  “The plan was to confuse them,” she whispered back, finally pulling away, “act so erratically that no one has any idea who you’re dating or screwing or what the hell is happening.”

  “She’s a little too good at this.” Josh sighed, lowering his own voice. “But when you factor in the fact that you’ve been giving her your Light, I might actually be getting jealous.”

  He narrowed his eyes at us, but a smile was playing on his lips. He dropped one last kiss on my forehead and headed off, hunching his shoulders against the cold.

  Dot looped her arm through mine, and we headed inside to our classes. People who’d been stealing looks before were outright staring now. A few even had cameras out.

  I did my best to ignore it and focus on my classes, but I was on my own until lunch, and all the eyes on me made me feel vulnerable. At lunchtime, I speed-walked to the cafeteria.

  Zara and I reached the entrance at the same time.

  “How’s it going so far?” she asked, not bothering with petty things like greetings and pleasantries.

  “It’s been half a day, and it already feels like torture,” I deadpanned, removing my coat as she did the same. We picked a table and sat.

  “Well, it’s already working, if that makes you feel any better. Some of the rumors I’ve heard are ridiculous.” She smirked, leaning forward so we could keep our voices down.

  “Excellent.” I rolled my eyes. It was what we intended, but I hated that there was an element we couldn’t control.

  Dot and Josh joined us soon after, and we were about halfway through our meals when Ethan made his entrance. No doubt it was by Dot’s design that he arrived late, his big frame ensuring all eyes were on him as he came through the doors.

  He paused, removing his bomber jacket as he scanned the crowd. He found our table and smirked, the dimple appearing for only a moment, but he moved off toward the food instead of joining us.

  The chatter in the room lessened, everyone watching Ethan’s every move as he piled his tray high with food, then marched straight over to us, his big shoulders pulled back, his eyes dancing. I could tell he was fighting laughter; he found the gossip as amusing as I found it frustrating and awkward.

  He lowered his tray, deposited his bag and jacket in a chair, and faced Josh. Josh remained in his seat, one arm resting on the back of my chair, the picture of relaxed.

  There was a moment’s pause.

  The two of them looked at each other.

  The room held its breath.

  “Hey, bro!” Ethan finally released his brilliant smile.

  “What’s up?” Josh reached his hand out, and they did some weird horizontal high five before fist-bumping.

  I figured if we were going to do this, we may as well do it right. I stood up and wrapped my arms around Ethan’s neck. He had to bend to meet me halfway, but we shared a brief kiss hello.

  The room descended into confused murmurs. Som
e people went back to their food and conversations now that the drama they’d been expecting hadn’t happened. Others started whispering.

  I reveled in Ethan’s warmth, the strength of his gentle arms around me, and used it to ground myself.

  He stole my seat and pulled me into his lap, and we spent the rest of the hour talking about anything other than the plan we were, so far, flawlessly putting into action.

  Two weeks later, Dot’s plan was working like a charm. The attention had died down after some furious speculation about who I was actually dating. When no dramatic fights or breakups happened, everyone got bored and moved on to other things. I was no longer trending.

  No one had even speculated that I might be a Vital; Dot throwing her attention into the ring had put a stop to that. Everyone knew Charlie was her Vital, and no one wanted to be reminded of the fact he was missing.

  Even Zara had joined in the fun, walking through campus with me with our arms around each other. She probably only did it because she enjoyed glaring death at anyone who dared to look at us, but I was grateful anyway.

  But there was one unexpected side effect of having the whole campus think I was dating multiple people.

  The bitchy comments from girls when they realized Ethan wasn’t actually back on the market and people calling me a slut were not a surprise. But the extra advances I received, just the sheer volume of attention, were a bit unsettling. I’d been asked out and propositioned more in two weeks than I had in my whole life before. Both guys and girls were coming up to me, some of them subtler in their flirting than others.

  I would have thought that with most Vitals having multiple partners, the Variants of Bradford Hills wouldn’t be quite so affected by the idea of someone dating more than one person. But I was wrong. So wrong.

  As I headed to my next session with Tyler, yet another guy zeroed in on me, stepping into my path and waving. “Hey, girlie!”

  I scowled at him. We were both bundled up in warm clothing, but I could see his face clearly. The last conversation I’d had with Franklyn was at Ethan’s party, when he’d come on to me in the grossest way possible on the dance floor.