by Wendi Wilson
“Oh, God, Wyatt’s blushing. This must be bad,” I joked, but the others didn’t smile. I sobered instantly. “Okay, what is it?”
Oh, God, what if they’re breaking up with me? Maybe all this Purist savior bullshit is too much for them to handle. Maybe our relationship isn’t worth the hassle. Maybe I’m not worth the hassle.
“Savanna,” Jett said, “stop it.”
“What?” I asked, snapping out of my hectic train of thought.
“Whatever rabbit hole you’re going down right now. It’s written all over your face.”
“Just tell me,” I said, refusing to acknowledge the accuracy of his observation.
“We were discussing our relationship,” Beckett started.
“Are you breaking things off with me?” I jumped in, unable to wait for them to get to the point.
Three identically appalled faces met my words.
“What? No!”
“Of course not!”
“Are you insane?”
The vehement denials exploded from them all at once, so I had a hard time keeping track of who said what. It didn’t matter, though. All that mattered were the words. They weren’t trying to leave me, so I relaxed and waited for someone to continue.
“Savanna, we love you,” Jett said, becoming the spokesman for the group, a role he filled often.
“I love you guys,” I said.
He nodded and continued, “We’ve been together for a few months now and every day, our connection grows stronger.”
He paused like he expected some kind of response, so I said, “I feel it, too.”
His voice lowered, so quiet I almost didn’t catch all the words. Almost. “Our physical connection with you is growing stronger, too.”
Oh, God, I thought, are we having a sex talk?
“We’ve been…exploring each other more,” Wyatt added.
Oh my God, we are.
Beckett, who was sitting next to me, gripped my chin and turned my face toward him. “We want you to take the lead. You hold all the power.”
I nodded. I knew that. It was the way it had been all along, me controlling what we did and how far it went…except for when they would stop me from getting too carried away.
“We talked about this,” Jett said, pulling my attention back to his side of the table. “We want you to know that whatever you decide, whoever you decide to go farther with first, none of us will be angry or jealous.”
My eyes flicked at Wyatt, who smiled. “We’ll try not to be jealous,” he said, amending Jett’s statement. Wyatt was, historically, the one who couldn’t keep his jealousy under control.
Despite being embarrassed and slightly insulted—I mean, they were basically giving me permission to sleep with each of them— I was also relieved. I had been fighting guilt each time I went a little further with one of them, wondering what the others would think. Would they assume I loved that brother more? That I wanted him more?
“Okay,” I said.
“We’re not trying to pressure you,” Beckett said, his warm palm finding my thigh under the table. “And we didn’t go into specifics when we talked. We just admitted things have been getting more…heated, lately.”
“And we want you to feel comfortable, first and foremost,” Jett added.
“Whatever happens, whenever it happens,” Wyatt said, “we want it to be all about pleasure and love, with no feelings of guilt whatsoever.”
“Okay,” I repeated, my mind unable to come up with any other words.
Jett pulled out his phone and checked the screen. “We should probably get you home before your parents start to worry,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, standing.
“Are you going to say anything besides ‘okay’?” Wyatt asked, his eyes crinkling with humor.
The tension broke and I grinned back at him. “Sorry, I guess I was just a little shocked.”
“And appalled?” Jett asked.
“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “But you guys are right,” I blurted out before they could backpedal and take back what they said. “I was feeling a little torn between wanting more and feeling guilty about it.”
“We know what you mean,” Wyatt said, his eyes flicking to my chest for a brief second before meeting my eyes once more. “We all felt the same way.”
I felt my cheeks heat as my eyes wandered over the three of them. The love they felt for me was written all over their faces. As was their devotion, their patience. They didn’t expect anything, but wanted me to know that if I had expectations, they would fulfill them without doubt or jealousy.
“The only thing we want is for you to be happy,” Beckett said, confirming my thoughts.
“Thank you,” I said, meeting each of their gazes. “That’s what I want for you guys, too.”
“We know,” Jett said.
“And we are,” Wyatt added.
I looked at Beckett, and he smiled. “Never been happier,” he said.
And, despite everything going on with Dr. Patton, neither had I.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday morning, I woke up with a sledgehammer beating out a rhythm in my head. I sat up slowly, fingertips massaging my temples in an attempt to ease the pain. It was almost as bad as the morning after Lizzie’s party.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”
I looked around my room, confused. That was my mother’s voice, clear as a bell, yet I was alone in my room.
“What other choice do we have, Angela?”
“We could run away. Take Savanna and disappear. He wouldn’t find us.”
Panic speared my chest, stabbing straight into my heart. The pain in my head all but forgotten, I threw the covers off and leapt from the bed. I ran across the room and flung the door open, ready to confront my parents.
The hall was empty. My brow crinkled as I looked first right, and then left. I was sure they’d been right outside my door.
“What kind of life is that for her?” my dad asked.
“What kind of life is this?” my mom shot back.
I stepped back into my room and closed the door, waiting for my dad to respond.
“It’s the life she chose,” he said. “She’ll never forgive us if we take her away from those boys.”
His words comforted me as much as the fact that I could hear them so clearly freaked me out. It sounded like they were standing right next to me. It reminded me of what happened after I drank Beckett’s blood. I gasped as the thought hit me. The injection. Something in it did this to me.
I got ready for school, confident that if my parents started talking crazy again, I’d hear it. They seemed to have tabled the discussion, opting instead to talk about mundane things like work and the weather. Mom was just placing breakfast on the table when I entered the kitchen.
“Good morning, Pumpkin,” Dad said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good,” I said, swinging open the cabinet that held our medicines and vitamins. Pulling out the bottle of aspirin, I added, “Just woke up with a bit of a headache.”
“Nothing too bad, I hope,” Mom said, offering me a glass of orange juice to wash the pills down. Her voice was like a cannon in my head.
“Thanks,” I said, gulping it down. “I’ll be fine.”
It killed me that I couldn’t confront them about their earlier conversation. If I did that, I’d have to explain how I’d heard them in the first place. I’m sure Mom made sure I was nowhere around before she broached the subject. And if she was already stressed out enough to want to go on the run, I hated to think what she’d do if she knew Dr. Patton was giving me injections. That he’d already given them to me years ago. She’d freak.
I sat at the table, eating and chatting and pretending like everything was totally normal and one hundred percent fine. I must have pulled it off, because I didn’t get any strange looks or probing questions from either of them. Luckily, they were kind of lost in their own heads, no doubt thinking about their earlier conversation.
I got out of there as quick as I could, grabbing my backpack and heading outside to wait for the boys.
I heard their truck and walked to the driveway, expecting them to pull in any second. They didn’t. I could still hear the engine, getting louder and louder until the sound grated against the nerves in my brain, causing my headache to come back full force. I had to plug my ears as they pulled into the drive.
“Savanna, what’s wrong?” I heard over the roar of pistons firing.
“It’s so loud,” I groaned, my eyes meeting Wyatt’s as he wrapped an arm around me.
He helped me climb into the front seat next to Jett, who immediately silenced the radio. Once Wyatt was inside and all the doors were closed, the noise level dropped to a tolerable level. I moved my hands away from my ears and looked around miserably.
Wyatt and Beckett leaned forward, propping their arms on the seat between me and Jett. Tears stung my eyes as I described what happened when I woke up. Each of them took turns being shocked by my new ability, sympathetic to my pain and angry at my mother’s plea to run away.
“I wonder how long it will last,” Jett whispered.
I shot him a grateful look for keeping his voice low. “I don’t know,” I said, “but I hope it goes away soon. I don’t know how I’m going to handle the noisy hallways at school.”
“I have an idea,” he replied, motioning for me to put my seatbelt on.
Wyatt and Beckett sat back in their seats and buckled their own belts as Jett reversed out of my driveway. He drove past the school and into town, parking in front of the grocery store. Telling us to sit tight, he jumped from the truck and ran inside. Wyatt and Beckett whispered about mundane things, school assignments and such until Jett hopped back into the cab, closing his door as quietly as possible behind him. He held out his fist to me, opening it to reveal his purchase.
“Ear plugs?” I asked, taking the small plastic container from his palm.
“It should help mute the noise,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, truly grateful I had these boys to help me through all the changes I’d experienced in recent weeks.
I stuffed the foam plugs into my ears and said, “Okay, talk.” My voice sounded weird to my own ears, like I had a head cold or something.
“How is this?” Beckett asked.
The volume of his voice seemed normal. “Did you say that in a normal voice?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, and once again, the sound was totally bearable.
I looked at Jett. “This is great, thanks.”
He smiled in satisfaction and cranked the truck, backing out of the parking spot. He pulled out onto the road and headed back toward school. As we rode, Wyatt broke the silence.
“Have you experienced any other side effects, besides the hearing?”
“Nothing, yet,” I replied, “but who knows what might happen before it’s all said and done?”
When we arrived at school, I took a deep breath and breezed through the doors behind the boys. I stopped just inside, cringing in anticipation before slowly opening my eyes. It was louder than normal, sure, but completely bearable. Jett’s ear plug idea worked like a charm.
The three of them turned and looked at me expectantly. I nodded to let them know I was okay and they smiled, leading the way to my locker. As I walked down the crowded hall, specific conversations swam in and out of focus. The cacophonous buzzing would morph into specific words and sentences as I got closer to each person. Then that one would fade back into the background as a new conversation came to the forefront. Was this what the boys had been dealing with all their lives?
“She’s such a slut. I never knew she had it in her, or I would have hit that a long time ago.”
I turned my head toward the voice and met the eyes of Jonas Wiggins as his cronies laughed at his words. My eyes narrowed and I veered off course, heading right for him. He picked the wrong day to mess with me. I may have convinced the boys to forget he drugged me at Lizzie’s party, but I hadn’t forgotten. I still owed him some payback. A hand on my arm stopped me.
“What are you doing?” Jett asked, looking from me to Jonas and back again.
“Didn’t you hear what he said?”
He shook his head. “We tend to tune out most of the chatter. If it doesn’t go away, you’ll learn to do it, too. What did he say?”
“He called me a slut and told his friends he’d have ‘hit that’ a long time ago if he’d known,” I said, using air quotes.
Jett growled and headed straight for Jonas, his long strides making it hard for me to keep up. I leapt forward and pulled him back by the elbow. The anger in his eyes only dissipated a little as he looked from his target to me.
“No way,” I said, shaking my head at him. “He’s my problem.”
I looked from Jett to the equally angry faces of Wyatt and Beckett, reiterating my point. “Mine,” I said, hitching a thumb at my chest. I turned on a heel and stalked toward Jonas, feeling the boys on my heels. They might let me do this, but they weren’t going to let me do it by myself.
“Why don’t you say that to my face, Jonas?” I said, halting right in front of him.
“What are you talking about, psycho?” he asked, looking nervously at the Alts behind me.
“I’m talking about what you just said to tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum over here when you thought I couldn’t hear you,” I said, pointing to his constant sidekicks, Alec and Paul.
His eyes widened. “I didn’t say anything about you,” he said.
“You didn’t call me a slut?”
“No,” he said, his eyes darting back to the boys again.
He must not have known Alts have super hearing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be lying. That particular ability of Alts wasn’t as well known. I guess it kind of paled in comparison to the persuasion ability. That and the fact that we drank blood was all people ever talked about.
“You didn’t say you would’ve hit that a long time ago if you’d known?” I asked, arching a brow as sweat popped out all over his face.
“No,” he said, sticking to his story.
I looked at Alec and Paul, but they just shook their heads. Anger rose up in me, hotter than before. I was going through way too much crap to deal gracefully with those clowns. I narrowed my eyes at Alec and Paul, venom spewing from my mouth.
“Yeah, you guys just keep kissing Jonas’s ass,” I said. “Just the way he likes it.”
The second the words passed my lips, the two of them dropped to their knees and pressed their mouths to Jonas’s backside. My mouth dropped open, shock erasing my anger and freezing me on the spot. Jonas jumped away from them with a yelp.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” he yelled, his voice high and cracking.
Alec and Paul scooted forward on their knees, trying to get behind him again, but he jumped and whirled again.
“Stop it,” he commanded, but it was no use. They were already leaning toward him.
“Tell them to stop, Savanna,” Jett said, his voice breaking me out of my frozen state.
“Stop kissing his ass!” I said.
Alec and Paul shook their heads as if clearing the cobwebs and stood up. Jett, Wyatt and Beckett stood in front of them and Jonas, making eye contact and whispering something about forgetting what just happened. Then they whirled, Wyatt grabbed my elbow and pulled me down the hall. We went straight out the door and across the parking lot. No one spoke until we were safely inside the truck.
“What. The hell. Just happened,” I said, enunciating each word as I pulled the earplugs from my ears.
“You used persuasion on them,” Beckett said, not making eye contact.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no! I can’t persuade normal people. Only Alts. You know that, Beck!”
My words were rushed and bordered on hysteria. I knew I was being irrational. I was there. I told Alec and Paul to keep kissing Jonas’s ass and they dropped and continued to try to kiss it until I told them to stop. Definitely pe
rsuasion. Yet, I still denied it, even to myself.
“Savanna,” Wyatt said, his voice cajoling.
“Don’t Savanna me, Wyatt! I can’t persuade norms.”
“You also didn’t have super hearing before uncle Earl gave you that shot last night. Now you’re persuading norms. What other effects will it have on you?”
His worried tone cut through my hysterical inner commentary on the impossibility of me persuading those two jackwagons.
“What do you mean?”
“Savanna, I know you don’t want to hear this, but whatever he injected into you is making you exhibit Alt traits. Super sensitive hearing. The ability to persuade norms.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his flask after hearing my stomach grumble. He handed it to me and said, “You need this because you just used persuasion, but what if you need it permanently…to survive?”
His question left me speechless. I sipped from the flask, my eyes unfocused as I tried not to freak out over the possibility. What the hell did Dr. Patton give me? If it was the same thing he gave me when I was little, why didn’t it affect me like this before?
I handed the flask back to Jett and said, “Your uncle said he was giving me the same thing he gave me when I was little. The same thing he gave my mom when she was pregnant with me. It had to have the same effect then as it did now, right? Maybe it’s only temporary and will fade away, like the super hearing I had after drinking Beckett’s blood.”
Wyatt and Jett nodded in agreement, but Beckett frowned. “Unless he lied,” he said, his voice quiet.
“What?” I asked.
He met my eyes. “Unless he lied,” he said more clearly. “There’s a possibility he lied to you to keep you from fighting him too much. It could have been something else, something new that he wanted to test out on you.”
All four of us fell silent for a few moments, pondering Beckett’s words. He was right. Dr. Patton probably had lied. He would say anything to keep me in line and cooperative.
“I wonder if you can still persuade Alts,” Wyatt said, breaking the silence.
“Why wouldn’t she be able to?” Jett snapped.
“Well,” Wyatt said, his voice patient despite his brother’s irritable tone, “if uncle Earl gave her something to make her more like a normal Alt, who’s to say it didn’t take away the ability she already had? Normal Alts can’t persuade other Alts. If she can use persuasion on both Alts and norms, she’d be…”
