Exie snorted unladylike. “I’ve got to meet this guy. And Sloane too! Sloane would die to see someone make fun of you.”

“He actually works at Delice. We could go get coffee after school?” I didn’t want to acknowledge the happiness that suddenly ping-ponged around inside of me. How messed up was that? I could have any guy I wanted…. literally. But that thought left me utterly dead inside. The one guy that wanted nothing to do with me however? Yeah, he somehow brought my body to life…. gave me emotions and everything.

I was so screwed up.

“I am so all over this!” Exie squealed with excitement. “I’ll clear it with Sloane and call you.”

I jumped out of Exie’s car and into the dreary day, but the weather no longer dampened my mood. I waved goodbye to my friend and headed up to meet with my…. other friends. Weird. They were surprisingly happy to see me. Even Kenna. Well…. kind of Kenna.

I fell into the school routine easily. I hadn’t been in school for six months, but somehow the constant schedule, the forty-two minute class periods, the bells and hall passes felt easily natural. And I was kind of thankful for that.

I liked to learn, I liked to study. I even liked to take tests. College would have been exactly where I wanted to go next but there was no way that was in the cards for me. It was escape or enter the trade. Or worse, take Nix seriously and join his household.

I was wrapped up in those thoughts as I took a pass in English and headed toward the bathroom. I loved school, but that didn’t mean Mrs. Wade didn’t get excruciatingly monotonous.

“Ivy Pierce,” a nasally valley girl voice called as Amber walked out of a stall to my left.

“Hi Amber,” I said softly. I recognized the ugly bitterness she was throwing off her in waves.

“It’s because you’re easy,” she said matter of factly while washing her hands.

“Excuse me?” I asked in a pathetically quiet, meek voice. The thing about high school girls was they could be the best friends you ever had with the fiercest sense of loyalty or your worst enemy with the flick of a switch. We were emotional creatures, I got that. But every girl was hard-wired with animosity against me already, born leery of me, waiting for me to betray them. Maybe I already crossed a line with Amber and didn’t remember it, or it was one of those crush things there was no way I could have known about… and probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway…. or she just recognized the enemy inside me that I was to her. It didn’t really matter because obviously Amber had it out for me.

Exie would have told her to mind her own business. Sloane would have figured out just what buttons to push and dated whoever meant the most to her.

Although, apparently I was already doing that.

I cowered in fear.

The truth was, girls scared me.

“You’re easy,” she repeated slowly as if to a child. “Their fixation. Why guys won’t leave you alone. It’s not like you’re all that pretty. It’s just that you’re easy and boys have short attention spans.”

I thought about Sam and his attention span, how it had ultimately led to the car accident. I thought about Chase and how he didn’t push me to spend time with him or be something I wasn’t. I thought about Ryder and how devoted he was to Kenna. Some boys were interested in one thing; I had known enough of that kind to not be completely naïve. But I also knew some of the other kind now and so with deafening clarity I saved my self-esteem.

It also helped that because of the curse I knew I was pretty. So she could suck on that one.

“I’m not easy,” I replied stubbornly. Because I wasn’t.

In return she cackled at me. Honestly, she cackled.

“Please, everyone knows what a skank you are,” she rolled her eyes in the mirror at me and headed for the hand dryer.

“They’re wrong. I’m not a skank.” This was the most I had ever stuck up for myself since being sent away and I didn’t even really know why I was trying. She was welcome to believe whatever she wanted about me. In fact, Nix preferred the rumors even if we were ordered to hold on to our virginity until he could line up a worthy buyer.

“That’s not what Sam Evans told everyone the night of that party,” she countered bravely.

That was enough to snap any calm resolve that remained. “You need to stop with that,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about Sam, so stop using him to make up your points. Sam loved me. Loved me.” Well, not me. Sam fell in love with the curse, but Amber didn’t need to know that. “So stop putting words in his mouth when it’s so unfair that he can’t defend himself.”

“And look where that got him? Paralyzed and brain dead. Nobody could love you now, not after what you did to him. Now you’re nothing but a used up hag,” she turned on me with biting cruelty, her eyes burning orbs of hatred. “You’re the reason he’s not here to defend himself!”

And she had cut right to the most vulnerable vein.

My breath stuttered in my lungs as I tried to suck in enough oxygen to remain level headed. Hot tears pricked at the backs of my eyes and I wanted to curl up into myself and die, or at least weep. I repeated to myself that she didn’t matter, that she didn’t matter to me. I was stronger than this.

But I wasn’t. And all of the broken, shattered pieces of me came crashing down in a suffocating deluge of weakness.

The bathroom door opened and laughing girls walked in completely unaware of the impending mental breakdown I was just seconds away from. I couldn’t even look up to see who the happy girls were, my eyes were focused on the dirty drain and broken porcelain sink I needed to hold me up. My knuckles turned as white as the sink basin as I gripped on for my life.

“Ivy, what’s wrong?”

Kenna.

She was exactly the last person I wanted to witness this tragic side of me.

“Amber, why does she look like she’s about to burst into tears?” Kenna demanded of my attacker. A soft hand rested on my shoulder as if to comfort me and surprisingly it did. I lifted my eyes to meet Amber’s ashamed gaze in the mirror. She quickly fixed her expression to innocence and shrugged one shoulder casually.

“What did you say to her?” Kenna ground out and then thought better of rehashing Amber’s accusations. “You know what? Nevermind. You’re a bitch. You’ve always been one and that isn’t going to change. It drives you crazy Chase is happy with Ivy, but jealousy is an ugly color on you. Just leave her alone, Amber. She doesn’t need your drama and neither do I.”

Amber struggled to swallow against Kenna’s tirade. I watched her throat work to finish the action, while her eyes glossed over with tears. She silently turned around, tugged at her shirt to make sure it was in place and then left the bathroom. I didn’t have any trouble believing Kenna’s words had hit home.

I realized slowly how popular Kenna was. It wasn’t that before I left I was oblivious to her social status, but while I had my own agenda, popularity never really mattered to me. Besides Kenna seemed like one of the nicest girls ever, in the history of girls. She tried to befriend me for God sakes. Or at least she put up with me.

And now she was sticking up for me. The whole scenario felt surreal.

Nobody should be sticking up for me. I was the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. I had one agenda and one only and it was completely selfish. But in the last three days more people had come to my aid than I thought existed in my life.

I wasn’t alone. Not by a long shot.

But now what was I supposed to do with that realization? Besides my girls, I couldn’t take anybody with me and there was nothing on earth that could persuade me to stay.

“Thanks,” I mumbled to Kenna who waved me off like it was no big deal.

“Don’t worry. She is a bitch. It’s not like she doesn’t know it. She’s just not used to being told the truth,” Kenna laughed and then turned to primp and preen in the mirror.

I smiled in response but didn’t offer anything else. Suddenly and very inexplicably I felt bad for Amber. Which sucked since she made me feel like the worst kind of awful…. but still. I didn’t deserve this kind of attention from Kenna and their friendship didn’t deserve me getting in the middle of it. At the end of all this I was gone, out of here. There was nothing long term between any of us, and besides Amber couldn’t even really be blamed. She hated me for good reason. Especially if she had a thing for Chase….

I sucked in a deep breath and snuck another peek at Kenna.

I couldn’t identify anything going on between Ryder and me, but either way I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Kenna should not be defending me. She should be defending her relationship. I promised myself at least four times a day that I wanted nothing to do with Ryder, but the guilt seeping into my bloodstream and pumping through my heart with crackling clarity begged to differ.

“Are you going back to class?” Kenna asked me while her other two friends waited for her by the door.

“In a minute,” I whispered, still trying to put the broken pieces of myself back together.

“No worries,” she grinned a carefree smile and then met her friends at the door. “See you later, Ivy.”

“Yep,” I croaked and went back to gripping the sink. I looked up and met my watery green eyes in the mirror. I looked over my silky auburn hair, the reddish gold highlights were really coming out now that my hair had a chance to heal from the poor dye jobs I was obsessed with right before I was sent away. My skin seemed paler than normal but still held that milky-porcelain-perfection all the women in our circle kept. I was beautiful.

But empty.

And I didn’t deserve any of this.

Chapter Nineteen

“Oh lord, I’m so nervous!” Exie squealed as we crossed the street to Delice.

I rolled my eyes. “What do you have to be nervous about?” I demanded over the clicking sound of our heels against the wet pavement. The sky hadn’t stopped spitting since it opened up yesterday morning and the constant drizzle made even my hair frizzy and wild.

“To meet him of course!” she exclaimed dramatically. “I just hope he’s everything I want him to be! Last night was so anticlimactic that if he’s not there tonight I might die. Seriously, I might just die!”

Sloane laughed delicately from the other side of Exie and I threw her a “what the hell” look just for good measure. “He had band practice last night, or that’s what Phoenix told me today. So he should definitely be here tonight. But, honestly, I don’t understand why you’re so worked up about this, Ex? It’s not like I’m ever going to date him or anything. I’m just mildly curious about why he seems so…. impenetrable.”

“Oh honey,” Exie groaned. “I’m not sure there is a man out there that is…. impenetrable. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are all very aware of how…. penetrating they can be.”

Sloane snorted this time, not at all delicately. Even I couldn’t stop the smile from appearing on my face.

“You sound like my mother!” I laughed. “You’re so gross.”

“But accurate,” Exie giggled.

“I just don’t understand the fascination with him,” I paused at the door to Delice, holding my hand firmly on the handle so they couldn’t muscle their way past me.

Sloane let out an exasperated sigh and explained, “Let’s start with the fact that you have never once, not once, been even curious about a boy. But you’re so much more than curious, and don’t even try to deny it. You are protecting him like the fiercest kind of guard dog, which is also completely uncharacteristic. We know he’s hot and that you’re attracted to him. And then throw in the fact that he isn’t the least bit enslaved by the curse, I mean, come on, Ivy, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why you would be so fascinated by him. But don’t take that the wrong way; it’s Ok that you’re into him. I promise that it is. Just because the curse has repressed us, doesn’t mean we have to live in bondage to it. You deserve a free life, a free love life.”

“Plus, he’s hot, Ivy! Look at him!” Exie practically swooned right here on the damp sidewalk. Her eyes glazed over and her lips parted slightly as she took in his extremely messy dark hair and full lips. He looked like he just crawled out of bed after hours of making out or something even more lascivious, and his tough, overly masculine hands were working the cash register with practiced, confident movements. He had a black apron folded in half and tied around his waist that accentuated how narrow his hips were, and he was wearing a gray cardigan over a faded red t-shirt that made him look more college-hottie than high school-bad-boy.

Sloane sighed again only this time it was in complete adoration for the boy on the other side of the glass. She pushed past me and walked into the coffee shop with an intense presence that demanded she be noticed. She had never looked more like Snow White in my opinion than tonight, with her long, almost black hair tumbling over her shoulders in soft waves, her glossy red lipstick and soft pink blousy mini dress.

A pang of jealousy clenched my gut and I hated how frumpy and unkempt I felt next to my two gorgeous friends. Exie followed Sloane and the two of them made their way up to the counter while I watched them like a creeper from through the door. I wanted to drag them back outside and explain to them that I hadn’t meant my fascination with Ryder, I meant theirs.

They were wrong. There was no fascination on my part. None at all. Only a desire to protect something outside the realm of our world.

Sloane had waged a completely unnecessary argument against me.

I hoped.

Because even now something was fluttering in my stomach and I refused to name the emotion that drugged my senses and narrowed the entire scope of my vision just to him. He was looking at me through the glass now while my friends made fools of themselves gesturing for me to come inside.