Brady, all serious now, pushed away his plate. “At least we know that though. He keeps telling us he’s the devil we know. Well, he is. Better than our lying scum parents, whom I can’t get myself to stop calling ‘parents’ and it’s pissing me right the fuck off.”
“I know. Me too,” Layla groaned. “We have no homes to go back to. No way am I going back to Celia and Porter, whatever their names actually are. Are you guys willing to go ‘home’?”
“No,” Griffin, Hunt, Brady, and I replied at once.
“Exactly,” Layla continued. “Yeah, we could head out into the world and make our own way. I know we could do it. Together, we totally could. We’d all have to work, but we could cover our expenses easily with the five of us working. But then how would we find out about us? Now that I know some of what we’re capable of,I need to fucking know everything.”
“I need to know too,” Brady said.
“Ditto,” Hunt added.
“I’d like to meet some of these other students, too,” I admitted. “Are there really more people out there like us? And what are they like?”
“The campus isn’t huge,” Griffin said, “but it’s big enough. Magnum’s definitely expecting at least a few dozen students by the end of it.”
Brady’s eyes gleamed. “That’s gonna be cool as shit. A school of fuckingimmortals.” He whistled and let the impact of that notion settle around us all. “Plus, did you guys see the training center? I got a semi just looking at the place.”
“Ew, Brade,” Layla complained, but I chuckled and pointed at myself.
“Like I said,facilities ho, right here. Talk about some ninja training. I’ll bet Magnum’ll even have some sweet instructors lined up for us.”
“And if he doesn’t,” Brady said, growing more enthusiastic by the second, “we can ask for them.”
“That’ll be cool,” Griffin conceded begrudgingly.
Brady pulled his plate back toward him, a grin tugging at his lips. “The way I see it, we’re already fucked as fucked gets. You heard the guy, he’s already not gonna let us leave the easy way. Our options already suck. Add in that ourparentsaren’t really our parents, that we have no allies beyond us, and things get even more dire.”
His smile fell. “We can fight like hell now, he sets his goons on us, we die all over again, and this whole process starts over. Or, we just go with it, for now. We learn everything we possibly can about ourselves, our powers, immortality, whatever, everything about everyone else like us, what it all means, and then we can always leave later if we want.”
“I doubt leaving anytime soon is on Magnum’s agenda,” I said.
Brady shrugged, but the flippant attitude was gone. “It’ll be as much an option then as it is now. And by then, we’ll know more about what we can do.”
“That part’s true,” Layla agreed. “We’ll prob be more powerful then too, or whatever. I mean, it can’t get much worse than it is now, right? The more we know, the better.” She scowled and gnawed on a chunk of cheese. “I hope, anyhow.”
“At least we’ll live like royalty in the meantime,” Brady said. “Not great, of course not. But at least better. He could’ve locked us up in cells like true lab rats, the miserable fuckers. From what we’ve seen, he’d totally do it, too. So I say we do as Fanny suggested. We play nice for now so he does too.”
He glanced around at the rest of us. We had no better plan to offer.
“In that case,” Griffin said, “I’ll be taking the bedroom next to Joss.” He swiveled in his seat to fully face me. “Now that I know how you feel about me, I’m not leaving your side. No one’s gonna take you away from me again.”
A sudden surge of warmth spread throughout my body to tingle in my extremities. No matter how many times I’d allowed myself to imagine what it might be like to actually openlyloveGriffin, and to have him love me as more than just friends in return, I found myself with nothing ready to say.
Layla chuckled. “Oh man. This is gonna be a blast.Flustered Jossis my new fave.”
“Shut up, Lay,” I grumbled, but the others laughed.
Everyone but Griffin.
His eyes warmed to a bright hazel as they took in mine.
How would I ever sleep with him in the room next to mine? Talk about some wet dream potential.
My gaze fell to his full lips. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until those lips tipped into a smile that was the sexiest I’d ever seen.
My stare flicked up to his, and his grin spread.
Then, he winked at me.
