Page 73 of Slayer

She rolled her eyes and then approached me. “So parent weekend is coming up, which is super awkward for those of us without parents. We all camp in tents down at the beach and have a bonfire and play games. We’ve been doing it since high school. It’s really fun. You should come.”

Bonfire and beach campout? Sounded amazing. But why did Asher look so uncomfortable?

“I’ll think about it,” I told her. “Thanks for inviting me,” I added.

She nodded and then leaned onto her tiptoes to kiss Asher chastely on the lips. His body tensed, and I looked away, feeling like I’d been stabbed in the stomach.

Stop liking a guy who’s taken, you idiot!

This would be so much easier if Daphne was mean, but she wasn’t. When she walked away, we resumed our walk in an awkward silence.

“So how long have you been dating?” I knew what Harper and Luna had told me, but I wanted to hear his version.

He peered into the lunchroom at Daphne and frowned. “It’s complicated.”

Hmm. Interesting answer.

“I like her,” I added, not wanting him to think I was being weird.

He nodded. “She’s sweet.”

I wanted a guy to call me sweet. I wanted him to call me sweet.

“You guys make a cute couple.”

He bristled at that. “She’s my best friend.” The way he said it was almost like a confession, the emotion behind it hard to decipher. Before I could respond, he cleared his throat. “You should come to Rose Beach. Staying here is just depressing. The ‘I’m proud of you’ and homemade baked goods the other kids get make you feel like you want to crawl into a hole and die.”

I laughed. “Whoa, tell me how you really feel.”

He smiled at that, and I had to slow my pacing to keep walking because my legs felt like Jell-O when he smiled.

His smile faltered though. “That first night we met, when you said you were given up at the hospital… I assumed you were adopted, that you had parental figures. I didn’t know it was a group home.”

“Are group homes worse in your mind?” I was curious what his thought process was on that.

He looked a little haunted at my question. “Yes. In a group home, people are paid to look after you. They don’t do it because they love you. They do it because it’s their job. I say this from experience.”

His words cut into my heart because they were so accurate. Brenda was my favorite group home mom. I thought she really loved me, but she left when she got a better job.

“But some of them did love me,” I mused out loud.

Like Linda. Linda loved me.

We crossed into the outside fields, and he stopped and faced me. “Not the way you deserve to be loved,” he said, his green eyes swimming with something I couldn’t explain.

What was happening? And why did I suddenly feel like I wanted to cry?

He shook himself and then laughed. “Not sure how we started talking about this.” He took off then, walking faster than before as I struggled to catch up with him.

I followed him, head spinning with what I’d just heard.

Not the way you deserve to be loved.

What did he mean by that?

When we got to the practice field, I was excited to see Celia there. She stood with over a dozen hunters clad in black, their hunter marks visible on exposed arms, the ink catching the late afternoon light. They all looked a few years older than us but not much more than that. There were some giant crates on the field behind Celia, their lids already half open.

Asher and I joined the dozen other students who hadn’t received their marks yet as Celia began to speak, her voice carrying easily across the field.