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“You’re blocking my way,” I said coolly.
“Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?” Her voice had grown increasingly high-pitched through our short conversation. And man, she was standing so close to me I could smell her strong perfume. How much of that crap had she doused herself with?
I shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I should ask your boyfriend why you’re so obsessed with defending his honor. Which one of them is it? I mean, you must be dating at least one of them if you’re getting this worked up about it, right?”
Her expression twitched. With savage satisfaction, I knew I had hit a nerve.
The girl got right up to my face, her straw-pale hair swinging, spit practically flying at me. “I protect what’s mine. And I don’t let any bitch just walk in here and pretend she knows what she’s doing. So you better take the fuck off with that attitude or else…”
Instead of finishing her threat, she poked me on my arm, right over my bullet wound. I winced at the needle of pain that shot through the muscle.
I balled my fists at my side. “Wrong move, bitch.”
I was about to punch the living daylights out of her, consequences be damned, when a voice spoke from behind me. “Gia, back off.”
The girl who was apparently named Gia looked toward the door and faltered. “Oh. I was just— Wylder wouldn’t want her—"
Rowan ambled into the room, his expression mild. “Wylder knows she’s here. He told her she could stay, for now.” Had an edge come into his voice with those words? “Do you want to take it up with him?”
Gia stepped away from me. “I don’t trust her. You can tell him that. I’ve met enough girls to know trouble when I see it.”
“Right now I’m pretty sure you’re the one making the trouble,” Rowan said. “Get out of here, and leave Mercy alone.”
His voice stayed casual, but there was a hint of steel underneath it that I’d never heard before. Whether because of his own authority or simply his association with Wylder, Gia shut her mouth. She gave me one last look and surreptitiously flipped me off before scampering out of the kitchen.
Rowan stopped in the middle of the room as if he thought it was better not to get any closer to me. “Gia’s a bitch to pretty much everybody who isn’t Wylder,” Rowan said. “It’s nothing personal. She’s annoying but mostly harmless.”
Was he seriously trying to make conversation? After everything that had happened? “Thanks for the tip,” I replied with dripping sarcasm and returned to my meal.
I expected him to leave, but he stayed there, watching me take the plate of pasta out of the microwave. I set it on the island and found a fork, but I couldn’t just dig in with him as an audience. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Rowan said, but he stepped closer. His eyes were hooded, his expression almost unreadable.
For a second, I found myself searching for the guy I’d known all those years ago, the boy with eyes that sparkled the moment they found mine in the crowded hall of the high school and the easy smile grazing his lips that made me want to know everything about him. How much of him was left under that nonchalant façade he was putting on?
How much of him had ever been real to begin with?
“If you don’t want anything, you could let me eat in peace,” I said.
He snorted. “Is that what you came here for? To findpeace?”
“You know why I’m here. Whyyou’rehere, I don’t have a clue. But frankly, I don’t care. So run off to your master, since we both know you never gave a shit about me.”
His eyes flashed, but I forced myself to focus on my food, jabbing a piece of penne with a little more force than was strictly required. I’d eat, and then I’d get out of here if he wouldn’t.
“I only came in because I saw how Gia was going at you,” Rowan said after a moment.
“I wasn’t worried about Gia,” I said. “So if you’re waiting for a thank you, it’s not coming. I was handling her by myself just fine, and I most definitely didn’t need your help.”
“Right,” Rowan said in a voice that held far too much meaning. “Because Mercy Katz never needsanyone’shelp.”
I glared at him, but images from the seventh-grade field trip when we first started talking rose up in my mind despite my best intentions.
My classmates hadn’t known everything about my father, but they’d gotten enough of the gist over the years to be nervous of me—and resentful of the fact that I made them nervous. At the museum that day, someone had dared me to climb inside an antique wardrobe. Refusing to show any fear had mattered more to me than the fear I had very definitely been feeling.
As soon as I’d climbed inside, they’d jammed something to hold the door shut. I could still remember the snickering, the footsteps fading away, and the expanding realization that I was trapped, in the dark, just like—
The walls had begun to close in on me. No amount of shoving got me out, and after what felt like an hour, I curled into a ball, muttering to myself to try to hold back the terror sinking its talons into my mind. I’d been crouched there, shaking, when the door had yanked open and a head topped with ash-blond hair had appeared in front of me.
