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My chest puffs, like every time she vocalizes that she’s mine, even as my curiosity grows with what went down between them. Especially as I know for a fact Nicoisn’ttaken. He wipes a hand down his face.
“I’m not,” he replies begrudgingly. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Since when?” Harlow asks suspiciously.
“Since before I ever met you.”
“Who was the girl you were with at the bar?”
Nico frowns. “My sister, who, by the way, thinks you’re way too hot for me.”
Harlow ignores that comment in favor of another question. “What? I asked you about her the night you crashed here. You were gushing.”
He looks as if this is the last thing he wants to be discussing, but I know the truth, and I’m amused at his awkwardness. Serves him right. Plus, he was the one who came here to discuss it.
“I was high as a kite and thought I was dreaming.”
“Okay...” Harlow draws out, not content with that half-answer. Personally, I’m very much enjoying the torturous way she’s dragging the information from him.
“I was talking about you,” he says with a sigh, as if that’s the worst thing in the world. Harlow doesn’t reply, and I can’t see her face with her tucked into my side. “You have me wrapped around your little finger so badly I talk about you when I’m practically comatose.”
A laugh erupts out of me, and I hear a stifled chuckle from Sawyer too. Neither of us have said anything—this is Harlow and Nico’s conversation to have—but he shoots us both halfhearted glares at our reactions.
“The perfect angel is me?” she asks quietly, and he groans at hearing his words back.
“How could you ever think it wasn’t?”
“Why do you sound so inconvenienced at that?” Her head cocks to the side as she assesses him, taking note of his begrudging tone.
“Because I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?” she pushes, and he straightens his shoulders, his eyes hardening along with them.
“Because I’m in the Seconds.”
CHAPTER NINE
Harlow
Surely, I’ve heard Nico wrong. That cannot be what he just said. No one makes a sound, the silence engulfing us, and Nico’s eyes don’t leave mine once.
“Excuse me?” I finally choke out.
“You should probably come in,” Ezra says, steering me away from the door by my shoulders and into my room, where he hands me a pair of sweats. Sawyer joins us, leaning on the door frame.
“You good?” he asks, eyes only for me, and I nod, even though I still feel slightly stunned. He watches me shrewdly but lets me pass, where I find Nico standing awkwardly in the living area. I take a seat on the sofa, pulling my legs up in front of me as I gesture toward the armchair for him. The other two each take up a space on either side of me, elbows on their knees as if ready to pounce any second.
“What do you mean you’re in the Seconds?” Sawyer asks when we’re all sitting, opening the conversation up again.
“Exactly that,” is all Nico offers back, and irritation filters through my shock. When I look up at him, his eyes are locked on mine albeit devoid of emotion. He’s keeping an eye on my reaction while being careful to not give me any of his.
“But you work at The Grind,” Sawyer continues. “You go to university.”
“You thought we were all feral?” Nico asks, but he’s still looking at me, his eyes so deep and empty I feel like I’m in a trance.
“Exactly that,” Sawyer spits back at him, but Nico answers his own words with a shrug, and the casualness of it all pisses me off.
“Is that it?” I demand. “A shrug? Nico, what the fuck is going on?”
