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For the next twenty minutes, I try my best to ignore Jace’s hulking presence right behind my shoulder while Jenn, Aurora, and I chat and drink our coffee. At least he blends in better than all the other bodyguards I’ve had. Marginally better, anyway.
All the others have been middle-aged men in dark suits who stand out like damn signaling beacons on campus. But Jace in his jeans and white t-shirt, and with his messy brown hair, looks like he’s just a normal student here. If normal students also looked like they were carved statues of ancient Greek warriors, that is.
“Oh, by the way,” Aurora says in an excited voice as she leans forward. “I think I’m going to ask Nichlas out for coffee tomorrow.”
Jenn smirks and gives her a playful shove. “Then why were you flirting with Kayla’s bodyguard just now?”
“Because I’m not a nun.” She grins back and wiggles her eyebrows. “Like a certain someone.”
“I’m not a nun! I just didn’t want to date Henric Gutman.”
“Oh come on, he has a nice smile.”
“He has a pet lizard and a porn addiction.”
“True. And that is never a good combo.”
“Told you.”
With matching grins, they raise their cups and clink them together.
My heart twists painfully.
I wish I had that.
I mean, we’re friends and we have fun together. But I know that my relationship to them will never be what their relationship to each other is. Jenn and Aurora are sisters, with Jenn being only one year older. And since Jenn went to France for a year to work as an au pair, they are now in the same year at Ivy River.
And they’re inseparable. They joke and laugh and tease each other and have each other’s backs in a way that only siblings do. I only got to experience that for a short time.
Some people would say that I’m lucky that I got those years at least. But I’m not lucky. Having known what it’s like is a fucking curse and it makes me feel even more lonely now that I’m all on my own.
A bang echoes through the room.
I leap up from my chair and whirl around as the sound of rattling silverware follows the bang.
Stunned shock pulses through my skull as I stare at the scene behind me.
“Ow,” a miserable voice groans. “What was that for?”
Shaking my head, I blink to clear my vision. But the scene before me remains the same, which means that it is indeed happening.
Jace has slammed a guy down over a table. He has one hand on the back of the guy’s neck and the other around his wrist as he bends the guy’s arm up into the air behind his back.
All around us, the other people in the coffeeshop are staring at us with wide eyes. The barista is holding a cup towards a customer, but it’s just hovering in the air because both of them are looking at us.
Embarrassment floods my cheeks.
I quickly shift my gaze back down to the guy who is bent over the table with his cheek pressed against the pale wooden tabletop. Recognition flits through me.
“Uhm… Kayla,” he croaks from his awkward position.
Oh God, it’s that guy from the party. Lionel Henderson.
I snap my gaze to Jace and throw my arms out. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“He was sneaking up on you,” Jace replies, scowling down at Lionel.
“He’s a friend!”
