Page 48

Slowly, giving her time to stop me, I shuffled closer, and my hands closed around her shoulders.

“Mia, what’s going on?”

My voice was softer than it had any business being.

“Oh, you don’t know? Well, let me illuminate you—”

I forced myself to stay put, though every instinct was screaming to pull back at the fire in her eyes.

“—thanks to your unwanted attention, I’m… I’m…”

Her voice broke. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, like she was a fish out of water. It would’ve been funny, but for the sheer agony in the line of her brows.

Something jagged and complicated twisted my guts as I leaned in a touch, searching for the missing clue. And then I saw it: her blazer, clutched to her chest, in tatters. Words stood out to me where angry Sharpie scrawls stained it—vicious, like ink bleeding in water.

The blood drained from my face as I blinked a few times, as if blinking would somehow wipe them clean. But the slurs persisted, and ice sharpened in my veins.

“Who. Did. This?”

My fingers twitched with the urge to pluck it from her hands. I wanted to toss it in the nearest bin and set it on fire. I had to lock my knees to stop from barrelling forward like a bull seeing red.

“The better question is who didn’t.”

Her voice cracked on the word.

My chest pinched in until breathing grew difficult. My knuckles blanched and my jaw ached from biting down on a hundred things crawling up my throat.

“Hey…” I murmured, the word coming out all wrong again.

I blamed it on the impending cold. It was making me feverish. How else would I explain the heat creeping up the sides of my neck?

Her heavy little pants rose in a steam between us.

My body arched towards her of its own accord, until my own breath whispered over her face. I reached out, thumbs wiping at the smudged make-up.

Almost… gentle.

Every muscle in my arms locked-up a second too late.

I yanked my hands away as if the touch had burnt.

The rain picked up, hitting the roof in insistent, sharp little needles, and all I could see was the trembling line of her shoulders. My fingers flexed at my sides with immense restraint.

I wanted to pull her into my arms.

And not only that. It hit me like a punch to the solar plexus: I wanted to fix it.

A grim urge to laugh crawled its way up my throat.

I’d started it all, hadn’t I?

Thunder rolled again in the distance, and when it quietened, a chatter drew my gaze to her mouth, to her trembling bottom lip.

Goddamn it.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I yanked my jacket off, and my skin prickled at once as cool air seeped into my soaked shirt.

“I don’t need—” She spat and bristled at once, like a stray cat offered a smidgen of care.