He looked at me. His expression was fierce. "He was kissing you."
"He was hugging me," I said. "I was hugging him. It was innocent."
Griffin went into the kitchen. "I know what I saw."
"You saw it wrong," I said. It was the most heartbreaking thing on earth to me that he refused to believe me. I followed him into the kitchen. "Clint was telling me that he stopped doing c.o.ke, and I was happy for him. He used to be my friend, and the cocaine made him greedy and selfish, and I was happy he was rid of it. And so I hugged him. Why don"t you believe me?"
He opened the refrigerator and dug through it. "Because it"s not like you hadn"t screwed him before." He came out with a bottle of Newcastle.
"It"s a little early, isn"t it?" I said.
"You want one?"
"Yeah," I said.
He handed me a beer, shut the refrigerator door, and went over to a drawer. "That guy was the weasel that was in your apartment the first day I got there. The one who you ran off with that one night. The night when I had to beat up the other guy who was slamming you up against a wall and calling you names? You remember that?"
"I do," I said.
He came out with a bottle opener. He opened his beer and tossed it to me. "That"s the guy who you were kissing. Clint."
I tried to catch it, but I missed. It fell on the floor, and I had to pick it up. "I wasn"t kissing him." I opened my beer. "I don"t know why you think you saw that. Maybe from the angle you were looking at, it looked like a kiss, but I swear to G.o.d, Griffin, I wasn"t kissing him."
Griffin leaned against the counter and took a long draught of his beer. "Why won"t you admit it, doll? After all this time, after everything, you could come clean. Stop lying to me."
"I"m not lying!" I took a drink of my beer, and the cold, thick liquid felt good going down. "I didn"t kiss Clint. I haven"t kissed anyone but you in over a year. You don"t want me to be telling the truth. Because then you look like a bad guy for running out on me."
He drained the rest of the beer and slammed it on the counter. "I came back."
"You came back too late," I said.
He looked down at his hands. His voice was quiet. "Yeah, I did."
I drank some more Newcastle. It still tasted good. I couldn"t look at Griffin.
"Maybe it doesn"t matter, doll," he said. "Maybe you were hugging him. Maybe I believe you."
I raised my gaze to meet his.
He wasn"t looking at me. He was staring at the floor. "The fact of the matter is, we were already broken then. Because if we hadn"t been, I wouldn"t have run. And you wouldn"t have..." He swallowed. "But it all happened the way it did, didn"t it? And it"s... it"s f.u.c.ked now."
"It doesn"t have to be," I said.
He was quiet for a minute. "I think it does."
"Griffin-"
"Don"t." He sighed. "You were right about one thing, though."
"What?"
"I don"t think you should stay here. Maybe Sloane and Silas won"t mind after all."
I readjusted the backpack on my shoulder as we walked up the sidewalk to a brick house. "I don"t like this, Griffin. If you and I just talked about what"s going on between us, then maybe everything would be okay."
He was at least three steps ahead of me. "There"s nothing going on between us, doll. We used to be together. We aren"t anymore. We have nothing to talk about."
"We do, though. I"m still in love with you."
He whirled to face me. "No."
"No?"
"No, you"re not."
"How do you know how I feel?"
"If you were in love with me, if you were ever in love with me, you wouldn"t have-" He broke off. "This is why I don"t want to talk about it. It only makes me upset, and it doesn"t change anything." He turned back around and walked up to the door. He knocked.
I hurried after him. "I never stopped being in love with you."
"Stop talking," he said. He knocked again.
"What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that you still have feelings for me too? Are you afraid that if we talk, you"ll remember that?"
The door opened and Sloane peeked her head out. "Oh, you"re here."
Griffin shoved me through the door. "Keep her out of trouble. I"ll be back in two weeks." He turned to go.
"You don"t want to come inside?" said Sloane.
"You aren"t even going to say goodbye to me?" I asked.
Griffin kept walking down the sidewalk, back towards his car. "Thanks for taking her."
"Griffin!" I called after him.
"See you, Griffin," said Sloane. She pulled me away from the door and closed it. She grinned at me. "Probably better to let him go."
I sagged against the door. "All I do is let him go."
"Oh," she said, "you"re still into him, aren"t you?"
"Never stopped."
She made a sympathetic face. "I"m sorry. I know all about that feeling."
"What feeling?"
"Liking a guy who"s not liking you back?" She pointed at herself. "Me? I"m always friend zoned. It"s always like, "But Sloane, we"re such pals. I don"t see you that way."" She shrugged. "I figure it"s just because I"m a better shot than they are, and I own cooler guns. Also, I have a scary brother." She gestured to the staircase that was adjacent to the front door.
Silas was coming down the steps. Sloane was right. He did look scary. He was burly and muscled like ex-Op Wraith a.s.sa.s.sins tended to be. He had dark hair which he wore in a ponytail, dark eyes, and a few piercings. His eyebrow. His labret. His ears, which were stretched to fit bigger gauge jewelry. But none of that was what made him look scary. It was his expression-unconcerned but deadly. "So. You"re the chick who broke Griffin"s heart."
I opened my mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
Silas trooped down the rest of the steps and sauntered past us.
"Don"t mind him," said Sloane. "He takes a little while to warm up to people."
"Okay," I said.
Sloane started up the steps. "Come on. I"ll show you your room."
I followed her. "It"s just you and Silas in this house?"
She grinned over her shoulder. "It"s awesome, right? Silas and I hacked into some of the Op Wraith accounts after the whole place went bust and got a nice chunk of change. We figured that investing in a house in a college town is always a good idea. After we graduate, we can rent it out."
"So, you"re going to school?"
She laughed. "Yup. Well, it"s break now. We finished our finals last week. But, yeah. Silas and I are both doing the college thing. It"s way more fun than the a.s.sa.s.sin thing."
"I bet it is," I said.
We got to the top of the steps. There were two doors and another set of steps.
"This is my room," she said, pointing to one of the doors. She pointed to the other. "And my bathroom. Silas" room is downstairs. Yours is all the way at the top."
"This place has three stories?" I"d hardly been able to tell from outside.
"Four, if you count the bas.e.m.e.nt," she said. "It"s finished. I think it was supposed to be like a party room, but we work out down there and stuff." She plunged up the next set of steps.
"This is a cool house," I said.
"Thanks," she said.
The room I was staying in was small but cozy. It had a single bed, a dresser, and its own TV. There was also a tiny bathroom off to one side with its own shower. I turned around in a circle. "This is just a guest room?"
She shrugged. "We talked about getting a roommate, but we don"t really need one. We asked Griffin if he wanted to move in, but he seems to like having his own s.p.a.ce."
I turned to her. "Thanks for letting me stay. I appreciate it."
"Sure," she said. "You were injected with the serum, right?"
I nodded. That seemed like a strange way to take the conversation.
"Well, I think it might be cool to have someone else to talk about it with. Someone who"s not a guy, you know? Because most of the Op Wraith a.s.sa.s.sins were male."
Oh. Okay. She was offering me friendship. "Yeah. I get that."
She straightened a knick knack on the dresser. "I don"t have a lot of friends that are girls."
I smiled. "Me either. The ones I have seem to keep getting killed."
She smiled back. "I"m hard to kill."
I nodded. "Yeah, that"s true."
"Anyway, I"m glad you"re here. I wanted to get to know you."
Silas had his head in the refrigerator. "There are no more leftovers, Sloane."
"I"m ordering pizza," she said as she led me into the kitchen. It was a wide open s.p.a.ce, with the stove located on an island in the middle. The lighting dangled from the ceiling, and the appliances were sleek and stainless steel. She gestured for me to sit down at the kitchen table. "You like pizza, right, Leigh?"
"Yeah," I said. "Of course."
Silas closed the refrigerator door. He surveyed me. "So why"d Griffin kick you out of his house and send you to us?"
"Silas, don"t be an a.s.s," said Sloane, dialing on her phone.
"He didn"t tell you?" I said.
Silas sat down at the table across from me. "No."
"I made his girlfriend mad," I said.
"Daisy?" said Silas. "The Sunday school chick?"
"Yeah."
He shook his head. "Man, I do not know why he"s dating her."
"She"s nice," said Sloane. "You guys are okay with pepperoni, right?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Sure," said Silas. He turned back to me. "That"s the thing, though. Nice. It"s like he"s afraid to be with someone he might actually like. Because whatever you did to him, you royally f.u.c.ked the boy up."
"Silas, geez," said Sloane. Into her phone, "Um, hi. I want to place an order?"
"It"s okay," I said. "He didn"t tell you why we broke up either?"
"He doesn"t talk much about you at all," said Silas. "And when he does, he gets this look on his face. All shot through with agony and pain and s.h.i.t. I feel bad for him."
I bit my lip. I felt bad for him too. Judging from the way he"d been with Daisy, I"d a.s.sumed he"d moved on. But the more I found out, the more apparent it became that it wasn"t like that at all. Griffin was as lost without me as I was without him. I had to find some way to make him see that. No matter how we"d hurt each other, we needed each other.