Page 78 of Rage
I’m reaching for the beer when she goes still. Not scared-still. Reading-still. Her eyes slide past my shoulder to the back of the bar and stay there.
“Don’t turn around fast,” she says.
So obviously I want to turn around fast, but I turn around slowly.
Pool tables. All four of them.
Garret’s lining up a shot, sleeves shoved up, the table lamp throwing green light across his tattooed forearms. Valen is standing at the rail with a cue like a cane and a drink that definitely isn’t on this menu, dressed like he lost a bet that required him to enter a college bar. Azriel is mid-laugh, head back, the only one of them who actually looks like he belongs.
And Saint. He’s leaning against the wall. Black hoodie, hood down, cue against his shoulder. Just past the edge of the lamplight like the dark saved him a seat. Doing that thing he does where he’s the stillest person in the room and somehow you can’t hear anything else.
And he’s looking at me.
Of course he is.
Even Rose could feel it before I turned. He’s been watching the door. I’d bet the rest of my beer he planned on me showing up.
Which would be flattering. He’s been MIA for four days. No call. No lurking by my dorm room. My phone has been thedeadest it’s been all semester, and I have absolutely not been checking it.
I’m lying. I have been checking it, but I did ask him to stay away.
I drink my beer and survey the rest of the scene like a person who couldn’t care less.
There are girls at the high-top nearest the table. Obviously, there are. Four of them are arranged the way you arrange yourself when arranging is the whole point—angled toward the boys, drinks at collarbone height, and laughs pitched to carry over the bass. One leans across to say something to Garret and lets her hand land on Valen’s sleeve on the way back. Valen looks at the hand like it’s lint before moving away.
Then I see her. The brunette from the library.
Corner stool. Hair down her back, glossy under the neon, phone face-up on the table like she’s expecting something. I found out her name is Monica. The one who fucked Saint on the east stairwell. The story that grew after the locker room shower girl across campus.
She’s watching him too.
She glances at him every few seconds, hoping he notices she’s angled so her jean miniskirt rides up the back of her thighs.
And here’s the thing about how she’s watching him—it’s not hope. Hope looks hungry. This looks fed. She watches him like something she’s already had her hands on, and there’s a smugness that hope never gets to have.
Something hot and small switches on under my sternum.
I put my beer down. Carefully. I line the glass up with its own ring of condensation like the table’s being graded.
My thumbnail finds the corner of the label and starts peeling, one slow strip, edge to edge like I’m conducting surgery.
“You’re shredding that label,” Rose says, pointing it out.
“It was loose.”
“Mmm.”
It’s not jealousy, I tell myself. I don’t get to be jealous. There’s nothing said in any of the rooms we’ve been alone in that gives me rights over a barstool or the glossy hair of the girl on it. How could I anyway? He’s no different from the rest of them.
He is just more unhinged, honest about what he plans to do, and gorgeous. I think what makes him more dangerous than the others who hunt Prey is that he is big enough to destroy and big enough to protect.
The label comes off in shredded pieces. I fold a tiny part in half, then quarters.
The bar is too hot, the bass is too loud, and her hair catches the neon every single time she tips her head back to laugh. The sound drifts across the room like nails on a chalkboard.
By the other side of the pool table, Azriel spots us.
His whole face opens, and he throws an arm up in a wave that’s basically a flare, mouthing something that signals get over here.
