Page 49 of Bound By Fury

I stop, and he approaches me, slow and deliberate. Predatorily. Until we’re so close, our toes touch.

“What?”

His hand smooths against my hair, his fingers barely grazing the side of my face. They leave a trail of tingles that travel all the way down my spine. The streetlamp behind him illuminates us like a spotlight, and I watch as his pupils blow wide at the brush of our skin. Gently, he prods under my left eye where the branch caught, and I flinch when the intensity of his touch becomes too much.

He snatches his hand back, hissing through his teeth.

I’m equally disgusted by the way my body reacts to him. It really didn’t get the memo.

Snarling, he leans down until our eyes are level. “I said, why did you come here?”

“I’m not sure that’s any of your business, actually.” It seems like a stupid question coming from him anyway, as if he wouldn’t know that his uncle was the one to recommend me for the scholarship.

“Gigi is dead,” he murmurs. It’s blunt. But it’s a statement full of more than words could ever say, because he knows better than anyone else, besides my mother, what this has done to me.

Pain, white hot through my chest. “Yes,” I whisper. “She’s dead. Of course she’s dead. You were at the funeral. What does that have to do with anything?”

I wait for him to say the words they all say, but they never come. It’s peculiar how the platitudes feel hollow when they’re from anyone else, but with him, I’m left wanting.

“You’re here because of her. You want to feel closer to her. Do the things she did.” He circles me, his arms crossing as he speaks. He stops when he’s behind me and sweeps my wet curls from over my shoulder. His words slither into my ear like a threat. “But you’re also here for revenge. To punish her for leaving you.”

My nails carve into my palms as I tense.

How dare he put into words the thing I haven’t been able to acknowledge myself; tease out the part of me that wants to remain hidden, that isn’t as virtuous as I want to believe.

“What are you even talking about? You sound insane. Of course Gigi dying has something to do with me being here. Of course I want to feel closer to her! What the hell does it matter?” I turn until we’re face-to-face again.

His reddening neck and the tick of his jaw betray his silence.

“Spit it out,” I push.

“It matters,” he sneers, “because you shouldn’t be here.”

I cackle in surprise, but it’s humorless. “Oh yeah? Why not?”

“Because.” He glares. “You don’t belong.”

He knows what he’s doing. He knows that his words are echoing inside me. You don’t belong. You don’t belong.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” My voice is louder and more hurt than I’d want, but his words cut deep. The warmth spreading in my chest has a focal point. My fingers raise to the golden pendant.

If anyone belongs at Black Mountain Academy, it’s me, and I’m so goddamn sick of everyone thinking otherwise. While she was alive, Gigi made it clear that Black Mountain Academy was off limits, even if the dream version of her didn’t agree. But I spent my whole life wondering if she was wrong. And here I finally am, living at the school that has haunted me since I was old enough to dangle my legs from the pews of Lee Chapel, and the only other person still alive in this world who should understand how significant that is just shit all over it.

His eyes flick down to where my hand rests at my throat and then up to my face, lingering on my mouth before finally resting over my shoulder with cold indifference.

“How could you say something like that to me?” I hate the way the words spill from my lips. Whiny and weak. Confused. I want to rip out my own voice box and crush it in my fist. If I could slam my hand through his chest and squeeze his heart to dust, I would.

Once again, he doesn’t answer my question. Instead he reaches out and wraps one of my errant face-framing curls around his finger. His voice snakes under my skin, and I jerk beneath his touch. “You’ve always been so obsessed with Earnest, but you never belonged here, no matter how bad you wanted to. You and this place? Diametrically opposed.”

I shift on my feet, cautious of the wild storm swirling behind his eyes.

“Everything in my life has been easier without you in it,” he says. “You and your grandma, all that fucking woo-woo shit. It’s toxic. Nothing good will come from you being here.”

I shake my head like I can dispel everything I just heard. Hit undo undo undo. This—this is not Kai.

I grip his forearms, the sleeves of his jacket still covering my freezing fingers, and pull him until he has nowhere else to look but directly at my face. The tension between us is an electric thrum so intense, it simmers in tune with the nearby fountain. I’m about to tell him where he can shove his nosey-ass questions when his head tilts just slightly, his jaw clenching, a vein in his neck bulging as he curses, yanking himself from beneath my touch.

Suddenly he’s a pace and a half away. I blink. How the hell did he move so fast?