A Matter of Heart (34 page)

I’ve been told, over and
over again, that he dates a lot—possibly even more so now that we’re friends
again. I know this, and up until now, I haven’t been too bothered with it, I
suppose, because it’s never been real to me.

Watching him with this
insanely beautiful woman, though—my vision hazes green.

It’s completely irrational.
My own wedding is two months away, and just until the last two minutes, I’d
been mourning Jonah’s absence so strongly that Cora accused me this morning of
acting like he’d died.

I have no idea who this
woman is.

I try to tell myself that,
since we are just friends, I have no place to be jealous.

So why do I feel like
ripping her hair out by the roots?

The next thing I know, I’m
standing next to Kellan, smiling down at him with the super cheerleader smile
he first met me with. I’ve got my emotions wrapped up nice and tight, so he
can’t feel the poison streaking through my bloodstream like fire.

He starts when he sees me,
and the most interesting look flashes across his beautiful face: like he can’t
believe I’m actually alive and standing next to him.

“Hi!” I’m cheerfulness
personified. “Funny running into you here!”

He quickly covers his
surprise before the girl sitting with him can see it, offering up what I know
to be a fake smile. Can she tell, though? “What are you doing? I mean, over
here?”

I grin at the redhead
apologetically before sitting down, unasked, at their table. “My class was
cancelled.”

Surprisingly, the girl isn’t
bothered by my presence at all. Up close, she’s even more stunning. Her skin is
flawless and honeyed with just the smallest smattering of freckles across a
pert nose. And her hair . . . good gods, it’s the most gorgeous red, the kind
that movie stars have, the kind that makes every girl drool and wish it were
hers. It glows in the sun like liquid gold on fire, so dazzling I swear every
man walking by stops and stares. To top it all off, she’s got these very light
blue eyes, rimmed with dark indigo.

She looks like a goddess.

I officially loathe her.

Kellan clears his throat.
“Sophie, this is Chloe Lilywhite.” There is a small pause, in which he clears
his throat again. “Jonah’s fiancée. Chloe, this is Sophie Greenfield.”

Sophie, who I note didn’t
get a relationship clarifier, smiles sunshine and flowers at me, extending a
perfectly manicured hand. I take it, squeezing perhaps a little too hard. A
childish urge to wipe my hand on my dress overtakes me.

“It’s really nice to meet
you,” she says, and dammit, her voice is gorgeous, too.

“Class was cancelled?” Kellan
repeats, his cuff already rotating around his wrist.

He’s nervous. I scratch at a
bump in the white linen covering the table. “So says the note on the door.”

“That happened to me
before,” Sophie says, practically oozing sympathy.

I merely stare at her, my
idiot smile not reflecting how I’m really feeling at all.

“So, you were . . . heading
home?” Kellan asks, bringing my attention back towards him.

Yes. And I ought to go now.
“I—”

“You should eat with us!”
Sophie exclaims. “We just ordered. I’m sure we could get the waiter back.”

Meeting this woman was one
thing. Spending time while eating with her? I’d rather have a lobotomy, thank
you very much. “Oh, no, really, I—”

“I won’t take no for an
answer. I’m quite tenacious, you see.” She grins, her teeth perfect and movie
star white. Does she have any defects? “Here, let me go get someone.”

She stands up, showcasing
the enviable body she has. It’s absolutely, disgustingly flawless, and when she
walks, she glides. I no longer think every man is watching her. I know it.

Every man, that is, except
Kellan. Who is staring at me like I’m a nightmare come to life.

“Chloe,” he murmurs, and I
swear, it sounds like his voice is shaking, “I . . . what . . .” He inhales
slowly, like he’s centering himself. “I can’t sense any of your emotions right
now.”

It’s the first time either
him or Jonah has pointed this out. “Oh?” I say, still picking at the
tablecloth. The cheerleader smile is gone.

He says nothing. His
eyebrows are drawn together, his brow scrunched, like he’s trying to puzzle me
out.

I can’t risk him learning
about my trick. I also can’t deal with this—jealousy over someone I have no
right to be jealous over—on top of what went down with my parents. I lurch to
my feet. “I’m going to go now. Sorry if I interrupted anything.”

“Wait.” He reaches out and
grabs my arm, and this here, this touch, is the first I’ve felt from him since
Hawaii. Tingles zing up and down my arm, my spine, and everywhere else, making
me feel like I’ve been electrocuted.

My shield cracks for the
tiniest moment from our skin touching. He jerks his head up and stares at me,
shocked, before I slide my arm away from his hand and smooth the crack out. And
then confusion fills his face as he grapples to understand what I’ve just
inadvertently let him feel.

“The waiter will be over in
a sec.” Sophie’s back, handing me a menu. “Have you been here before? The
calamari is to die for.” And then she notices I’m standing. “You’re not still
thinking of leaving, are you?”

“Um,” I clutch the menu
against my chest. “I really should . . .”

Her eyes widen dramatically
“No!” She pats the seat I’ve vacated. “Please stay. You don’t know how long
I’ve wanted to meet you!”

Huh?

“Sit,” she encourages, and I
do sit, hard onto the chair. “Kellan and I were just talking about how fun we
think the party tonight at the Leviathan will be. Will you be coming?”

I hold the menu up so I
don’t have to look at her and her incandescent beauty. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s too bad,” Sophie
says. “Kellan tells me you and his brother are homebodies, but I keep hoping
you’ll come hang out with us.”

Us? US? “I . . . we tend to,
uh, not go to many parties,” I say idiotically. I can’t even see the words on
the menu. Oh my gods. This woman, this Sophie, she’s . . . she’s . . .

Everything I’m not.

Which is available to
Kellan.

I should not care about
this. Why can’t I stop caring about this?

Sophie talks some more about
this party tonight, which, frankly, I haven’t even heard of until now, and whom
she expects to see. She doesn’t notice that I’m not saying anything, how I’m
still hiding behind the menu, or that Kellan is answering in small,
noncommittal ways that indicate he’s grossly uncomfortable.

I know this about him. Does
she?

Is this a first date? I
wrack my brain for what Jonah’s told me. Kellan has a lot of first dates.
Occasionally there are second dates and, very, very rarely, there may be a
third. There are never fourth dates. And, mostly, there are no dates at all.
There are just hook-ups, which Jonah disapproves of.

It’s almost laughable that
Jonah and I have no sex yet are in a committed relationship and Kellan has way
too much without any relationships at all.

I should not be thinking
about Kellan having sex. Not if I want the restaurant to remain in one piece.

“Ma’am?” The waiter is
standing over me, pad and pen in hand.

There is silence at the
table while everyone waits for me to order. I feel like eating less right now
than I did two hours earlier, and then I’d only been not hungry. Now the threat
of food is enough to make my stomach churn. Plus, my head is pounding. So I
order the simplest thing on the menu—a house salad with no dressing. Iceberg
lettuce is mostly water, right?

The waiter tugs the menu out
of my hand and I reluctantly let it go, bitter to lose my shield. I try not to
cringe under the weight of Sophie’s stare.

“So!” she says. “You and
Jonah, huh?”

I nod, shifting my fork and
knife around.

“That’s great,” she coos.
“He’s a looker, that one.” She nudges Kellan and laughs. “But this one’s cuter.
When’s the wedding?”

Jonah and I never, ever
discuss the wedding within earshot of Kellan. This one question multiples the
uncomfortable factor of this little
tête-à-tête, complete with a
third wheel,
by a thousand. “Um, about two months?”

“Oh, I love weddings. I can
hardly wait!” Sophie turns to Kellan. “You must be so excited.”

He doesn’t even bother to
make a noncommittal sound this time.

She’s just begun to ask me
where the wedding will take place when Kellan’s phone rings. He pulls it out
and apologizes, then moves away from the table to answer it.

Once he’s out of earshot,
Sophie leans closer and says, “He’s the best, isn’t he?”

The cheerleader smile
stretches as far as it can go when I nod.

“Being engaged to his
brother and all, you must know Kellan well.”

I force myself to perform
just as well as I used to during a football game. I exude confidence and
happiness when there is none to be found. “Yes, we are . . .” Connected.
Star-crossed. Hopeless. “Extremely close.”

A dreamy look consumes her.
“I have never fallen so hard in love with anyone before. It’s been crazy these
last few months. Insane. It’s almost embarrassing how in love I am with him.”

MONTHS?

Caleb snaps to attention in
my mind.
Whoa, Chloe, calm down right now—

Months, not one date, not
two, not three, but whole frigging months of dates when Kellan doesn’t date? He
loves
me, I’m
his Connection, OHMYGODS what—

China and glass rattle all
around me. Caleb forces me to count to ten, then twenty, willing me to calm
down before I do something I’ll regret.

And still, Sophie isn’t done
with me yet. “We’d been friends for awhile, you know. Which is a nice way to
start, even though . . .” She giggles. “I’ll tell you a secret. I fell in love
with him the moment I saw him. I had to have him, was relentless in pursuing
him. I knew he and I were meant to be.”

She puts a hand on me, her
horrible, beautiful hand that’s touched him
,
and Caleb barks at me not
to start screaming or destroy anything.

“I’ve tried to get him to
set up a double date with you guys, so we can get to know each other. Think of
the fun the four of us could have.”

Leave,
Caleb yells,
leave now, for the love of all that’s good in the worlds . . .
JUST LEAVE.

But she’s still talking,
still touching me. How does she not see that the table is close to blowing sky
high? “I really want to get to know the people who mean the most to Kellan. I
figure, if we’re going to make a go of this, a serious one like we both want,
we should share things like that. I mean, we’ll be sisters someday.”

SHE DID NOT JUST SAY WHAT I
THINK SHE SAID.

I stand up, throwing out
wild excuses as why to leave at the moment. My phone is ringing, even though
it’s clear that it’s not. I have an appointment. I have somewhere to be. And
then I spot Maccon Lightningriver across the street and yell his name as loud
as I can.

Sophie stares up at me like
I’m the lunatic I’m acting like.

“My friend,” I say, smiling
as big as I can. “Him. I mean, Mac. I, uh, we’re on the Council, and we’ve got
. . . Council stuff . . . so . . .”

Mac comes over, takes one
look at me, and slides his arm around my waist before kissing me on the cheek.
And then, horrors upon horrors, greets Sophie like they’re old friends.

Am I the only one in Annar
who doesn’t know this siren?

“I’ve been looking for you,”
I tell Mac. His dark eyebrows rise, so I rush to continue, my words too fast,
“You know. Work stuff? We need to talk about work stuff. We’re supposed to meet
today. For work stuff.”

He stares at me, hard, but
relents, like I knew he would. “I was just coming to find you.”

I very nearly collapse in
relief.

“But Chloe! What about your
salad?” Sophie asks, taking a step too close to me.

Kellan returns to the table,
not smiling in the least. Mac is, though. Mac is smiling like a Cheshire cat.
His arm tightens around my waist, his head drops to lean against mine as he
greets his friend. Or is it frenemy? Because Kellan looks like he could kill
Mac right now.

“Chloe says she has to go,”
Sophie tells Kellan. “I guess she and Mac have some sort of date?”

This goes over as well as a
lead balloon with Kellan. He opens his mouth to no doubt say something nasty,
but Mac cuts him off. “Dinner date.” He pauses before adding slyly, “A work
dinner date.”

Sophie claps her hands. “We
should all go together! And then maybe we can all go to the party afterwards?”

NO! “Work stuff. Boring!” I
practically shout. My face hurts from the fake smile. “You’d be bored. Right
Mac?”