Brutal Precious (Lovely Vicious #3) (9 page)

“You little bitch –”

His hands reach for me, and I’m ducking, but neither of us get to move any further, because someone steps between us.

“That’s about enough of that.”

And I recognize this voice, too.

Dark jeans, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Shoulders I know – shoulders I slept against a long time ago. Tawny, gold-brown hair sticking up in the back. It’s an illusion, it has to be.

“And who the fuck are you?” Nameless sneers.

“I’m hurt you don’t recognize me, Will. All that prying into our school records, but no prying into my photos? That’s lazy of you. Lax. I’d almost call it a mistake.”

I see Nameless’ eyes go wide, but he quickly adopts a neutral face, a smirk tugging at his mouth as he stands up, his full height almost level with the newcomer’s.

“We’re all here, then. Fabulous. The party can finally start. It’s about damn time,” Nameless sneers.

He looks at the newcomer, and then me, before turning and walking away down the well-lit sidewalk. Like a spell, the paralysis lifts when he’s out of sight, and I gasp for air.

“Shit, shit, rancid
shitmonkeys
!” I stand and brush myself off, willing the trembling to stop. It’ll take hours. And it’s not just Nameless that’s causing it.

Jack Hunter turns to face me.

It feels like years, but it’s only been months. A few months. He looks so much older – lines around his eyes that didn’t used to be there. His face matured somehow, the sharp angles of pubescence rounded off in a handsome, hawkish way. His eyes are the same frigid, clear blue, brows drawn tight.

“Isis, I –”

I pull my fist back and punch him. His head snaps to the side, and the people around us go even quieter. Someone murmurs ‘fight’, but no one moves. Except Jack. He slowly turns his head to me, a red welt blossoming on his Legolas-high cheekbones. I expect rage to ice over his eyes, but it never does.

“Isis,” he repeats, softer now.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, running off like that?”

Jack flinches (flinch? Jack? Never.) but doesn’t break his gaze on mine.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

“I know I’m fucking shaking! I’m a lot of things right now, and shaking is the least homicidal of them! You left all of us! You just…disappeared! Your Mom, Wren, shit – everyone. You left everyone behind!”

Jack’s frown deepens. I catch a glimpse of his hands at his sides – strong and spidery as ever. I want to hold them, I want to hold him, to lunge in and hug him until he can’t breathe or leave again, to tell him it’s okay, to tell him I forgive him, but the fury and Nameless’ words mush together in my head and come out as acid on my lips.

“You left
me
behind.”

“Isis, please, let me –”

“No!” I interrupt his soft, pleading voice. It’s so unlike him, it scares me. Almost as much as Nameless’ hands shooting out to grab me. Almost. “Did you think a fucking ticket to Europe would make me forgive you? On what fucking planet is a ticket a substitute for a proper goddamn goodbye, and how can I avoid said planet for all conceivable time?”

***

She is fire and rage, all claws extended, her hair swirling around her in the gentle night-summer wind and her cinnamon eyes ablaze with light from the hall. She shines in the velvet darkness, a little thinner than I remember, and a little sadder, but burning all the same. Always burning. I warm myself on her fury, embracing the searing hot-sweet feel of her wrath and all the vibrant life behind it.

She is here, she is within reach. She is real and corporeal and angry with me. Maybe she’s never not been angry with me, and that’s why it feels right. We have always been at odds. We have always clashed. After months of feeling wrong, this - staring down my hellion (mine? No, I threw the chance to call her mine away.) – is the only thing that has felt right. The planets are in place, the last clockgear snaps into motion, and the world begins to turn again, as is proper and right.

“I thought you were going to Stanford,” I try. She bristles.

“Don’t change the subject, buttlump.”

“You should’ve gone to Stanford. It would’ve challenged you.”

You would’ve been happier there. You would’ve bent the whole world to your will. You would’ve met smarter, kinder boys, there. Boys who aren’t me.

“Wow,” She scoffs. “I didn’t think it was possible, but you’ve somehow gotten even better at pissing me off. Call the pope, because we have a bonafide fucking miracle on our peasant hands.”

Through the anger I can see her shoulders trembling. I didn’t think it was her, at first. She was so quiet, her purple streaks all by faded. But I recognized Will Cavanaugh. How could I not? I studied his face in the dossier for nights on end, memorizing every line and curve, planning out where and how I would hurt him most. The docile girl talking with Will couldn’t have been Isis. But then came the kick to his spleen, wild and furious and all reaction, no forethought, and I knew instantly it was her. Here, of all places. My heart stuttered, the color and warmth flushing in where months of training and guilt had drained it out to grays and blacks.

“What about you?” She spits when I don’t say anything. “Harvard get too snooty for you? Who am I kidding, the Queen of England is less snooty than you.”

“I’ve transferred here. I never went to Harvard.”

“Then where. The fuck. DID. You go?”

Her words are slow venom, her eyes narrowed. I can’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand. No – she would. She would understand best of all, and that’s why I can’t tell her. It would draw me closer to her. I was thrilled to take this job at first, if only for my planned retribution on Will, but now that she’s here I regret it. This school brings us close. So close. Close enough for me to hurt her all over again, hurt her to the point of no healing, like I did to Sophia.

I savor the cuts her fury makes, the pain letting me know that yes – I’m still alive. Even after trying to kill the old me, the hurtful bastard me, to leave him behind buried in guilt beside Sophia and Tallie, a single flame from Isis’ lips and I’m reminded of our war, our words, our bond. I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her as she turns me to ash. I want her to kill me like I haven’t had the guts to.

But she is trembling. So I settle for words.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” I say. She scoffs. Her armor is out in full force, tougher and spikier than ever, thanks to me. Thanks to Will. Thanks to bastards like the two of us.

“Did you get that line from one of Sophia’s trashy romance novels –” She covers her mouth instantly, but it’s too late. Sophia’s name rings in the open, tearing apart the stitching on both our wounds. But where pain stops most mouths, it fuels Isis’.

“I hate you, Jack Hunter.”

I want to hold her until she can’t stand me anymore, until she runs away to somewhere safer. Somewhere without me.

I nod instead.

“I know.”

“No. You don’t know. You think that immature war was hate. But this – this is –” She squeezes her eyes shut. “You left me. You left me like everyone else, and I can’t forgive you for that.”

“You don’t have to,” I offer. “You don’t owe me anything.”

She laughs, the harsh front breaking for just a moment, her old self spilling through the cracks.

“And you don’t owe
me
anything, obviously. Not even a call. Not even a single goddamn text saying, oh, I don’t know, ‘
I’m not actually decomposing in a river somewhere after throwing myself off a bridge, still breathing, don’t wait up for me’
.”
 

And that’s when I see it. It’s not anger because I’ve hurt her. Sophia’s anger was always because I’d hurt her. This purer, brighter anger is because I made Isis worry. Because she thought I was dead, or rather, because she didn’t know whether or not I was alive. She is too kind, too motherly for this fury to be anything but a protective instinct denied its full course. I held that sort of anger once, too. I took it out on Isis after I’d caught her in my room looking through my letters – in my mind, trying to get to Sophia.

I’ve known Isis long enough (not nearly a year, but it feels like centuries) to know that when she shakes, she is far gone. When she trembles, her past is rearing its head, throwing shadows on her mind. I’d always considerately refrained from touching her, from making it worse, and though I scream at myself to remain that way, I can’t.

I can’t.

I step into her, wrapping my arms around her weakly and resting my head in her neck.

“I can’t do it anymore,” I breathe. “I tried, and tried, god I tried to be the strong one. To do the right thing for everyone.”

Isis goes stiff, and for a split second I realize what I’m doing, and frantically try to pull back. Something desperate and dark is eating away at my core, held back by Gregory’s brutal training and my own dam of denial. And, like the bomb she is, just seeing Isis again blew cracks in that dam, and she’s going to see me through the cracks, the real me, she’s going to see me like no one else has, like I’m pretending not to be, broken and dead inside and I have to leave, have to compose myself, but she doesn’t let me pull away, wrapping her arms tight around my waist and keeping me pressed against her, against her warmth and smell and her understanding silence.

“I t-tried,” I whisper. “I tried to protect her, and you, and everyone. But all I did was kill her. I failed. I failed and I killed her, and hurt you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, hot moisture collecting in them.

“I don’t deserve to live -”

Her arms tighten, squeezing the air from me.

“Stop,” Isis says.

“It’s the truth –”

“Newsflash; not everything that drops from your gorgeous dumb mouth is the truth.” There’s a pause. “Ah, shit. I just called you gorgeous. Now I have to commit seppuku.”

“Don’t you dare,” I mumble into her neck.

“See? That’s how it feels. That’s how it feels when you say you don’t deserve to live. New rule: Nobody gets to talk suicide ever.”

A tear escapes, and I bury it in her shirt collar. She puts a hand on my head, petting it.

“If you really think you’re so bad,” she says. “Then live. Live, and suffer. Live with the memories of all the bad things you’ve done. Don’t take the easy way out.”

There’s a poignant pause. Then she adds;

“- numbnuts.”
 

The name is a tiny injection of reality, of light. The cracks in me relieve the pressure of the last year, of the year before the last, the water flowing through them slowly as my breath deflates in my lungs. I look up, and cup either side of her face.

“I’ll only say this one time, so listen carefully.”

Her eyes are wide, her lips parted and her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes too, I notice, are more than a little tear-stained.

“You’re right,” I finish. “You’re right for once, Isis Blake.”

And then she smiles, and for the briefest half-second before her friends come barreling out of the hall and shout for her, everything in the world is right, and bright, and better. We part, my arms already missing her warmth, and she looks back at them.

“One sec!” She whips her head around to me. “So you’re here now? You’re living on campus like the rest of us peons?”

I nod. “The Jefferson dorm. 314. For a while.”

Her stare is flinty. “You have a lot of explaining to do. Due. A lot of explaining is extremely overdue. And you should call your mom. She’s been really worried about you.”

“Agreed.”

“You still have my number, right? You didn’t chuck your phone in a lake when you went to join the Empire or the seven samurai or the monastery of lame grossness or whatever?”

“I have it.”

She chews her lip. “I still haven’t forgiven you. But I’ve found, through eighteen years of vigorous experimentation, that I’m much more willing to forgive people if they interact with me on this physical plane. Talk to me. Text me. With cute cat pictures or winky faces –”

“I don’t do winky faces.”

“Aha, but you do cat pictures!”

“No.”

“Yes,” She argues.

“No.”

“Ugh, look at us. Why can’t we just talk like normal people? About, like, concerts and cake and our deep personal beliefs and the color orange and stuff?”

I stare at her blankly. She nudges me.

“Orange. C’mon, try it. A conversation about orange.”

“It’s….orange.”

“Ding ding ding. Give the man a cigar. Orange is orange. Wow. This has been an excellent conversation. Your powers of observation are downright fearsome. Maybe we could work our way up, you know, to purple next time. Except then you might disappear for years again –”

“It wasn’t
years
.”

“ – and I would be lost and heartbroken, and then you would come back having spent fifty years thinking about purple, thinking; ‘
oh yes, now is my chance to impress Isis with my deep and thorough knowledge of the color purple’
, and you’d find me in a nursing home in a coma dreaming about Johnny Depp all vegetable-like, and you’d have to hurry to tell me about purple because one of my potential spawn might pull the plug on me. Maybe you’ll pull the plug on me. Note to self: ugh, don’t get old.”