“So what’s going on?” she asks as we slowly make our way back to my room. “I thought I’d see you at dinner, but you weren’t there.”
“Oh, yeah. I had a little…accident.”
“I can see that.” She eyes the bandages covering too many of my visible surfaces. “Anything serious? Because you look like you went three rounds with a polar bear. And lost.”
I shake my head with a laugh. “A little flying glass from the earthquake earlier, no big deal.”
“Oh, right. The earthquake.” She studies me for a second. “You know, we’ve had more tremors since you got here than we’ve had in the last year. I’m beginning to think you brought them with you, California girl.”
I snort. “Yeah, I’ve already had that discussion today. But I have to tell you, I never got hurt like this from a quake in California.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you know what they say about Alaska.”
“North to the Future?” I respond, quoting the state motto I found online when I was researching this state.
She laughs. “More like, everything here is designed to kill you in ten seconds or less.”
“I thought that was Australia?”
“I’m pretty sure it works for any place that begins and ends with an A.” She grins, but there’s a bite to the words that reminds me just how bad things can get here. I may have fallen out of a tree and gotten cut by some glass since I got here, but Lia lost her boyfriend. And Jaxon lost his brother.
“How are you doing?” I ask as we get closer to my room.
“Me?” She looks startled. “You’re the one who’s all cut up.”
“I didn’t mean physically. I meant…” I take a deep breath, blow it out slowly. “About Hudson. How are you doing?”
For a second, just a second, rage flashes in her eyes. Towering, unadulterated, infinite. But then she blinks, and it’s replaced with a bland, pleasant expression that is somehow a million times worse than the fury beneath it.
“I’m doing all right,” she says with a strange little smile that makes me ache in sympathy. “I mean, I’m not good. I’ll never be good. But I’ve figured out how to say no, so that’s something.”
“To say no?”
“Yeah, we talked about this before. Everyone wants me to just move on, and I can’t. They tell me that nothing has to change, that Jaxon’s a perfectly good replacement—”
“Jaxon?” My whole body tightens up at the mention of his name linked with hers. She can’t be serious…can she?
“I know. It’s absurd. He and Hudson are nothing alike. And I don’t care about politics or family dynasties even if he does. I just want Hudson back.”
I’m reeling under the news that she and Jaxon are supposed to be together—and the implication that he’s willing to go along with it. But she looks so small when she says it, so exposed, that my heart twists for her.
Besides, it doesn’t make sense. Not with the way he held me earlier. Not with the way he kissed me. He didn’t do either of those things like a guy who had another girl on his mind. He did them like a guy who was as desperate for me as I was for him.
Yeah, he tried to take it back on the stairs a few minutes ago, but you can’t just take something like that back. Not when I’ve never felt anything close to it before in my whole life, and I would swear he never had, either.
So what’s all this about, then? What’s Lia getting at? And why is she talking about it to me, of all people?
I don’t have answers to those questions and, more than likely, I’m not going to find them standing in the middle of the dorm hallway. Especially not when the combination of sedative and blood loss is still fogging up my brain, making me feel like half my body isn’t even here.
On the plus side, we’re finally back at my and Macy’s room. I’m exhausted and more than ready to be back in my own bed. I’m also more than ready to be away from Lia, at least until I figure out if I’m being paranoid or if she’s trying to subtly warn me off Jaxon because she considers him hers.
If that is what she’s doing, it isn’t going to work. Not when I already feel this connection to Jaxon. It’s strange, I know, considering we’ve spent as much time sniping at each other as we have talking, but the more time I spend with him, the more time I want to spend. Like there’s something pushing me toward him, making me want him. There’s not a chance her subtle little speech about how everyone wants her and Jaxon to be together because of family reasons is going to change that.