Evanescent - By Addison Moore Page 0,8

aches to have her.

“I love you, Laken Anderson.” I crash my lips over hers and deliver a serious tongue-lashing born of love. How I wouldn’t like to lash the rest of her, inch-by-inch, so painfully slow I’d explode from the effort.

Cooper blinks through her mind again. She envisions his lonely face, those drawn out eyes that have every girl on campus dropping to their knees.

He’s in her head again.

Looks like I need to put an end to this before he crawls down into her heart.

Nope, not going to let Cooper worm his way into Laken’s anything, least of all her jeans.

I slip my hands over her bottom and feel her soft, warm skin.

Laken’s body and heart, I want them both to be mine.

2

The Heat is On

Laken

Monday morning, I sit and gaze out the oversized window from my dorm and marvel how the days blink by like a dove swatting its wings in flight. I wonder where we’re headed. Where it is exactly this manufactured destiny proposes to take me—to take all of us.

Behind me, Jen drools into her phone, conducting her regular morning sexting session with Jackson—a lanky boy from the basketball team. It’s weird seeing Jen so stratospherically happy after she was such a frustrated mess with “insane Blaine” who bagged every babe he could while under the guise of their committed relationship.

The fog smooths over the rolling hills on the other side of the frozen glass. The sun tries to break through the haze, staining the horizon with a salmon bruise. People huddle in overcoats as they shuffle along the intricate walkways. They look small as sparrows who have had their wings clipped—trapped at Ephemeral like some luxurious, opulent prison. The campus gleams and glitters. Ephemeral Academy is a masterwork of beauty with its cathedral-like buildings and winding brick roads.

The dark forest that hedges along the property catches my attention. It gives a private whisper while the fog strays from its border as if it were too afraid to go there. That’s where I last saw Casper, my ex-roommate for less than a week. Someone or something took her. Turns out, Casper was of Celestra descent like my mother and sister. And I can only assume they’re all holed up in the nebulous “tunnels,” being drained of their lifeblood for the sport of it.

“Let’s go!” Jen’s voice hits its upper register and sends a cluster bomb of a headache railing through my temples.

It takes a second to figure out Jen is barking at me rather than Jackson. She buries the phone in her blazer and hitches her thumb to the door.

“I talked to Blaine last night.” She blinks into her statement. “Heard you really showed ‘em who was boss at the commencement.”

“Blaine?” Personally, I’m disgusted Jen still lets him entertain her with those vocal exercises of his that never seem to include the truth. “Please, don’t let that dick-nose worm his way back into your life. Trust me, I should know. I’ve had more than my fair share of assholes that tried to screw me over, in more ways than one.” Tucker Donavan springs to mind, my once upon a boyfriend. He was more your fuck ‘em and leave ‘em type, only he decided to try a girlfriend on for size and to my misfortune that happened to be me.

“It was business.” She averts her eyes as if I should know better—and I do. I’d bet truckloads of Anderson dollars that Blaine is about to worm his way back in. “Relax, Laken. It was a house parent meeting, and he happened to sit next to me. He said you hacked off the heads of those poor birds.”

“That’s right.” I cinch my backpack over my shoulder as we make our way downstairs. “And I’m gunning for hairy balls next time, so he’d better watch out.”

Jen belts out a laugh. She’s not at all as uptight as she was when I first arrived over a month ago, and I’m not sure how alarmed I should be over this.

“Anyway,” she sighs before taking her post as the keeper of the gate. “I decided to talk to Wes regarding your relationship. He’ll have to present you with a purity ring if an engagement is on the horizon.”

“What?” I take it all back. Swear to God, one day I’m going to find out Jen is a transplant from the eighteen hundreds, and I’m not even going to bat a lash. “No, seriously, don’t do that.” Wait—what am I saying? A purity challenge would