On my way out, I hear him say to Dmitri, “What the hell did you do now?”
I’m pretty sure it’s the only time I’ve seen Asher truly pissed, but I ignore it in favor of walking as fast as I can until I burst through the doors into the crisp fall air.
People are still gathered in the quad, so I make a sharp left turn, heading toward the woods. As soon as the babble of voices behind me fades, I break into a run, and I don’t stop running until I’m deep in the forest, leaving everything behind.
The twisting, aching feeling in my stomach though?
The invisible hand squeezing my heart?
Those stay with me.
Chapter 13
The next week is… um… it’s…
Okay, it’s awkward as hell.
Dmitri and I aren’t talking. I’ve got no interest in talking to him, and he’s clearly got no interest in talking to me. Everything else in our lives keeps going on as normal, but just… without him acknowledging that I’m there.
And it’s making me realize that maybe I really was wrong all this time.
I must have misinterpreted this whole thing. I’ve been putting way too much importance on Dmitri’s supposed feelings for me, on this connection I thought I felt between us.
I feel awful. Absolutely awful. If it wasn’t for the connection between his friends and me, Dmitri and I probably would’ve been a quick one-night stand, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, and then never talked again. But instead, this whole time he’s tried to ignore his attraction so he wouldn’t give the wrong impression, the impression that he wanted more, and I still assumed he did, and I just—God, I feel like such an idiot.
Here I was trying not to get attached, and I went and did it anyway.
Of course… it’s not entirely my fault, here. I mean, why the hell wasn’t he honest with me in the first place, huh? Why couldn’t he just tell me he didn’t like me and that I shouldn’t assume anything from him? It’s fifty-fifty here, buddy, and I don’t see him apologizing for his part in things, and that annoys the fuck out of me.
When I think about the group of men that’s formed around me without him in it… God, I hate to say it, but it breaks my heart, okay? It breaks my fucking heart. I don’t want to lose Dmitri. I care about him, more than I think I even let myself admit before all this bullshit came to light. And what about the other guys? Roman, who’s started treating him like a brother, and Cam and Asher, who are his best friends. How can any of this be the same without him?
I’ll be honest, worrying about all of this kind of eats up my week. I throw myself into my homework so I have something to think about, but God knows I’m not paying attention to anything else. Alyssa and her crew can tell, I think, because they leave me alone, probably figuring I wouldn’t even hear them if they did throw a taunt my way.
Another student gets her magic stolen, bringing the total up to four. I’m not in class with her, she’s a first-year and it’s an introductory class—poor girl, her magic just sparked, and now it’s gone for good—but honestly, I don’t pay as much attention to it as everyone else does. It’s whispered about in the halls constantly, just like Raul’s attacks last year, but all I can think about is Dmitri and how the fuck I’m supposed to fix this.
If I can even fix it. Maybe whatever I try to do will just make it worse. It feels like everything I’ve done so far has just fucked things up more.
I get a few weird magical blips again, different powers flaring and then receding, but I ignore them. It’s not like I can control these strange burbles or stop them from happening, and nobody’s getting hurt. Probably just something Johnson fucked me up with in our battle.
The only class I’m really enjoying right now is Combat, and that’s just because I get to turn off my brain for a couple hours and work out some aggression with my fists and magic.
I never spar with Dmitri anymore though. It’d be pretty hard to fight someone you’re ignoring, and besides, I wouldn’t trust either of us not to actually try to hurt the other one right now.
The third-years have special projects throughout the year, and one of their senior seminars involves a two-day field