Devil Incarnate (Boys of Preston Prep #4) - Angel Lawson Page 0,170

on the desk. Giving a flippant sniff, he snatches a pen from the desk and uses it to jot his name on the line. I watch, stupefied as he goes through the motions, deliberate and too stiff.

I yank it from his hand the second he extends it.

But before I can reach for the knob, he says, “If I see you doing it again…” Roughly, he shoves his fingers through his hair, eyes wild. “Then fuck it. I’ll just go to Mrs. Gilbert. You can turn me in to Collins. I’ll accept that.”

I stare at him, unblinking. “You’re bluffing.”

The smile he gives me is crooked and all wrong. “I have it on pretty good authority that I’m shit at gambling. So believe me when I say I’m not doing it now.”

“Why?” I wilt inside at the agonized tone it escapes in. “Why do you even care?”

His answer is worse than anything I might have imagined.

“Because I love you.”

I stare in stunned disbelief, lifting my hands to give a slow clap. “Amazing. Every time I think you can’t possibly stoop any lower, you—”

“Don’t,” he snaps, brows crouched low and angry. “I’ve only said those words to one other person, and she’s the woman who gave birth to me. You’re pissed at me, I get it. But don’t fucking mock me because you can’t handle the truth. I love you.” He says it with far more conviction than he had the last time, and it just grows when it says it again. “And I’d rather go back to jail and have to start all over again than see you slit your wrists over some total fucking bullshit!”

I do flinch then, startled by the crash of the clipboard smashing against the wall. He’d hurled it so quickly that I didn’t even see it sailing through the air. The office falls into a thick, tense silence, and for a long moment I find I can’t move, frozen with my hand halfway to turning the doorknob.

He sighs, dragging a palm down his face. When it reaches his throat, he meets my gaze and releases a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”

I don’t even know what he’s apologizing for. Making the video? Selling it? Trapping me in here? Threatening me?

Is he apologizing for loving me?

I don’t find out.

I wrench the door open and run as fast as my unsteady legs will take me.

“The horns aren’t big enough,” Caroline says, shoving her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I think we should make them spikier.”

Vandy taps her chin as she inspects the effigy we’re building. “And curvier, right? Wait, let me see the picture again.”

The two of them huddle around Caroline’s laptop, pointing out the various details on Thistle Cove’s Viking mascot. I keep layering newspaper onto the helmet, plopping on more glue before adding another. It’s almost as easy to get lost in as knitting. Paper, glue, paper, glue.

Caroline groans. “This is hard! Aren’t we supposed to have a fourth Devil to help us?”

I flinch at the mention of Heston, trying harder to tune them out.

Vandy scoffs. “Of course, he comes in to give his opinion, but sticks us with all the actual work.”

The torso is already completed, composed of three different sections. Down here in the Devil’s bunker, the ceiling is far too low to construct it at full height. The helmet itself is almost as wide as my car, and we’d had to move everything to the walls to have sufficient space. But it’s a dank basement, and the ventilation is poor, which means that we keep having to take breaks up in the tower.

“What do you think, Georgia?” Vandy asks, turning to me.

My chief contribution so far has been to nestle the memory card with our confessions within the gluey, paper layers of the helmet, which was honestly more productive than I feel strictly capable of. Listlessly, I paint another glob of glue onto the newspaper. “Sounds good.”

“That’s it.” Caroline snaps the laptop closed, whirling on me. “You need to talk.”

“About what?”

Vandy props her fists on her hips. “About whatever’s got you acting like this! You’ve been a total space cadet the last couple days—that is, whenever you’re not crying and thinking we don’t notice. Something is clearly going on.”

Caroline sighs. “We thought we’d wait for you to come to us on your own terms, but you’re not doing that.”

Vandy sits down at my side, resting a hand on my back. She ducks down to ask, “Please tell us what happened? It might feel better