First to Fail (Unraveled #3) - Marie Johnston Page 0,30

use another pack.”

Chris unlocked the door and held it for me. “Go on in and get comfortable. I’ll make us something to eat.”

I slowly picked my away across the garage. My muscles had stiffened on the ride but were loosening with each step. A bruise on my right side where Lauren PenaltyCall’s elbow had clipped me was aching. It probably felt worse than it looked, but that could be said about my overall appearance.

“Thanks,” I muttered when I stepped into the house. I meant it. Between my headache and my body aches and feeling like an epic failure for getting taken down by an overbearing brute, my inner Valaria wasn’t even prepared to open an energy bar. “Mind if I use your shower?”

“Knock yourself out.” He smiled when I quirked a brow at him. My heart fluttered with that damn twinkle in his chestnut eyes. “Not literally. Why don’t you use mine? Jaycee’s is the first door on the right upstairs, but she’s not a regular cleaner and there’s no counter space left. But I have a small bath off the master bedroom at the end of the hall.”

“Thanks again.” I trudged for the stairs, not needing directions. We hadn’t made it off the couch last time I was here, but his house was compact.

Rounding a corner, I stopped. The landing for the stairs was as ordinary as the rest of the house, but the artwork on the walls captivated me. Pain pushed aside, I drifted around the perimeter of the small square, its area the size of a jail cell. Scratch art. Was that what it was called? The private schools and boarding schools I’d attended weren’t heavy in the arts. But it had to be. A solid black background overlaid a colorful palette of reds, whites, and oranges. On another, there were various shades of green, and a third was blues and purples. The hues were unveiled by delicate and deliberate scratches.

The effect itself was stunning, but the panorama of the three smaller pictures together was the most impressive. Intricate leaf patterns were revealed in the greens. Flowers and petals in the blues and purples, and sunset in the oranges.

They had to be Jaycee’s creations. The girl had talent.

I flipped the light on and ascended the stairs. Now that I’d been moving a good few minutes, I wasn’t as sore and welcomed a shower.

But I stopped at the landing.

“Holy artwork, Batman.” More scratch art, an obvious favorite of Jaycee’s, but on the second level the drawings were straight from graphic art. Across from me was scratch art in shades of gray, with silver predominant. An artistic risk that worked beautifully because the girl had outlined Batman from the side. He was running and his cape billowed behind him.

Another was in blues and reds, with a scratched outline of Captain America’s shield.

My lips quirked at the third. Another orange palette—with Sonic the Hedgehog.

What if I gave Jaycee a blank scratch art canvas with deep reds? Could she do a full-body profile of Valaria? One of me walking like a badass toward, or even away from, the camera?

Shaking my head, I ripped my gaze away and scurried down the hall. I couldn’t slip up around Jaycee again. A kid who had served detention and been suspended wasn’t going to be keen on keeping my secrets.

Avoiding peeking into Jaycee’s room was a struggle. I wasn’t a snooper, but Jaycee’s bedroom probably rivaled an art gallery, only way more relatable than the ones I had been to in the past. My dates had been as boring as the artwork. Jaycee’s work was definitely up my alley.

If Jaycee and I had been teens together, she would’ve been the girl my parents forbid me from ever talking to. Fan art equaled useless trash in their minds.

I slowed when I got to Chris’s room. It wasn’t because of his—oh my god, was that a Dark Knight pillowcase? I crossed to it. His bedding could put Fifty Shades of Gray to shame; it was contemporary with clean lines. The sheets, though, were an ode to Batman.

That shouldn’t make him sexier, but it did. Who’d he date that would be turned off by a grown man with superhero bedding?

I shook my head and scanned the rest of the room, my ponderings swerving to concern for Jaycee. My gaze touched on a full hamper, a matching walnut dresser set that must’ve been from his white-collar career-man days, and closed closet doors. Was Jaycee facing the same attitude from