The Moth and the Flame (When Rivals Play #2) - B.B. Reid Page 0,16

up the stairs.

I burst through my bedroom door, fighting the clog in my throat and didn’t bother with the light as I peeled my jacket from my body and toed off my ratty boots.

“Took you long enough,” a deep voice taunted. I was in the middle of pulling my shirt over my head when light flooded the room. “I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”

I didn’t scream or bother to turn and confront the intruder until I had my boot in my hand. I flung it across the room and smiled when it bounced off his forehead and fell to the floor. Wren didn’t get a chance to recover before I pulled a razor out of my hair and swiped at his stomach.

“Jesus, Lou,” he whispered. “Fucking stop!”

I liked hearing the desperation in his voice and took another swipe, but this time, he anticipated my move and grabbed my wrist, squeezing until I cried out into the hand he’d clapped over my mouth, and I dropped the blade.

“What the hell is your problem?” he demanded once I was defenseless.

“Hey, I’ve got a better question. What the hell are you doing here, and why are you stalking me?”

He dropped my wrist and glared as he rubbed my dusty boot print from his forehead. He’d probably have a bruise by morning thanks to my wicked arm. “I was making sure you stayed put.”

“That’s not your business,” I sassed as I made my way to the old stereo the Hendersons loaned me and turned the volume up high. Cathleen and Dan were patient people, but I had a feeling finding a boy in my room was crossing a line.

“Yeah, well, I made it my business,” he retorted arrogantly. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.” His expression became an adorable mixture of astonishment and suspicion, and I smiled. “You’ll be dead or in prison soon,” I explained. “Why waste a perfectly good manicure?”

“Are you willing to risk it?” he questioned, sounding confident once more.

“You’re Exiled. What other outcomes could there be?” I searched his eyes for the answer, but he gave none. The confidence in his voice, the playfulness of his smile, the amusement in eyes…it was all gone in a flash.

“I could walk away,” he suggested.

“Would you?” I shot back. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was one of them. Exiled recruited lost boys who grew into broken men. The younger the male, the less they understood the world and even less about themselves. They were often hormonal teenagers simply looking to rebel against their parents and themselves, and so Exiled promised them freedom only to give them a prison instead. There was no walking away. He had to know that. Which meant…

“You’re toying with me,” I announced without emotion because he deserved none.

“No more than you toy with me.” I didn’t miss the anger brewing in his gaze.

“When have I—”

“Fates change every day,” he spoke sharply. “You give one power over the other when you speak on it.”

“I didn’t peg you for superstitious.”

He looked away while swallowing hard. “I’m not, Lou. Not really.”

“Then how can you believe that I would or could will you to be dead?”

Leaning his head against the wall, he closed his eyes. He didn’t speak for a while, but when he did, he tore my heart in two. “The last time I can remember dreaming was six years ago. I woke up in the middle of the night, crying and sweating from a nightmare. My mom had a knack for convincing me that I was not only brave but so full of goodness that the monsters in my closet should be afraid of me. So I got out of bed, and I ran to her room, but I didn’t go in.”

“Why not?”

“I heard her whispering. She never liked being interrupted while she was on the phone, so I thought about going back to bed, but I couldn’t. I had to tell her about my dream. The door was cracked open, so I peeked inside, and I saw her pacing back and forth. She was holding the phone to her ear, and she was crying, saying how she didn’t have a lot of time left. At least that’s what she told her best friend. She said she was going to die, and she spent the next three days believing it. She didn’t sleep, didn’t eat…she wasn’t my mother.”

“What happened on the third day?”

His face contorted into a grimace, and I wished at that moment