The Rush (The Siren Series) - By Rachel Higginson Page 0,44

into the den toward the back of the house. The room was unoccupied, but we knew it would be. Personal offices are always off limits at these things, hence the reason we use them as our safe haven. Technically we were still apart of the party.

We squished together on a rich, deep chocolate suede sofa surrounded by ceiling to floor bookshelves stacked with volumes of intellectual books that had probably never been opened and began our ritual of making fun of everyone we could remember seeing in our brief sprint from the bottom of the staircase to this room. We pulled our cell phones out and multitasked by trash talking and texting. This was procedure for us, years of routine and tradition.

“So did that guy ever work out for you?” Sloane asked with a sly lift of her eyebrow.

“Guy?” I clarified. A surge of irrational panic slid through my veins leaving sticky residual anxiety congesting my blood vessels into immovable blockage.

“That one from your first day back? The one that offered you a ride?” Sloane clarified as if I was especially slow tonight.

“Oh, right. Yes, actually. We have a date tomorrow night. Some house party thing….” I trailed off and then felt the need to defend Chase’s choice of first date. “He asked me out for tonight first, but obviously I had other plans. So we decided to do this thing tomorrow night because he already told his friend he would be there,” I rambled nervously. “His name is Chase.” For a moment I assumed she meant Ryder, which sent off all kinds of panic alarms in my head. I realized then that I held a fierce desire to protect Ryder from this life, from me…. and I didn’t understand where it was coming from. I didn’t even really like Ryder. He was more like this phenomenon in a life where everything had become far too predictable. But maybe that was why I wanted to protect him. Maybe because he was all but invincible to my curse, I wanted to protect him from every potential female that could hurt him.

Which was kind of messed up since he was already saved from being the victim.

It was all the other boys that lay in the wake of my war path that I should really be concerned about.

Except I tried that once….. I tried that with Sam and things did not end well.

“I remember,” Sloane grinned, lifting her second eyebrow to join the first. “But a house party? Seriously? I thought I raised you better than that.” She threw me a saucy grin to let me know she was kidding.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, he had this whole wining and dining event planned but when I turned him down for tonight he was already locked into this party thing. It should be fun. The guy who’s throwing it is super sweet and funny. And Chase’s whole circle of friends will be there, so….” I trailed off not really knowing where I was going with that or why I was defending the night at all. It was a party, so what? We went to parties all the time.

“Aw, I think our little Ivy is nervous,” Exie elbowed me in the ribs from where she sat in between Sloane and me. “Your rambling a little bit, sweets. Are you scared to go to the party?”

I thought about that for a minute and decided I was more than scared, I was petrified. It would be my first high school event since the accident last spring. I had plenty of reasons to be nervous but I was raised to believe that kind of anxiety was a weakness.

And I wasn’t supposed to have any weaknesses.

“Maybe just a little bit,” I smiled, hoping my nerves would be misinterpreted. “I kind of like Chase. He’s adorable in that soccer-jock-I’m-so-l-laid-back-I-should-be-a-surfer-way. You know?”

“Sure, we know,” Sloane giggled, turning her attention back to the text message she was sending to her boyfriend of the month. “Surfers in Nebraska where there aren’t even any noteworthy lakes, make complete sense.”

The three of us dissolved into laughter.

At that moment my phone lit up with an incoming message and I smiled down at Chase’s name and short note. Having fun at the family thing?

Chase was a good choice for the first boyfriend back in the game. He was low maintenance and extra sweet. He would be careful with me, even if I would eventually break his heart. He didn’t know it now, but even