Tucker Avery wants to be my friend.
He looks so vulnerable right now, staring at his boots, his ears slightly red under his tan, his shoulders tight. I want to reach over and put my hand on his arm. I want to smile and say, Sure. Let’s be friends. I would love to be your friend.
But I have to be strong. I have to remember why we broke up in the first place: so that he could have a life where he wouldn’t be attacked by a fallen angel at the end of a date, where he could kiss his girlfriend without her literally lighting up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, where he wouldn’t be constantly kept in the dark. He needs someone normal. Someone who will age when he ages. Someone he can protect the way a man protects his woman, and not the other way around. Someone not me. I mean, five minutes ago I was being blackmailed by a Black Wing, for heaven’s sake. I’m being hunted by a fallen angel who means to “collect” me. I’m going to have to fight. Possibly die.
I take a deep breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He looks up. “You don’t want to be friends.”
I try to meet his eyes. “No. I don’t.”
For once I’m glad he can’t read my mind the way Christian does. He’d see how much I think about him, how I dream about him, how even after all this time apart my heart still aches to see him, touch him, hear his voice. He’d see that we can’t be friends. He’d see that every minute I’m with him I want his arms around me. I remember his lips on mine. I’ll never, never, be able to see him as a friend.
It’s better this way, I repeat to myself. It’s better this way. It’s better this way. He has to live his life, and I have to live mine.
His jaw tightens. “All right,” he says. “I get it. We’re done. You’re moving on.”
Yes, I need to say to him. But I can’t make my lips form the word.
He nods, flexes his hands like he wants his cowboy hat to put on now, but he doesn’t have it. “I should go,” he says. “I have chores to do back at the ranch.”
He moves to the end of the aisle, then stops. There’s something else he wants to tell me. My breath hitches in my throat.
“Have a nice life, Clara,” he says. “You deserve to be happy.”
My hands clench into fists as I watch him walk away.
So do you, I think. So do you.
9
BACK, BACK, YOU FIEND
“You’re distracted, Clara,” Dad says. “You need to focus.”
I lower my part of the broom, panting. My shoulder smarts from where Christian just whacked me. We’ve been sparring in my backyard in Jackson in ankle-deep snow for the past half hour, and so far it’s been pretty even. I hit him; he hits me. Although that last hit was a doozy.
Christian looks at me with guilt in his gold-flecked eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine. We agreed not to pull our punches, and I left you an opening, so you should go for it.” I rotate my arm in its socket, wince, then roll my head from side to side, stretching. “Can we take a break for a minute? I could use a breather.”
Dad frowns. “We don’t have time for that. You must practice.”
This is our fifth training session together—me, Dad, and Christian—and every time Dad seems more tense, like we’re not making enough progress. He’s been working us like crazy all week, but winter break is almost over, and we won’t have as much free time to train once we go back to school. We should have moved on from brooms and mops by now. We should be wielding the real deal.