The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) (21 page)

Luke raised his hands in the air, waving them. “Whatever!” He walked toward the door, making a circle around North. “You’re not going to listen. You’re just going to yell.”

“Where are you going?” North said, turning to face him in full.

“Maybe if I leave, you’ll stop yelling,” Luke said. “You’re scaring Sang. If you’re going to keep yelling, follow me and leave her out of it.”

North spun to face me, sizing me up.

I pulled myself further back against the wall, dipping my head toward my knees. I wanted to help, but my mouth and brain refused to connect. I’d fought with North before, and I knew I should stand up to him in that moment but I’d been caught in such a compromising position, and felt so awkward. Not to mention, my brain was just done from the long day.

I didn’t blame Luke for wanting to get out of the room. North seemed so angry, I wasn’t sure if even I could do anything about it.

“If I hear yelling, I swear, North…I’m not doing this in front of her.” Luke disappeared into the hallway, his footsteps echoing.

I understood why he left, but the moment he was gone, I was sad that he had. Things were left unsaid and the fun time we were having was gone.

Silence filled the space as North looked at me. Then, suddenly he turned toward the door, like he meant to go after Luke. Only he just stood there, his shoulders heaving as he breathed.

My mind was in a frenzy, and I wished that I could turn back time. Luke had said something important to me, and now I wasn’t even sure if he had really said it. After everything else, it had shocked me and I was still warm all over. It felt like something I had dreamed up during a heated moment, and now even the kiss felt like it had happened to someone else, perhaps in a movie.

Luke had said it before though. He admitted to being afraid I would leave. Since it wasn’t the first time, he must have really been worried about it.

Was that why he was so distant? Was he afraid that I’d be leaving?

THE CHOICE

N
orth slammed his palm against the frame of the door. His shoulders were rising and falling with every deep breath he took.

Should I try to explain? I waited. I didn’t want to say anything first.

North started to whisper. It was the same line over and over, rising in volume with each breath until I finally heard him.

“I don’t know,” he said in a rasp, deep and unnerving. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“North?” I said quietly, scared but too afraid to let him continue.

He turned slowly toward me.

In a flash, I recalled the first time I’d met him, with the shadows around his eyes and that dark hair, the black clothes, and the way his face made him look so scary. He was so intimidating.

He was that way now, his expression a mix of confusion and anger. Yet there was something different now, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

He stepped backward, leaning with his back against the door as he looked at me. He swallowed, breathed in deeply and then exhaled through his lips. “I think I just fucked up,” he said.

I pressed my lips together, inclining my head in a nod. I wanted to talk him through—no more arguing. “Are you okay? You came to look for us?”

“I saw you on the cameras when you were both downstairs,” he said, “while driving in from downtown. I was just trying to get here and make sure nothing was wrong.” His eyebrows shifted up. “Your phone’s broken? I couldn’t reach you.”

“I’d probably be worried, too, if you tried to call and couldn’t reach us.” Especially after the Volto scare. Slowly, ensuring the T-shirt was covering me and the boxers were in place, I searched on the bed for where I’d left the phone. I found it at the foot, underneath the towel I’d used. I swept back some of my still wet strands of hair as I checked the screen and pushed a button. It turned on but there wasn’t a recently called icon. “Are you sure you called me?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “I called Luke, too.”

I checked messages and then the recently called list, but there was no record of North or anyone else having called. I held my phone out to him. “It doesn’t show it.”

He came over, taking it from my hands and looking at the screen. “What the hell? Is it broken?”

“Maybe it’s the storm,” I said. “Maybe it didn’t go through?”

North sighed and dropped my phone back on the bed. “Maybe,” he said, his voice deep. He looked at me, his eyes softer now. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

“You were worried.”

“It’s been a long day.”

I scooted back on the bed, offering him some space to sit.

He sat down heavily, tilting the bed a little so I was sliding into him.

He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, and his face into his hands. His T-shirt tightened across his back. I touched it, feeling the wet material. “Maybe you should change,” I said.

He seemed not to hear me. “Maybe this is too much for us,” he said, still with his hands covering his face. “Especially right now. We’re in the middle of everything. This is huge. It’s a lot to process. In theory, I’m okay with it and I thought I had a handle on it. I just…I couldn’t keep myself together seeing him with you like that.”

I left my hand on his back, trying to be supportive.

His admission of jealousy filled me with doubts “It’s all because of me,” I said quietly. “This is my fault.”

North straightened up quickly, twisting his torso to look at me. Lightning flashed in his eyes. “Stop talking like that.”

“Tell me if I wasn’t here in the middle, that you’d still be like this? Would you be this upset with Luke if I hadn’t been here? None of you would be so distracted if I wasn’t involved.”

He growled and leaned over, putting a hand on the bed over my thighs as he glared at me. “Do you think you would have been better off staying in your house with your parents?”

I might have been dead if it wasn’t for them, but that wasn’t my point. “I didn’t mean that part. This is about a complicated relationship that not everyone seems comfortable with. If we decide this isn’t for us…then it means I may have to leave.”

He scowled at me. “We can figure something else out.”

“I can’t…I can’t be with you and Luke, and then have you come in yelling at him. You’d hate it if Luke walked in on anything we were doing, right?”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I was coming home. Neither one of you were answering your phones. This is my room, I never thought for a second you’d be in here…with him…like that. Now there’s a mess of the Chinese food downstairs. Apparently, there was a hungry skunk in the house.”

I sighed. “The skunk is a long story. We were just…Sorry.”

He frowned and then reached up, capturing my chin between his fingers. “I have been worried. You need to decide, Sang. You need to figure out if this is for you.”

“I’m more worried about you,” I said. “And Luke and the others. I don’t want to say yes, sound selfish, and then what if someone doesn’t want to belong? I won’t just be able to take it all back.”

“But I can’t be in this if you’re not in it,” he said. He released my chin to cup my face in his hand. “I need you to believe this. That this is what you want.”

“I want to,” I said, although my voice faltered. “I just don’t know what to want. I don’t what it all means. And I’m worried. Plus there’s the thing at school…”

“Don’t worry about school,” he said. “But I need you to figure out if this is for you. Despite what Mr. Blackbourne said before, you have to be at the center of this, or it’ll never work.”

I wanted to believe in the plan. Lily had it easier. She didn’t know anything until they confronted her about it. She’d mentioned she had a hard time with it, but I thought if I’d just stayed out of it until they were all in agreement, it would all work out.

North eased closer, scooping me up to move my legs over his thighs. He leaned over me and his nose bumped mine. “Baby,” he said, the anger gone, his voice deep and soothing. “If you tell me you can’t, I won’t push it.”

I sighed. “I just need to think on it. It’s hard to know what you’re working for when you can’t see what it might be like. I’ve never…It’s not like I’ve had much experience with relationships in any normal sense.”

He smirked a little and then shook his head slightly, his nose touching mine. Then he tilted his head, his lips tracing mine as he spoke. “Fuck normal,” he said.

I started to smile, but he stopped it with a kiss.

UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES

D
espite what North was saying, I still felt I needed the boys on my side before daring to suggest I was for the plan. A few of them were for it, some I wasn’t sure about, but knowing at least the majority was interested would at least meant maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea.

If I could only be sure they were really okay with this, perhaps I would start to believe.

Before North and I finally got downstairs, Luke had taken Kota’s car and left.

I stood on the front porch, rain coming down, looking at where the car had been. I’d hoped he was downstairs waiting. “Will he be back?” I asked. “Where did he go?”

“Probably to get away from me.” North grunted and then turned toward the dog house in the corner. “Now guess who has to figure out what to do with the skunk.”

I was supposed to get to the bottom of what Luke was running off for and now we’d gone and driven him away again.

Maybe it
was
because of North being so grouchy around him. Could Luke totally avoid his brother? Maybe they needed to get together and talk it out.

We changed-- North into dry jeans and a t-shirt, and I was wearing his pajama pants—tied tightly—and one of his black shirts. We sort of matched with all the black. I wasn’t wearing a bra, mine was still wet and hanging to dry. I held my phone in my hands, feeling the scratch marks on the back cover.

I helped North piece together a makeshift pen for the skunk so he couldn’t get into too much trouble around the house if we left. For now, he seemed content sleeping in the dog house.

“What are we going to do with a skunk?” North asked, peering into the pen and all the supplies.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Are you really upset about it?”

“I just don’t know what to do with one. Do you leave it alone like a cat? Or do you have to work with it every day like a bird?” He crouched, looking into the doghouse. “What are we going to name it?”

I wanted to suggest something, but I didn’t want to name him without Luke being around. “Maybe Luke should come up with it.”

“He said it was yours,” North said. He sighed, stood up and then motioned for me to go into the kitchen.

North and I ate some of the Chinese food. After, Kota called and had North drive me back so we could go over what to do the next day.

When we got to Nathan’s, North was opening my door, when he stopped and squinted at the house.

It was dark now and the drizzle eased once we got to the neighborhood, although the clouds remained dark, promising more rain later. A deeper chill had settled in. I thought he was seeing Kota or someone else at the door to welcome us in from the cold.

It took me a minute to realize he was looking at a white mask on one of the windows. I stared at it, too, suddenly panicked. Where there more? Even with the porch light on, I couldn’t see any other windows.

“Not this shit again,” North said. He groaned and opened my door wider so I could walk around him and then slammed it closed. He turned and urged me on toward the house. “I’m too tired to deal with this.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to agree with him. Is this where Luke went after he left? How was this his way to get back at North, if that’s why he was hanging up the masks?

I was angry, at first, for Luke pulling such a stunt again. Confusion was stronger, as I reasoned out why he would, and nothing really added up.

I was in a pair of North’s boots, too big for my feet, but more protection from puddles than my soaked Keds I’d left at the Taylor Compound. I hurried along, trying not to slip as I looked at the mask.

Once we were closer to the front door, I finally saw another one at a different window. If there were two, I suspected there were more. Disappointment seeped through my brain. How could he?

Once we were under the shelter of the porch’s overhang, I reached for North, catching his wrist, and urgently tugged him to a stop before he could put a key into the lock. “We can’t tell Kota this time.”

North lifted an eyebrow. “Baby, he’s got to know. We can’t keep secrets like this.”