Page 173 of Endless Anger
If Lucy wasn’t expecting me at her new apartment soon, I’d walk in and kill the fucker myself. Damn the consequences.
Anger can only be sated so much when it comes to people who’ve harmed the ones you love.
I fear I’ll be angry forever about what happened to Foxe and Lucy, but this helps keep it at bay. For now.
A lone figure stands in the shadows near the Lyceum, a briefcase in hand, watching as flames consume the dean’s house. The three of us continue walking as if we don’t see a thing.
Professor Dupont’s handsome, stoic face is half-lit by some of the streetlights, and as we pass him, Noelle stops in her tracks about a hundred feet away.
She stares, silent.
He looks back.
“Noelle?” Quincy asks, nudging her.
I lean in, noting that Noelle’s face has paled, now as moon-white as mine and Quincy’s. She blinks rapidly, then gives her head a little shake, and when I glance back over my shoulder, the professor is gone.
“Sorry,” Noelle says with a little laugh. “For a second there, I thought I’d seen a ghost.”
Her hand trembles when she tucks her hair behind her ears, but then she keeps skipping along, dragging Quincy with her, and I pretend I didn’t notice shit.
When I look back at the burning house, I swear I see the professor once again, staring up at it. Hesitating maybe. Or thinking.
But then he walks on, disappearing into the Fury Hill nighttime.
I leave my sisters on campus and head straight for Lucy’s apartment, not even bothering to knock when I skip up the steps to the front door. She, Cora, and her sister are all sitting in the living room, arguing over a dog collar.
“Oh good!” Lucy squeals, jumping to her feet with the orange fabric in hand. “Asher can help settle this.”
“Please,” Logan snorts, rolling her eyes. “He’s your boyfriend. Of course he’s going to agree with you.”
“I’m her boyfriend? I don’t remember being asked to date,” I say, my eyebrows arching as Lucy comes to a stop inches away from me.
She’s in an old T-shirt of mine and a pair of oversize sweatpants, and I want nothing more right now than to peel them off and fuck her on every surface of the apartment.
But I don’t, for obvious reasons.
“You guys have been practically married for twenty-two years,” Logan continues.
Their mother throws a small white pillow at her youngest child. “As the future mother-in-law then, I think Asher should favor my side. I changed a lot of your diapers as a baby, you know. You pissed on me many, many times.”
My nose scrunches up. “Not helping your case, I’m afraid.”
“Well, I’m also your mother’s best friend, so I can just call her?—”
Lucy glares at her mom. “Just because you’ve enjoyed kissing Elena in the past doesn’t mean he owes you anything!”
Cora laughs, twisting the piercing in her nose. “There was no kissing, my sweet child.”
Ew. I snatch the collar from Lucy’s hands, turning it over. “Whose was this?”
“A foster from right before Luce left for college,” Cora says. “Which is why I think it should stay with us. Plus, Lucy loses things.”
“Not sentimental things!”
“But I can just put it in your old room for safekeeping,” Cora continues. “And maybe if you find your way back there at some point instead of wanting to stay here?—”
“Mom.”
