Page 98 of Endless Anger
When I meet his eyes again, I take a few seconds, cataloging him for any changes in pupil dilation or breathing. Anything that might suggest he remembers me.
He continues to stare blankly, his eyes bored.
But the boredom feels…almost practiced.
It’s too precise.
Tucking the glass jar under my arm, I extend my free hand, doing my best to plaster on a pleasant expression. Not my strongest suit, but my parents did spend a few years trying to coach me in case I decided to try for colleges that wanted to meet in person.
“What’d you say your name was again?”
The guy’s face screws up, but he takes my hand anyway. “Beckett,” he answers. “Beckett Dupont. President of the Curators, Aquarius, and fellow founding family member.”
“Ah. So that’s why you’re so invested in me.”
He squeezes my fingers twice before releasing. “It’s a networking thing. Rarely do we ever have so many founding family members on campus as students and faculty, and since this is the first the Duponts have crossed over with Blackwaters and Andersons since your sister was a student, there’s a certain responsibility to make contact. Suss you out, so to speak.”
“Because you think I’m here to, what? Carry on my namesake’s supposed curse?”
“I don’t believe in the curse,” he tells me, casting a sideways look at his table. “But there are a lot of Fury Hill residents who do. Something to do with botched sacrifices and hubris, I don’t know. All I give a shit about is my Curators. We work too hard to keep a good, clean name for a bunch of age-old bullshit to fuck that up.”
It’s a nice spiel, I suppose, albeit not compelling in the slightest. The Curators and Avernia are doing him no favors as far as storytelling goes.
Still,thisis what I was looking for. How lucky that he seems to have simply fallen in my lap.
Lucky and far too coincidental.
“So what exactly do you want from me?”
Beckett rolls his shoulders, adjusting the book bag strapped across his chest. “How’d you like to join my ranks?”
30
LUCY
“Doyou think it’s weird if a guy comes really quickly?”
Yuri looks over her anthropology textbook. Since they found Celeste, she’s been absorbed in her studies, rarely coming out of Blessed Hall to do anything. Even now, she’s only here because Aurora lured her in with the promise of homemade cupcakes, sent up by her mom, my aunt Lenny.
“What, like to see you before class or something?” Yuri asks.
Snorting, Aurora smooths her gloved fingers over the section of hair framing my face, rubbing red dye into the strands. “Comingas in what they do when you make them feel really, really good.”
Her eyes find mine in the mirror, and she squints at me.
“I do think it’s weird you’re asking us this before a date though. Got big plans there, cousin?”
“Tag’s cute,” Yuri adds. “But I didn’t think you liked him like that.”
I’m not sure why I said anything, except that I can’t seem to stop thinking about the day in Asher’s dorm. How intoxicating it felt having him come completely undone, just from a few over-the-clothes thrusts of my hips.
I didn’t realize sex was so consuming. That being intimate with someone would feel like ripping open your chest to bare your soul and letting them put their hands all over it.
Not that I’ve never been curious. I kissed and dated girls and boys, tempted to go further but never really finding an opportunity.
It was all a ruse anyway. Not my bisexuality or the attraction I felt but because I was trying to distract myself from the belief that Asher didn’t want me back. The one person on the planet who I could see myself going all the way with wasn’t interested, and it sucked.
In college, there aren’t very many people I’d even consider getting that close to. Especially not after the whole thing at Lethe’s.
