Page 85 of Serpentine Valentine
I was running before I could even think about it, surging by my sister, book and bags forgotten on the floor between D-E in the Ancient Greek section.
She didn’t try to stop me. She was my sister, so she wouldn’t have tried. Instead, she tugged my hand and ran beside me all the way downstairs to the parking lot where Grace and Juno already waited in the idling car.
I could have cried then, but I didn’t because my gratitude was so sharp it felt like another knife pinned through my heart.
I didn’t remember the trip to the hospital, and I was getting out of the car before Gracie had even come to a full stop. The admin nurse at the front desk directed me to a waiting room on the fourth floor, but no one would give me any information beyond that. I stalked back and forth across the linoleum, boots thumping, pulse racing, my brain empty of everything but the thought of Luna like the moon hung in a dark night.
At one point I was aware of Juno moving to walk in tandem with me, a metronome beat beside me.
“What happened?” I asked, the question falling from my lips like a gasp.
“She was walking near President Pallas’s house. A neighbor said they came across her lying in the street, beaten badly.” Juno hesitated when a whimper leaked through my mouth. “Lex, word on campus isyoudid it. After she broke up with you.”
Shock barreled into me so hard, I missed a step and fell forward into a wall. Juno caught me by the wrist and tugged me into her arms, holding me loose but close.
“What?” The word punched out of mychest.
I curled my fingers tight around Juno’s biceps, but she didn’t flinch, and her gaze was all warmth, all tenderness as she repeated, “People are saying you beat her, Lex.”
“I…”
The idea seemed so absurd, so impossible that it took me a moment of struggling to realize how plausible it might sound to people. Lex Gorgon, the outsider, the slut, the angry lesbian. Was it so much of a stretch to think someone like the woman they thought I was would beat her own lover?
Was it even much of a stretch to think about the anger I had inside, constantly on vigilant lockdown like a high-security prison, exploding out of me as violence?
No, it wasn’t.
No one knew the truth about my feelings for Luna because I’d never deigned to show them how much she meant to me.
How she meanteverythingto me.
How she was the best part of every day, of every single part of me, and I would no sooner hurt a single hair on her head than I would cut out my very own heart.
Yet I had hurt her.
Irrevocably, unabashedly.
I’d set out to hurt her and then fallen in love with her. It didn’t get much more Shakespearean than that, but for the first time in my life, I loathed the comparison.
I loathed myself.
In all my anger and my rage, I’d hurt the only person who was blameless in this entire fucking mess.
And now she was lying in a bed somewhere in this maze of a hospital, probably alone and hurt and scared.
Possibly because of me.
A high-keening wail pierced through my throat and into the air.
“It’s okay,” Juno said, the prettiest lie. “We’ll get it sorted out.”
As if summoned by karma, Mina Pallas appeared over her shoulder flanked by two familiar policemen.
I turned to stone in Juno’s arms.
“Alexandra Gorgon,” Mina greeted silkily as she sauntered toward me in her silk blend trousers and designer blouse, heels clicking like snapping teeth. “How dare you show your face here after what you did to my daughter?”
“I would never––” I paused to choke back a sob, forcing myself to stand tall and firm even though my insides were collapsing. “I would never harm Luna nor did I.”
