Page 123 of The Confidant
“I am…”
“Is it like a date?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. “Is that why you’ve been distant? Why you’ve been off all week?”
Because you’re seeing him behind my back, and you feel guilty about it?
“It’s just dinner,” she rushed to say. “I promise.”
“Why, though?” I asked, not understanding why she’d be having dinner with another guy when I’d thought she was dating me. “Why are you meeting Xander for dinner?”
I knew we hadn’t officially put a label on what we were to each other. But I thought it was understood that we were basically together.
Or would be, if her dad wasn’t an issue.
“It’s just…” she started to say, “it’s complicated.”
“Does it have anything to do with what your dad talked to you about on Sunday?”
“Yes.”
I waited for her to say more, but when she didn’t, I asked, “What did he talk to you about, Scarlett?”
“It’s something that you wouldn’t understand.”
“Why?” I knew I sounded frustrated, but if she was planning to dump me because of something her dad had said, it was better for me to know now versus next week or in a month, or whenever she got around to telling me that Pastor Caldwell had poisoned her against me.
She studied my face for a moment, like she was trying to decide if she would tell me what was going on or not. After releasing a heavy sigh, she said, “It has to do with The Fold. And a new revelation.” She glanced out the window at a bird that had dropped onto a bare branch. “Something that involves Xander and me.”
“What?” I furrowed my brow. “A revelation that involves you and Xander?”
Since when did the High Priest have revelations involving specific people? Usually, any direction he’d heard of was for the church as a whole.
She must have sensed that I knew it was odd for the High Priest to have revelations about specific members because her eyes widened, seeming fearful.
And I was suddenly nervous for Scarlett.
“You’d tell me if there was something serious going on, right?” I asked.
She nodded, but the look in her eyes told me she was lying.
And now I was truly scared.
40
SCARLETT
“I’ll be backin a couple of hours,” I told Hunter on Friday night after seeing the text from Xander that said he had just pulled up to the school. “And then we can hang out.”
“Okay,” he said, a wary look in his eyes, like he knew it was more than just dinner with a friend. “Just hurry back, okay?”
I nodded. “See you soon.”
Even though all I wanted to do was cling to Hunter and beg him to somehow make this scary path ahead of me disappear, I made myself walk out of the common room.
As I headed toward the front entrance of the school where Xander was waiting, all I could think about was the fact that I only had one week until I was supposed to marry a near stranger.
There was just one week until I performed a special, secret ceremony to get pregnant with the Chosen One.
I’d been praying all week for clarity. For a sign from above that this was actually what I should be doing. But so far, despite praying in earnest, there had only been silence on the other end of the line.
