Stake You (Stake You #1) Page 14
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“Can I talk to you?” I asked Base shyly the next morning between classes. He avoided my eyes, and I realised he was mad at me. “Did I do something wrong?” I said, completely forgetting what I had originally wanted to tell him.
He sighed. “No. I’m just stressed out.” He looked at me for the first time. “Are you okay? You look terrible. Sorry,” he added when I made a face. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I don’t want to show you in front of everyone,” I said, eyeing up the passing students.
“Meet me outside at lunchtime then,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Oh, shut up making it sound like that. Just meet me at lunch.”
“Your every wish,” he said, bowing.
At lunch, I saw him heading outside, and ran after him.
“Wait up,” I said, grabbing his sleeve.
“You’re keen,” he teased.
“Yeah, yeah. So are we Jekyll or Hyde this afternoon?”
He rubbed his cheek, looking bashful. “Like I said, I’m stressed out. Tormenting you cheers me up though.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Nice to see I’m good for something.”
He bumped off my hip. “I bet you’re good at a lot of things.”
“Sleaze,” I retorted, but I was completely at ease with him when I allowed myself to relax. When he joked like that, I was fine around him. I knew he didn’t mean those kinds of things, unlike Sully, who made my skin crawl at every opportunity, so this was far safer territory for me.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I blurted. He stared at me in surprise. “I just mean… I’m glad I have someone to talk to about this kind of stuff. Everyone else thinks I’m insane.”
He stared at me for a couple of seconds, and I felt safe territory slip away. I looked anywhere but at him, and as if he sensed my panic, he moved away and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“So what’s up?”
“Last night, something, um, unusual happened, and I need you to give me a reasonable explanation for it.”
He looked confused. I pulled him behind a wall, shielding us from the lunch time smokers. He opened his mouth to say something, but I yanked up my sleeve to show him my arm, and he held my wrist and elbow to pull my arm closer to him. The wound looked worse now, red and inflamed.
“What the hell?” he whispered. “It looks like someone took a chunk out of you. What happened? Was it Aoife?” But even he sounded doubtful.
“I don’t know what happened. I woke up like this. I thought… I thought someone was in the room with me, and I called your name, and—”
“You called my name?” he said with a grin.
“I must have been having a nightmare,” I said dryly.
He clutched his chest as if wounded, so I thumped his arm. “Be serious! Anyway, then I felt the pain, and I sat up straight, but nobody was there. I turned on the light, and I thought I saw someone, but it must have been a shadow because all of the doors and windows were still locked. I picked up something and ran out into the hall, and I thought... I mean, I thought I hit something, but there was nobody there. It’s spooky, right?”
“It’s extremely spooky. Does it hurt?”
“A little, but I’m more concerned about reasonable explanations, remember?”
He thought for a second, holding on to my hand to keep my arm steady as he took a better look at the wounds. “Maybe, you were dreaming about me, and I was so good that you thought you were clawing my back, but you accidentally clawed your own arm instead.”
I burst out laughing, all of my nervousness gone. “That’s your reasonable explanation?”
“Yeah. Then you realised you hate me and went on a little sleepwalking rampage to hurt me.” He cocked his head to the side. “You probably scratched yourself accidentally, and thought you saw someone when you were still half-asleep. I mean, what else could it have been?”
But as we both stared at each other, my growing concern reflected in his eyes, I wondered if we were both thinking the same thing.
Sully. Somehow, Sully.