Death Before Daylight (16 page)

“I’m fine, Jessica,” he snapped.

When I stopped, he did, too.

His green eyes widened as he searched my
face, and then, his arm shot out and wrapped around my shoulders.
“I’m sorry.” His breath was against my forehead, and he breathed
twice before he spoke again. “Everything is going to be okay,” he
said it like it wasn’t going to be.

My palm landed on his chest just as he
stepped away from me. “Eric?”

He smiled, but I knew it was forced. It was
the way his upper lip extended to the right instead of the left,
the way his shoulders fell, the way he adjusted his backpack to
distract himself. Even if we had only known one another for a year,
I knew him well enough to know when he was lying.

“It’s nothing,” he said again before I could
ask him what was wrong. He ran a hand through his hair, and his
bangs stuck together like he hadn’t showered. “We should probably
get to lunch. You have to talk to Crystal, don’t you?” This time,
his smile was sincere.

I shot one back, and we walked together, but
didn’t hold hands. He kept his on his bag, and I stuck mine in my
pockets. It was cold outside, but it was warm enough for the
students to sit there. Everyone was desperate for fresh air.

“Want my jacket?” he asked as we approached
the elongated bench where everyone always sat, but Crystal was the
only one who had arrived.

“I’m fine.”

Eric dropped his bag by the table and shook
off his coat. Before I could continue arguing, he handed it over,
and I slipped it on.

Crystal watched, and a grin broke her lips.
“Aren’t you two adorable?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I sat down next to her and
pulled out my lunch. Eric sat on my other side.

Crystal had to lean over to get his
attention. “So, where’d you two go?” Unlike the previous times she
had spoken to Eric, she didn’t stutter this time. Whatever horrible
past they had was starting to melt away. “Aruba? The Caribbean?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please, tell me it wasn’t somewhere lame like
Seattle. It just rains there. I need some sunshine.”

“Georgia,” Eric answered.

“My extended family still lives there.” I
seconded the lie the Dark created.

“Didn’t realize you had extended family,” Zac
spoke before I saw him, and he kissed Crystal on the cheek before I
could stop him. His dark eyes were on me the entire time, but I
didn’t hold his gaze for long. Robb and Linda had joined us. She
was in the lunch period before ours, so she would have to leave
soon.

“Hey, guys,” Robb spoke for both of them.

Crystal chirped a reply, but I didn’t hear
it. I was too busy remembering what he had done, how he didn’t
remember, how only Zac remembered.

“You were saying?” Zac pressed as he put his
coffee on the table. He must have stolen it from the teacher’s
room.

“My dad’s family lives in Atlanta,” I
managed. It wasn’t a complete lie. My uncle lived there, but my dad
hadn’t spoken to his brother in years. As far as I knew, they had
never forgiven one another over their mother’s will. It was one of
the reasons my dad was happy to move to Kansas when he got the
chance. We didn’t talk about it any more than that.

“Isn’t that where you moved from?” Zac
asked.

I nodded. “But we moved around a lot for his
job.”

“What does he do anyway?”

“Enough questions,” Eric snapped.

I jumped at his tone, but when I looked at
him, I froze. Aside from his flushed cheeks, his complexion had
paled. “Eric—”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Robb
interrupted.

I glanced over, expecting him to be looking
at Linda, but his eyes were on the last person I expected. He was
talking to Eric.

Eric shifted away from me.

“About that thing we were talking about
earlier,” Robb continued.

When they were silent, I looked between the
two, twisting my neck to the left to see Eric, turning it to the
right to see Robb. They never broke eye contact.

“You two were talking earlier?” Crystal
giggled. “What a reunion.”

Robb smiled. “It’s good to be friends
again.”

“So, talk here,” Linda spoke up.

Robb waved her away. “It’s guy stuff.”

“Guys don’t have stuff.” Crystal took Linda’s
side of all people. Apparently, everyone had made up while we were
gone. I wondered if they had lost more memories than the bar, if
the illusion was affecting more than just their thoughts, but it
wasn’t like I could ask.

Eric stood up. “We can talk.”

Robb mirrored his movements. “We’ll be right
back,” he spoke to Linda instead of anyone else. She didn’t even
look at him as they left. I had to pull my eyes off the blonde to
watch Eric walk away with Robb, forcing myself to remember how they
had fought in the hallway only a few months prior.

Crystal leaned over to steal my chips.
“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day.”

“Not really,” Zac joined in. “They have a lot
to work through.”

Hannah Blake. Even if Robb had forgotten the
bar and the fights, he had to remember Hannah’s death. Everyone
did. Her memorial was displayed in the school, right outside of the
principal’s office. The only other girl Eric had loved was someone
I would never meet, but Robb knew her. As far as Crystal had told
me, they had all been best friends. It was just another world I
would never know. The only unique part I did know was her Dark
name—Abby. Eric never called her Hannah.

My hands curled against my legs, but I only
noticed when Crystal bumped her shoulder against mine. “Lighten up,
Taylor,” she said, but she covered her giggle when it escaped her.
“I guess you’ll be a Welborn eventually.”

“I guess so,” I muttered through my
embarrassment, but my breath caught when I saw my ring.

The piece of jewelry that bound Eric and I
together was glowing, but it was doing more than that. The metal
was warm against my cooling skin. Even in the January weather, it
pressed against my finger as if it yearned to be inside of me. The
warmth coursed through my veins like blood, like it was alive, but
I hid it in my pocket like I had to make it stay.

21

Robb leaned against the brick wall so he
could face the bench. It was yards away, too far for even Jessica
to hear, and he wanted it that way. But it was close enough for
others to see us, and I wanted it that way. Even if Robb put up an
illusion to hurt me, Jessica would know. Her senses were strong
enough for that. To keep calm, I imagined half of the student body
was in the Dark, but it also meant the other half was in the
Light—when, in reality, they could’ve all been humans. Mindy was
the first one I thought of before Robb’s smirk appeared.

“So, who’s going to talk first?” he pondered
aloud.

“Looks like you just did.”

He chuckled, raising his finger to point at
me. “That’s what I always liked about you, Eric—your wit.”

I wanted to punch the smile off his face.

“I miss that about you.”

“I don’t miss you at all,” I growled.

Robb’s eye twitched. “We used to be friends,
Welborn.”

“Good thing we aren’t anymore.” After all, I
was destined to kill him. It was that reason I gave up all my
friends in the first place, including him. But I remembered how he
fought it, how he came to Abby’s funeral, how he showed up at my
house and tried to convince my father to let him in. I counted how
many times he came.

“Sixteen,” Robb said as he looked at the sky.
“Sixteen times I came to your house, and sixteen times you ignored
me.”

Apparently, he was thinking the same
thing.

“I suppose you were right to.”

“You killed her,” I spat.

Robb’s brown eyes shot down to me, but he
wasn’t glaring. “Fudicia did it.” Even I had seen her peek inside
the car. “But that’s not what matters,” he paused to fiddle with
his shirt. Cigarettes poked out from his pocket, but he didn’t take
one out. It wasn’t allowed on campus. It would only bring more
attention to us.

“Go ahead,” I coaxed, hoping he would fall
for it, but he was smarter than that.

“I’m not an idiot.” He pushed them back into
his shirt. “I was afraid you’d forget.”

He knew it would take me a while to remember
it all, and I was the one who had fallen for his plan. I had
admitted to my memory when I blamed him for Abby. It was all a game
for him.

“Did you even try to break up with Jess?” he
asked.

“I’m not leaving her.”

“Then, our deal isn’t going to work out.”
After he spoke, he hissed and waved his hand. A shallow burn
reddened his skin.

I spun around. Jessica waved her hand as she
stood up. Zac was already apologizing. He had spilled his coffee on
her, and her injury appeared on Robb, too. When I tried to go to
her, Robb gripped my shoulder. My neck burned.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt her,” I
snapped.

“Not if you follow the deal.”

My jaw ached.

“That includes you hurting me,” Robb reminded
me.

“She’s my fiancée.” I pulled away from his
grip. “She won’t accept a breakup without question.”

“That’s your problem, Welborn,” Robb said,
“but I suggest you figure it out fast.”

I stared at Zac, knowing he was in on it.
Jessica had been right from the beginning, and I defended him when
I should’ve trusted her instinct. “Who’s he? The half-breed?”

Robb didn’t respond.

“That makes Linda Fudicia,” I told him
everything I knew. “Half-siblings, after all.” The reason for their
sudden transfer was starting to make sense. Robb needed his
henchmen, and if I had to guess, Crystal was one of them, too. I
just didn’t know who.

Robb walked past me and shrugged like he
didn’t care. “Do what you want to them.” He didn’t care about
anything but himself, the Light, and Jessica. “They can defend
themselves.”

He walked away, but I followed him like the
shadow I was. “My people can defend themselves, too,” I threatened.
Jessica and Jonathon were stronger than he thought. “You just
wait.”

“Use your actions instead of your words,
Welborn,” Robb whispered. As we approached, he lightened his
stance, even grinning as he waved at the others. “I leave for two
minutes and you guys get in a fight.”

“It was an accident.” Crystal wiped her
sweater with napkins. Zac had gotten her, too. “We’re fine, other
than my clothes.”

“I’ll buy you new ones,” Zac promised.

Crystal was glowing. “Today?”

“Sure thing.”

“What do you say, Jess?” Crystal’s hands were
on Jessica’s shoulders like she was about to hug her. “It’d be
fun.”

“It wasn’t my clothes that got ruined,” she
laughed, but it strained against her throat. She was trying to
clean my jacket.

I touched her arm to get her attention. “It’s
fine.”

“I’m sorry,” she started to speak, but she
stopped when she saw my face. I hated to think about what she saw.
She knew me well enough to know something was wrong. Her eyes
darted between Robb and I, and I hoped she would see what he was,
but she turned back to me. Her focus wasn’t on him. “Are you
okay—?”

“Can we talk?”

Her face flushed. “Sure.”

“Alone.”

She looked back at her friends, the people
that were truly her enemies, but she nodded. “We’ll be right back.”
She followed me without question until I headed for the willow
tree. “Why are we going way up here?”

It was our tree. I had to give her any sign I
could that I didn’t mean what I was about to say, and I needed to
find any comfort I could in order to lie. As I stared at the tree,
at its base where I almost died, I almost wished I had.

“My memories are coming back,” I muttered as
I tore my eyes off the grass. “All of them.”

She waited, as I knew she would. After all,
she knew how horrible memory loss was, and it sickened me to use it
against her.

“What did Darthon tell you?” I asked.

She glanced over her shoulder.

“No one can hear us,” I promised.

When she faced me, she brushed her hair out
of her face. She only did that when she was nervous. “Why are you
asking that?”

“Did he tell you that you were like him?”

Her shoulders lifted.

“Because he told me that.”

“What—”

“I know it’s true,” I forced the words out,
but couldn’t force myself to look at her. If I pretended I was
talking to someone else, I could do it. I could convince myself it
was the act it was, the script Darthon—Robb McLain—had forced on
me. If I didn’t do it, he would hurt her again, and I couldn’t have
that. Not until I could figure out a way for us to fight back.

“So, what?” Jessica spoke up, and it was the
last thing I thought she would say. “So, what if I’m like him?”

I blinked. “So, you are a light.”

“And a shade,” she pointed out. “We can find
a way to tell the elders, and they’ll understand just like you—”
She tried to touch me.

“I don’t understand.” I stepped back. “I
don’t like this. I don’t like lights.”

Her hand froze in the air where she had
reached for me. Her ring sparkled. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t like you.”

“You need to calm down,” her voice shook, but
the rest of her body went rigid. “I know a lot happened, Eric.”

“I’m not Eric.” I wanted to tell her I was
Darthon’s pawn, but I knew the words would never come.

Her eyes flickered over my face. “You
are.”

“I’m not,” I snapped. “I went in there as
Eric and came out as someone else.”

She wrapped her arms around her torso.
“You’re not making any sense.”

I closed my eyes as I said the part I dreaded
the most, “Eric loved you, and I don’t.” My heart was too loud in
my ears for me to hear myself say, “I’m breaking up with you,
Jess.”

Silence.

I expected her to slap me, to beat me with
her fists, to take her ring off and chuck it over the hill. But
nothing happened.