Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(38)

David dropped his head to look at me, eyes slightly narrowed. “I didn’t say I was dumping you, I said—”

“No,” I interrupted. “That’s what ‘rethink stuff’ means, David. And it means you’re letting the Paladin/Oracle thing get all tangled up with everything else we are.”

David laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “It’s already all tangled up, Pres. It always has been, and it’s making both of us crazy.”

Now David’s arms were tight across his chest, too. “You can’t quit being my Paladin, and I can’t quit being an Oracle, but maybe until all this is sorted with the Peirasmos and Alexander and Bee—”

“What does Bee have to do with this?” I asked, shading my eyes against the sun. It was warm out here by the side of the road, and I could feel sweat on my forehead, behind my knees. My stomach ached, and my chest hurt. From the pained look on his face, I thought David might be feeling something similar.

“She’s wrapped up in this, too. Which, let me remind you, is another thing that I might have been able to see coming if you hadn’t screwed around with my powers. Maybe I could have looked for her, or we could’ve brought her back sooner.”

I stepped closer to him, wishing I could at least poke him in the chest or something. I’d have to settle for saying all the hostile stuff I wanted. “Are you suggesting that what happened to Bee was my fault?”

A car drove by, sending up a cloud of dust, and David glared at me. “You know I don’t think that.”

But I did. That was the problem. If I’d told Bee the truth from the beginning, if I’d been faster at Cotillion, if I’d tried to do something to keep her from even going to Cotillion.

If I hadn’t been so scared of my boyfriend turning into a monster that I’d kept him from using powers that maybe could’ve seen her.

Could’ve saved her.

“Harper,” David said, his voice quieter now. “Why can’t you admit that you can’t do everything?” He sounded so much like the David Stark I’d fought with for all those years that it was hard to believe I’d kissed him just yesterday. That I’d loved him.

“You can’t let go of anything, can you, Harper? You can’t admit that maybe some things are too much for you. You can’t be Homecoming Queen, and Paladin, and SGA president, and my girlfriend—”

I spun away from him, heading for the car. “Yeah, well, we can go ahead and strike one of those from the list, no problem.”

With an aggrieved sound, David caught my elbow, pulling me up short. “I don’t want to break up.”

I stepped back, shaking my head. “Too late.”

With that, I stomped back to the car, my throat tight, my eyes stinging.

David was still standing a few feet from the car, one hand at his waist, the other rubbing his mouth as he watched the traffic. Then, after a moment, I saw his shoulders rise and fall with a sigh, and he walked back to the car.

When he slid back in the driver’s side, he didn’t even look at me, starting the car and staring straight ahead.

I took a deep breath, wishing it hadn’t sounded so shuddery. So that was that. We were done. Less than six months as a couple, and now it was over.

Maybe David was right and it was for the best.

We didn’t say anything else until David pulled up in front of my house.

“Both your parents are home,” he said, the car still idling.

“Probably because the school called them, and I’m about to be grounded for the rest of my life, if not imprisoned.”

“Right,” David said on a sigh, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Do you want me to go in with you, try to explain?”

I was going to cry. I could feel it in my throat, which suddenly seemed so swollen and painful I was surprised I could breathe. And the last person I wanted to see me cry right now was the boy sitting next to me.

“No,” I said. “I need to deal with this on my own.”

“Pres,” he said softly. In the dim light of the car, I could make out the freckles across the bridge of his nose, see the slight wobble of his chin, and I fumbled with the door handle as tears filled my vision.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said, getting out of the car as quickly as I could and slamming the door behind me.

I didn’t look back.





Chapter 18


“WOULD IT HELP if I apologized again?”

I was sitting between my parents in Headmaster Dunn’s office on Monday morning, the leather of the chair sticking to my thighs underneath the white linen skirt I was wearing. I was all in white today, down to the thin ribbon headband in my hair, hoping to project an air of innocence, but so far, it didn’t seem to be working.

Headmaster Dunn still had an angry purple bruise on his right cheek, and the top of his bald head was red with anger, a vein pulsing steadily there. I’d never seen Headmaster Dunn angry before. God knows I’d never given him any reason to be before today, and for the first time, I got that—as a principal—he was pretty scary.

“Martin, you know this was very unusual behavior for Harper,” my dad said, resting his ankle on his knee. “And we don’t understand it any more than you do.”

“I panicked!” I insisted, wondering if going all wide-eyed would be taking the innocence thing too far. “There was a fire alarm, and—”