This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(49)

“The moment I met you,” she said. “I knew you were different.”

August dug his fingers into his knees, silently begging her not to say more, not to confess to this.

“So am I,” she added.

He held his tongue, focused on his breathing.

“We don’t fit in,” she went on. “Not just because we’re new. We see the world for what it is. No one else does.”

“Or maybe they do,” he cut in, “but they’re too afraid of you to say it.”

Kate gave him a withering smile, and shook her head. “I make them uncomfortable, because I’m a reminder that it’s not real. That it’s just this . . .” she waved her metal-tipped fingers. “Veneer. They’d rather close their eyes and pretend. But our eyes . . .” she trailed off, her dark blue gaze weighing him down. “Our eyes are open.”

And then she flashed a strange, private smile, and he was back in the hall again.

Whoever you are . . . I’m going to figure it out.

August felt dizzy. The things Kate was saying, they were the truth, they had to be, and yet it all felt like a line to reel him in. It was too clean and too messy at the same time. Was she flirting with him? Or trying to tell him she knew? Did she mean what she was saying, or was she saying something else? August felt himself scrambling for purchase as the car filled up again with silence.

“You’re right,” he said at last, throat dry. “About us being different . . . But I’d rather be able to see the truth than live a lie.”

“Which makes you the only bearable person at that school.” Her smile widened when she said it, shifting into that genuine, contagious grin. Watching her, it was like watching a flickering image, two versions that shifted back and forth depending on how you turned your head. He waited for her confession to spill out, but it didn’t.

“I was wondering,” she said, tapping a metal nail against the pendant, “about your marks.”

August swallowed, rubbed his wrist. “What about them?”

“You said they were for sobriety, but they’re permanent.”

“Yeah. So?”

She cocked her head, revealing the silvery edge of her scar. “So what if you relapse?”

He looked at her, unblinking. “Well, that would suck.”

She laughed, but her attention was still fixed on him—she wasn’t going to settle for a brush-off—so he swallowed, trying to find a way to tell the truth. “If I could just wipe them off at the end of the day,” he said, “they wouldn’t mean anything. They wouldn’t matter. And they do. I was in a dark place, once, and I don’t ever want to go back. I’d rather die than start over.” She stared at him, a slight furrow between her brows, and he could imagine her thinking, So this is what it looks like when he tells the truth, and he thought, So this is what it looks like when she believes you.

Which was almost funny, seeing as he’d never lied, but it also scared him, because it was the first time he’d seen her make that face, and the others now looked empty by comparison.

Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?

He could ask her. Force her to answer. But the question was damning, and the car was too small, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do if she said yes.

The violin case sat on the floor between his feet, and Leo was right—if he tried, he could smell the blood on the driver’s hands, but not on Kate, and she didn’t have a restless shadow, and—

“Freddie?”

He blinked. She was looking at him expectantly. The car was idling in front of Colton.

“Sorry,” he said. He climbed out first, and held the door open for Kate. At the last moment he offered his hand to help her from the car, and to his surprise, she actually took it. He fought back a shiver when her nails brushed his skin.

“Hey, Marcus.” She leaned her head back into the sedan. “I have a counseling session, so I might be a little late.”

The man in the driver’s seat only nodded, and drove away.

Kate set off toward the front gate, glancing back when he didn’t follow. “You coming?”

“I’ll catch you around,” he said, nodding at a random cluster of juniors as if they were his friends.

Again, the edge of a smirk, the raise of a brow, the careful composure that he now realized went with disbelief. “I’m glad we talked, Freddie,” she said, her voice sliding smoothly over the name.

“Me, too,” he said, pulling his cell from his pocket the moment she turned away.

He dialed Henry, but it was Leo who answered.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked.

“Flynn is stitching someone up. What is it?”

“She knows.”

“Knows what?” pressed Leo.

“Something. Everything. I don’t know. But she knows, Leo.”

His brother’s voice was stiff, impatient. “What changed?”

“I don’t know, but yesterday she threw me against a locker, and today she wants to be my friend. It’s off, something’s off, and the way she said my name—not my name, I mean, Freddie’s name, it’s wrong, and I look at her and I see two people and I can’t tell which is real and—”

“Stay put, August.”

“But—”