Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(78)

“Oops! Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“You should be,” I said under my breath, fighting a grin as she abandoned her iPad and scooped up the stray marble. What kind of new-age kid played with marbles these days, anyway? Wasn’t that a little vintage?

Not that I was going to hold it too hard against her. It was only pretty recently that she’d started poking her head out of her turtle shell again. A laughing, noisy Crista, tormenting Dylan and running around the house experimenting with new toy setups was far preferable to the quiet, nonchalant kid she’d turned into after Aunt Linda passed away. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss her mom anymore, of course. She still brought her up. All the time, in fact. It was just that she’d adjusted to the idea that life would keep on going without her mom, and she’d finally decided to catch back up with it.

“I know it’s tonight, but when tonight?”

I blew my bangs out of my face and shrugged. Honestly, did it matter when? “I don’t know. I’ll wing it.”

“Don’t do it in front of everyone,” Mom said.

“Uh … why?”

“Because. He should get the chance to react in private before everyone else jumps in, okay?”

Dad tapped the neck of his beer against his chin. “Clearly, your mother has never forgiven me for proposing in front of a crowd of strangers,” he said.

“Well, all I’m saying is you’re very lucky I was going to say yes, anyway,” Mom shot back.

“Good thing I’m not proposing,” I said. “All right. I’ve got to go, so—”

“Ollie, can I play your guitar while you’re gone?” Crista asked.

I hesitated in the entryway.

“I’ll supervise,” Uncle Roy promised. “Only very gentle guitar playing tonight, all right, Crista? We aren’t in a rock band. If Ollie comes back to find another scratch on that thing he might lock you up and throw away the key.”

He pulled Crista into his lap and tickled her while she shrieked with laughter.

“Fine.” I smiled. “Supervised rocking out only. Deal. But if it’s scratched, you’ll have to take her place in the dungeons.”

“Duly noted.”

With that, I sprinted to my car, and practically broke the time and space barrier on the way to Will’s. Why was it that I managed to be late for everything?

“What took you so long?” Will asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.

“Hey, count yourself lucky I’m here at all. Napier is a hell of a long way to go for a drive-in movie.”

“It’s worth it, I promise. Where are the others?”

“They all went in Matt’s car in the end. I totally missed out on the road trip.”

“Those motherfuckers.” Will grinned.

“But it kind of works out, because I have to talk to you about something,” I said. I put the car into Park and flipped around in my seat. Mom did say to do this in private. And this was the only moment of privacy we’d be getting, so.

Will looked wary. “Oh no, what?”

There was no point dragging it out. “I got into the University of Southern California.”

“Oh,” Will said. He cleared his throat and gave me a forced-looking smile. “Wow, Ollie, amazing. That’s really great. When did you find out?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

He drew his brows together. “What, and you just kept it a secret this whole time?”

“Well, I wanted to wait and see, first.”

“For what?”

“If I got into NC State.”

He waited, shrugging to tell me to go on.

“And I did,” I finished.

“… And which one are you going to pick?”

“What would happen if I picked USC?”

He swallowed, looking hurt. He’d gotten into the nursing program at the University of North Carolina not long ago. An amazing school, but it couldn’t have been any farther away from California. “Well, we’ll figure it out. It’s far away, but it’s not impossible. We can keep an eye out for cheap flights and do weekend visits whenever we can. I’ll come up and stay for breaks, if you’re happy to let me crash with you—obviously, you can stay at mine whenever you want, but LA is more exciting than Chapel Hill, so—”

“So you wouldn’t want to break up?” I asked.

“What? No.” Will’s eyes went wide, and he reeled back a little. “Do you?”

“No, not at all. Plus, it wouldn’t be necessary, because I’m going to NC State.”

“What? Wait, seriously? You’re not joking?”

“Not joking. I just wanted to make sure that was still what you wanted.”

“Are you trying to kill me? You’re so ridiculous, why wouldn’t I want that?”

I shrugged like I didn’t know, but I did. Because after a year of everything being uprooted again, and again, and again, I was constantly bracing myself for something else to fall apart so I could somehow preempt it.

But Will didn’t fall apart, or reject me. Instead, he grabbed both of my hands and grinned so wide he could’ve auditioned to be a suitcase model on Deal or No Deal. “So, we’re going to be, like, a thirty-minute drive from each other next year?”