Love's Cruel Redemption (The Ghost Bird #12)(108)

Erica made a strange noise as she exhaled quickly. “I...don’t even know what to say. First, your school has you mixed up in a weird undercover operation, and now you’re saying you’re allowing...that Sang couldn’t decide between the two of you so you agreed to this?”

“We didn’t ask her to pick,” Kota said. “Nathan openly confessed to having feelings for her. He didn’t want it to cause problems. He was asking for solutions so he didn’t make a mistake like that. I talked to her about it. We were worried about it splitting up things or causing problems between us. Nathan wasn’t even interested in doing this. I suggested he give it a try, with Sang in agreement with it.”

Half truths about how it happened.

I wondered why he wasn’t talking about the others, but I realized maybe that was a bit too far. If she couldn’t accept Nathan and Kota dating me at the same time, it’d be impossible for us to explain the whole real situation.

Baby steps. One thing at a time.

I couldn’t wait any more. There was no reason to let him sit through this alone any longer.

I kissed Luke on the nose quickly, releasing him.

He stared at me, his face paler than I’d seen it before. His usually happy face serious. Now determined.

I was, too. I straightened up, fixed what I could of my hair by getting it out of my face, and then opened the door.

Luke stepped away, hiding, and I closed the door for him.

They were sitting at the table. Kota turned around. Erica looked up, her eyes wide, her face strained with questions and concerns.

“Morning,” I said, hoping they assumed I’d just gotten up and hadn’t heard anything. Kota needed a break, and Erica needed time to think about what Kota was telling her.

Kota remained seated but stretched out an arm to me. I went to him, unsure what he wanted. He wrapped an arm around my waist and looked up at me. “Morning,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“Are you?” I asked. “I can make some eggs and toast, perhaps?”

“Sure,” he said. And he looked over at his mom. “I was just telling her about what happened with Hendricks...and Nathan. About you, me and Nathan.”

“Oh,” I said. My face was still hot, the blush deepening, but she wasn’t outwardly protesting. Maybe he just wanted me to confirm what he was saying was true. “Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t mean to lie about it before.”

“We just weren’t sure you’d be okay with it,” Kota said. “Nathan made himself the bad guy until we were comfortable enough to talk about it.”

“He didn’t attack me,” I said. “I know what Jessica saw...that she probably didn’t understand the situation. We were talking about something else when I was saying things like no and whatever else. To Jessica, it probably sounded awful.”

Erica’s face had frozen. I thought she was looking at Kota but her attention had altered into someplace distant, drifting into her own thoughts. “I want to be supportive of what you’re doing,” she said. “I think I’m having more problems trying to figure out how you came up with this, and why you thought to do it.”

“We sort of stumbled into the idea,” Kota said. “I know it’s weird, but for some reason, it works for us.”

She shook off her thoughts and refocused on us. “I think I need to hear this from him, from all three of you together. But let’s put it aside, for now. We need to figure out what to say to the police as well. He may need to be here. We’ll need to focus.” She looked at me. “Maybe you can go get Jessica and walk over and get him?”

“I’ll go see if she’s up,” I said, eager to do as she asked. She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t demanding Kota get out of the Academy, that it was too dangerous. After all the lies, after all the craziness she’d experienced, I wondered how she was able to absorb it and deal with it. Did we not give her enough credit?

Part of me wondered if she hadn’t suspected the Academy to be more than what was on the surface. She’d told me before some suspicions she’d had about it, after the Academy changed Kota so drastically and helped them in their lives. Hopefully what she saw from that outweighed what happened last night. It wasn’t always dangerous like that.

I left them alone, trusting Kota to continue to talk with her about this, and headed to Jessica’s room.

Even though the truth was partially out, I wasn’t sure I felt totally comfortable.

But Nathan was no longer going to be an outcast. I wanted to be sure of this. No matter what happened now, I wouldn’t allow him to go through anything like that again.





Vulnerable




Nathan

––––––––

The early morning broke over the trees, and Nathan was in his house, at the kitchen table, with Diego Ramirez sitting across from him. They were both still wearing their clothes from the night before, Ramirez in jeans and a black shirt, and Nathan wearing a red hoodie and jeans. Nathan’s clothes were torn in places. He imagined his face was bruised. Parts of him were scraped and discolored where Hendricks had kicked or hit him.

His whole body ached, making sitting upright in the hardwood chair difficult.

Ramirez’s dark brows were high on his forehead as Nathan rattled off what happened. Nathan had been granted permission to talk about his dive into the lake, and onward.