All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(73)

The door practically flew off its hinges. Austin stood there, his hair perfectly messed, like it had taken an hour but he’d finally gotten it just right and now all that was left was for me to run my hands through it. “Hey.” His smile looked like it had fast legs, like it was ready to sprint whatever direction necessary to keep me there. Nervous, that smile.

“I’m sorry.”

“Jesus, already?” That long-legged smile danced like he was trying to keep me from running up the block. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Come on in.”

Be positive, Becca had said. Well, so much for that.

I stepped inside, and Austin slid his arms around me, his lips rising to mine. Not quite a peck, but not serious business either, the kiss felt like it was wobbling on the end of a broken spring. This kid was terrified he was going to do something that shot me out of here faster than a cannonball.

Be positive, I told myself.

“You look nice,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me over.”

“You look nice too.” Without letting go of me, he booted the door shut. “So.”

“So.”

“My brother is here.”

“Yeah, I figured. You said family dinner.”

“Well, Jake is, um. He’s being kind of difficult right now. You know.”

I opened my mouth to say, He hates me, but Becca’s voice cracked out: be nice. Somehow I managed to change it to, “It’s going to be fine. I’m sure he’s an awesome guy.”

One of Austin’s eyebrows went up.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. You just—you’re taking that better than I expected.” A struggle showed on his face, and he inched closer to me, wriggling up until we were pressed against each other, my back to the door. “I’m only going to say this because I’ll feel awful if I don’t. I’m sorry about what Sara did, and I promise I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I’ll do whatever I can to make this turn out right.”

Those claws were back, tiger claws, ripping out my guts by the millimeter. Be nice. Be positive. Be fucking nice. I started to run my hand through all that messy hair, but that would ruin it, so I settled for just pushing some behind his ear. Be nice, like it’s a fucking black-tie gala. Sure, I can do that. For this guy, tonight, sure.

“It’s fine. I overreacted. It’s all going to be fine.” It wasn’t, of course. That was a lie. But it was a nice lie.

Austin’s eyes searched mine. “You’re acting kind of different tonight.”

“I don’t—”

Before I could finish, a voice broke in. “Take it to your fucking room. Nobody wants to see you grinding in the fucking foyer.”

As though I’d caught on fire, Austin sprang away from me. Coming down the stairs was a young man. He looked a year younger than Austin—at the outside, maybe two. Instead of Austin’s casual, mussed look, he wore a crew cut, his hair neatly gelled and textured. Aside from the hair, though, he had easily swum out of the same gene pool as Austin: he was built big, especially for his age, and although there was still some softness to his face, he was clearly coming into the same rugged attractiveness that would, one day, be handsome, but would never be pretty. The clothes, however, told a different story. Where Austin tended towards nice, sometimes even preppy clothes, Jake wore heavy jeans with flamboyant stitching, a belt buckle as big as the North Star, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

“Vie, this is—”

I stuck out my hand.

Jake moved as though he were going to walk past us, heading deeper into the house, but at the last moment he crashed into me, his shoulder checking mine and knocking me back against the door. Without a backward glance, he kept walking.

“Jake!” Austin leapt after him, but I grabbed Austin’s shoulder.

Being nice was a hell of a lot of work. “It’s fine, let it go.”

“No, it’s not fine. He just—”

“I know. Seriously, it’s fine. Let him get it out of his system.” Or, I was thinking, let me catch up to that braindead cowboy when Austin wasn’t around. Let me have five minutes and he’d be wearing that goddamn belt buckle over a body cast.

Austin slammed his hand into the door, and pain flashed across his face as he shook out his fist. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not drunk, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Stoned?”

God, Austin. I’m just,” being nice, “being normal.”

He grunted, still shaking his aching hand. “Come on. My parents will be waiting for us.”

Sure enough, when we walked into the dining room, Don Miller was settling a bowl of salad into place, and a moment later Debra swept in from the kitchen with a basket of steaming rolls. Like the rest of the house, the dining room could have been set up in one of those high-end furniture stores as a display: dark-stained wood, shining crystal, bone-white porcelain with a double band of blue around the edge. Austin grabbed my hand, and his palm was sweaty.

“You have perfect timing, Vie,” Debra said. She was smiling like she’d been buying stock in teeth-whitening and needed everybody to know. “Austin, take his coat. Vie, have a seat. Don, you stay here, I’m almost ready.”