Mad Boys (Blue Ivy Prep, #2)(73)

Raising his hands in a gesture of surrender, Lachlan backed toward the door. “We running in the morning? Or you want a down day before classes start?”

“Maybe,” KC answered, but her distracted tone didn’t assure me she was listening to either of us.

“Right, I’ll talk to you later then.” Irritation flared in his eyes as I followed him to the door. But then he jerked his head to the hall with a significant look at me, so I followed him out and closed the door behind us. “Keep an eye on her and don’t accept any invitations this week.”

I always kept an eye on her. “Why?”

“Wait, look at that, you do know how to use words.”

I ignored the little dig and just stared at him.

“You got the invitations.” It wasn’t a question.

I shrugged. “I threw them out.” The stupid secret society thing held nothing of interest for me.

“Ace hasn’t.”

Shock twisted its grip on my spine. “No?” We hadn’t really talked about it. She’d actually clipped one of the invitations to my door. I’d recognized the riddle and the seal. Knots and Chains was a popular rumor. Only members knew who the other members were.

They’d scouted me back in my freshman year. It had been an interesting test to answer the puzzles. Then shit went sideways and all communication just stopped. I guessed they didn’t want me after all, or maybe Lachlan got annoyed at them for scouting me.

We hadn’t discussed it then. “Why don’t you want her to join?”

“It’s not about whether she joins or not,” he said, keeping his voice low and one eye on the room across the hall. Yeah. The cunt still lived there. Great. I liked Aubrey though.

She was great for KC.

“Then what is it?”

“Find me later,” he said. “We need to talk privately. In the meanwhile, keep an eye on Ace and don’t let her go anywhere alone.”

With that cryptic warning, he stalked off.

I stared after him for a moment, then looked back at the door across the hall. How long had all three of them been back on campus?

Back inside the suite, I glanced to where KC still sat reading through the music. She’d stripped off her sweatshirt in my absence and pulled out her guitar. The fact she was playing when I walked in trapped me in place. I closed the door as quietly as I could and listened.

Then she began to sing the lyrics, sparing me a brief look before dropping her gaze back to the music. Three bars later, I stepped forward.

“Drop it another half-octave.”

Her eyebrows climbed as she broke off. Lips pursed, she leaned forward and made another notation, then backed up to the beginning of the transition. When she dropped it that half-octave, I swore it was like she pulled mourning and worry twisted them right up with hope and fear.

It was—perfection and even made my eyes burn.

“Holy shit,” she whispered as the last bar fell away. “That’s—” She met my gaze. “Thank you.”

Running a hand over my hair, I rubbed the back of my neck. “You’re welcome. I should have asked before I touched it.”

“Maybe.” It was neither agreement nor chastisement. “But I’ve been stuck for three days and you found what I knew was missing.”

“It hurts.”

Dipping her chin, she nodded. “It definitely hurts.” The loneliness I might have imagined, but the melancholy I didn’t. Shifting, she put the guitar back on the stand. “I need to shower. I stink. Then we can make coffee.”

“I can try to make it for you if you want.” She’d been teaching me. I didn’t have it fully down, but I didn’t get a lot of practice.

“That would be great,” she said as she stacked the music sheets together and straightened them. “Thank you.”

She was almost at her door when I needed to ask, “KC?”

“Hmm?”

“Is Lachlan bothering you?” Cause if he’d broken in here while I was gone, my brother and I weren’t going to talk.

We were going to fight.

“I don’t know,” she said after a moment, one hand on the doorknob to her room. She’d picked up her shoes and sweatshirt. “I mean, he knocked on the door. So—improvement? We’re basically running and that’s about it. I’m not going looking for him, but he’s been here since right after I got back. So… we run. Usually really early, but he was late today.”

“Why don’t you just tell him to fuck off?” She was more than capable of doing it. I’d heard her—more than once. She could tell me to fuck off, too. It was part of what I liked about her.

She laughed, pushing the door open to her room and setting the stuff down on her bed before facing me again. I’d followed as far as the door but stayed out of her space. The sound of her amusement flooded me with warmth.

In all those pictures, she’d been kissing my brothers, but she’d smiled at me. Smiled and laughed. The rich, throaty sound of her laughter right now reminded me of that and made me want to just wrap up in that musical sound.

“None of you listen to me,” she pointed out. “None of you.”

“I do,” I protested. Granted, it had taken a while. But I did listen.

“You do now,” she admitted after a long moment. “Will it last long?”