Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1)(4)

But years of practice had made her good at it. She gritted her teeth and looked up at the ceiling for a good thirty seconds, and the sensation passed. By the time she faced him her eyes were as dry as they had ever been. Her face was that carefully constructed blank slate, as though he bored her to death.

And she held it, despite the things he had to say.

“That nurse said you were supposed to stay overnight,” Tate told her. “She said you needed to rest—you can’t just run out on serious medical business.”

She thought at first that she had misheard. There was barely an insult in there. He didn’t smirk while he spoke. Plus, what was that whole medical business remark about? He sounded like somebody’s dad.

If somebody’s dad knew absolutely nothing about science.

“So this is what you’re going with,” she said. “Faking weird concern to lure me in.”

“No. No not at all. Who would even do that?”

To his credit, Tate managed to laugh.

The problem was, the laugh had no substance. It puffed out of him like a dying breath.

“You would. You actually did do that.”

“Name one time I did that.”

“How about the time I was carrying textbooks for Merriman and you asked if I was sure I could manage? Then you threw them in the fountain outside the science block.”

“Oh, okay, yeah, my bad. But apart from that one tiny incident of book destruction—of books I might add that were not even yours.”

“Then there was the time the books were mine,” Letty continued. “Only you thought a fitting place for them was a toilet in the boys’ bathroom. Then when they wouldn’t flush you doused them in lighter fluid and set them alight.”

“I…damn it, all right. But that was years ago; you can’t hold something against me I did as a kid. But this is different—you could go back to your dorm and start bleeding out of your eyeballs. I have, like, a civic responsibility to make sure you don’t.”

“Are you serious with this shit? Who do you think I am, exactly—some kid fresh off the school bus? I know you, Tate. I know you better than your own mother probably does. I had to know you to survive high school. Do you get that?” She shook her head, surprised to find something like weary amusement in her voice. “Civic responsibility? Jesus, if you had even an ounce of anything like that in your whole meaty body you would have checked on me in the hospital last time.”

He started to answer, but something seemed to pull him up short. More than that, in fact. It robbed his features of all animation. It took his half smile and the pretend concern, and replaced it with an odd kind of closedness. Like his face was a book and someone had just slammed it shut.

“I really didn’t think you’d want me around last time.”

“But you think I want you around now? After you drop me on my ass?”

“Wait, what?” he said. “Now hold on a second, that is not what happened at all.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to try gaslighting me over a f*cking head injury. You grabbed me and then let go right when you knew I would slam into the ground.”

“Jesus Christ, Letty I don’t even know what gaslight means. I’ve never known what it means. You say these things and I’ve no f*cking clue what you’re talking about.”

Tate stopped there and took a breath in a way that seemed oddly familiar. Then she realized: it was like her glancing up at the ceiling to stop the tears, even though he didn’t appear tearful at all. She wasn’t sure Tate could cry, if she was being honest. So what was this? What exactly did he need to contain?

Anger, she thought—and it was true, his voice was softer when he started talking again.

But there was something else there, too. A kind of desperation that made her feel odd.

“And that is fine. That is really cool that you’re super smart and know about this shit,” Tate said. “Shit that I probably did do once without, like, being aware of it. But I swear to god I’m not doing it here. I swear to you that I just wanted to stop you falling, and then you looked scared as f*ck and like you wanted to kill me and so I just backed off. I just backed off, that’s all.”

He drew a line under his words with his hands, firm and sure, and when he did that odd feeling tripled. It made her want to slide down the double doors and onto the floor, for reasons she couldn’t grasp. It had to be her not-that-serious-injury, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like something else. Like she believed him.

And she couldn’t allow that.

“Then keep doing it. Back all the way off until we can barely see each other. You understand me, Tate? If you really are concerned, just leave me alone.”





Chapter 3


It took a full three days to accept that Tate had listened. Three days of peering around corners before going in that direction. Three days of anxious messages from her dad, asking her ridiculous things like did she want him to call the police? Three days of wondering if she should call the police, even though there was nothing to tell them. He wasn’t doing any of the old bullshit he used to do—or at least none that warranted her dad getting as upset as he had the last time. She could almost see the four worry lines across his forehead in every text; the way he’d seemed to age overnight.