"He said what?!"
"He said, 'I know it's your first time and it's hard, but if you wanna go at it again, I got you, babe,' or something like that."
"He called her 'babe'?"
"Uh, no, but he might as well have."
Isabelle slumped back into her chair and sighed. Celia was sitting on an ottoman beside her, still leaning forward. They were in one of the many student lounges on campus. This particular one was Isabelle's favorite because of the overstuffed furniture and heavy wooden tables. It reminded her of her mother's sitting room.
Isabelle lay as far back as she could in the overstuffed chair. She clasped her hands together and rested them on her stomach. Celia stared at her friend's face, waiting for her reaction. She had just told Izzy that she had seen Hunter and Ash kissing in the library. She also told her about what she'd heard Hunter say to Ash, including what she thought he meant by it.
"She didn't tell us about it," Isabelle whined sadly
Ash sat on the floor next to her tattered uniform and her mobile phone. Her hands were clasped over her head as she stared hard at the floor in front of her. Her heart was racing in her chest and she was breathing hard just to keep up. With all the anger she felt, she wanted to run outside, find Hunter and take him apart with her bare hands.Ash wasn't particularly athletic: she didn't have a sport like her friends did. She wasn't very strong. She did a lot of manual labor and menial chores at the orphanage but at Saint Blaise's there was nothing to do but study and there was nothing to clean and no one to clean up after. She wasn't out of shape since she jogged with her friends every other day, but having good cardio wasn't the same as having actual combat skill.While Ash had been involved in a few scuffles growing up at the orphanage, she couldn't count any of it as real fight experience. They were just skinny kids brawling over broken toys and petty insults.
Ash and Hunter sat on the floor of the back building. It was getting dark outside but they didn't turn the lights on. Turning the lights on might have called attention to them, so they chose to sit in the semi-darkness. They kept the door ajar, letting in just enough light for them to see each other's faces."You and I, we're werewolves," he said simply.Hunter's face was serious. He didn't smile like he usually did, which made his face seem unfamiliar to Ash. She was used to seeing Hunter as a friendly guy. Even as he seemed out of reach for her, he always had a happy air about him.The boy sitting in front of her now seemed to be a different person. He didn't have his usual positive charm, and it made Ash feel uneasy.Hunter's unsmiling countenance in the darkness didn't look at all like the Hunter Guzman Ash saw around the school. It was unnerving seeing him like that, even more so considering what he was saying."We exist here, at this time, in
“Tell me and I’ll kiss you,” Ash said.Hunter tugged at her hands and inched his face closer to hers, smiling playfully.“I’ll tell you everything and THEN I’ll kiss you,” he said, challenging her.Ash pushed her cheek against his, avoiding his lips. And then she whispered in his ear.“Tell me everything and I might let you.”Hunter liked the game she was playing. He didn’t know the rules yet, but he was willing to play along.“Okay, deal,” he said, smiling, into her ear.Ash didn’t pull back. She stayed where she was and rubbed her cheek against his.“Go on. Tell me,” she said, whispering in his ear.Hunter swallowed as he felt her breath on his ear. The contact was making him feel unbearably warm inside. He wanted so badly to just kiss her and drown in the warmth.“You ran away from me, in your werewolf form, and then
"I want to take you home,” Hunter said to Ash.Their faces were flushed and the night left very little light to see inside the building. They were two shadows on the floor and the sound of their breathing seemed to fill the otherwise empty room.“What . . . what do you mean by that?” the girl shadow asked the boy shadow.The boy shadow seemed to respond only in panted breathing.Ash bit her lip. She wasn’t sure what Hunter meant by “taking her home” and the longer he didn’t answer, the more conscious she became of their bodies touching. She could see Hunter’s eyes in the half-light and they were still blue. She wondered what she looked like, what he saw as he looked back at her.She tried to move off of his lap, but he tightened his arms around her.“I wanna take you home, Boots,” he said, resting his chin on her shoulder.“I heard you the first time, Hunter,” Ash
When someone tells a lie, they draw a line between themselves and the truth. The people who hear the lie and know the truth are made to choose sides. Do they side with the liar or do they side with the known truth?Ash had lied to the group at dinner and every girl at the table knew it. The question that hung in the air was “why?”Why would Ash lie about seeing a boy at school? Why wouldn’t she just tell her best friends about it?Isabelle could not understand why Ash would keep her relationship with Hunter a secret from them. They would have been happy for Ash if she had told them about her boyfriend or fling or whatever it was that Hunter was. Isabelle’s feelings were hurt. Didn’t Ashtrust her best friends?She looked at Ash quietly eating her dinner across the table from her and Celia, and she wondered, concerned with what was happening to their friend Boots.Celia, on the other hand, was angry. She did not sa
When Ash woke up the next morning, Celia was already gone.Ash wasn’t surprised. Celia liked to go for a morning run every so often, so she did sometimes leave at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning to get a good workout.Ash didn’t make too much of it. She knew that Celia was probably mad at her for lying about not seeing Hunter, so she figured Celia was just letting off steam with an early morning run.Ash thought about going back to sleep since it was only 6:00 am. Lying in her bed, listening to the sound of the quiet morning, she realized that she was finally alone after so many days of being around other people.She thought about sending a text message to Hunter, asking him to meet up for breakfast or something just to talk.[Are you sure you just want to talk to him? You only really talk about half of the time that you’re together.]Ash shuddered at her own inner voice. On one hand, she was positively ecstatic that Hunter lik
Celia woke up on the bleachers. Her head felt heavy and she was chilled down to her bones. She had felt so tired and had fallen asleep in the open. It was so cold. She knew she should’ve just walked back to the dorm to sleep but she couldn’t help herself. Kind of a stupid move, but whatever, Celia already knew she had a knack for doing stupid things.Celia walked back to the Girls’ Dorm, eager to take a hot shower and wash away the cold on her skin.***Ash gathered her hair and tied it up in a nice high ponytail. Isabelle had told her once that she looked pretty with her hair pulled high and back.”You have a lovely jawline and a graceful neck, Boots,” she had said to Ash. At the time, Ash had laughed at the phrase “graceful neck.” How can a neck in itself be graceful? She had joked about several stupid ways for a disembodied neck to move to be considered “graceful.”Now that she wanted to
On the night before her birthday, Ash wanted to go to bed early. While Celia and Isabelle ate dinner at the cafeteria, Ash packed a duffel bag with clothes for the two-week holiday. She had already decided that she was going to spend the holidays with Hunter getting to know his parents and learning more about their shared werewolf heritage.The problem was, she had no idea how to tell her friends about her decision. With the awkward way things had been going with the three of them lately, telling them she was staying with Hunter out of the blue sounded like the premise for an elaborate prank.No one at school would have believed it. But then again, no one would believe that living monsters in human form walked the halls at Saint Blaise’s either. Staying with Hunter for the holidays was far more believable. It seemed improbable, but at the least it was possible. As it was, it was definitely happening.She stared at her hands on the unfolded shirt in her lap