Chapter 649 | Go Break Him, Then

Chapter 649: 649 | Go Break Him, Then

Sloane stared at me for three long seconds, her fists still knotted in my hoodie, and then she shoved me backward hard enough that my calves hit the fountain rim and I sat down on wet stone.

"That’s a terrible answer, and I hate that it’s true."

"You told me not to edit it."

"I know what I told you!" Her voice bounced off the fog, and somewhere behind the eucalyptus a bird took off in protest. She paced two steps left, two steps right, and the sparks along her knuckles spat and died and came back brighter each time she turned. "You don’t get to be honest and romantic in the same breath at five thirty in the morning, because it’s cheating and I can’t hit you for it."

"You can hit me for it if you want to."

"I want to so badly." She stopped pacing and stood over me, breathing hard, her ponytail swinging behind her shoulders. The cropped top had ridden up another inch from all the stomping, and the fog had beaded on her collarbones and the tops of her breasts in tiny drops that caught the grey light. My eyes dropped for half a second before I dragged them back up, and the Duplex carried that half second straight into her chest.

Her mouth fell open.

"Are you checking me out right now, in the middle of me being furious at you?"

"I’m a deeply flawed person, babe, and you knew that when you signed up."

"I signed up for a flawed person, not a disaster." She grabbed my chin between two fingers and tilted my face up, and her thumb pressed into the spot under my jaw where my pulse ran fast and loud. Her eyes went soft for exactly as long as it took her to feel it, and then hardened again. "Okay, here are the rules, so listen to me and don’t make your thinking face."

I nodded, because nodding cost nothing and saved my life.

"First, you don’t sleep in her bed tonight, because tonight is mine and I already told Koda she can’t borrow my room for her horror movie thing." She held up a second finger. "Second, you buy me breakfast every day this week, and I mean real breakfast from the good station, not those cardboard protein bars you keep in your jacket. Third, Hardy and I are going to have a conversation without you there, and you don’t get to know what we say."

That made three rules, which meant she had planned at least two of them on the walk out the door, because Sloane never improvised a numbered list.

"Can I ask about the conversation afterward?"

"Absolutely not." Her thumb stroked once along my jaw, slow and rough, and the bond softened under my ribs in a way that had nothing to do with her words. "You’re going to sit in Combat Theory knowing that two girls who could both put you through a wall had a long talk about you, and you’re never going to find out what we decided."

"That’s the most frightening thing you’ve ever said to me, and you once threatened to detonate my bloodline."

"Good, then it’s working." She bent down and kissed me, hard and quick and tasting of mint, her teeth catching my lower lip and pulling until a sharp sting ran down my chin. The Sadism trait purred like a cat that had found a sunbeam, and she felt it through the bond and made a disgusted noise against my mouth. "I can feel you liking that, you pervert, so stop it."

"I physically can’t stop it, it’s a passive trait."

"Then I’ll make it a problem later." She let go of my chin and stepped back, and her eyes did one long slow sweep down my body before she yanked them back up and turned pink to the tips of her ears. "I’m going on my run now, and I’m going to run so fast that I break my own record and Hale cries."

"Go break him, then."

She jogged three steps toward the path, stopped, turned around, and pointed at me through the fog.

"I love you, and I’m still mad, and those are both true, so don’t you dare make it weird."

Then she was gone, a pink ponytail and black leggings vanishing into the grey at a pace that would have made most people pull a hamstring, and the bond trailed after her, hot and stubborn and very much alive.

I sat on the fountain until my jeans soaked through, and the interface popped open without waiting for permission.

[Heroine Bond Status: Sloane Fitzgerald]

Disclosure registered before indirect discovery. Affection Anchor holding at minimum threshold. Current state: hurt, jealous, relieved, aroused.

Note: The Host has just survived a confession by being honest and then staring at her chest. This strategy is not reproducible and should not be attempted again.

I closed it hard enough to feel it in my teeth and walked back toward 1-B.

The common room at six forty smelled of burnt coffee and the waffle maker that Caden had dragged out of a storage closet two weeks ago and refused to return. Caden himself sat on the kitchen island in a pair of shark pajama pants, eating a waffle with his bare hands and syrup running down his wrist, while Marco stood at the stove arguing with a pan of eggs that had clearly lost the argument.

"Belmont, my man, my king, my sovereign." Caden lifted the waffle at me like a toast. "You look like a guy who got yelled at by a pink explosion before sunrise."

"I got kissed by a pink explosion before sunrise, actually."

"That’s worse, and you know it’s worse." He licked syrup off his thumb and squinted at me. "Your lip’s bleeding a little, by the way, so either she bit you or the fountain did."

"She bit me, and I deserved it."

Marco turned from the stove holding a spatula that had a chunk of egg welded to it. "Bro, the whole tower knows why you deserved it, so you don’t have to be humble about it."

"The whole tower?"

"Maribelle sent a message to the group chat at one fifteen." Marco pulled out his phone with his free hand and scrolled. "It’s a screenshot of a twenty-dollar payment with the word respect in the memo, and then it’s just a fire emoji and a stopwatch."