Page 25 of Mayhem

Nichlas said my name.

Echo paused.

The reaction was small, but I caught it. She knew who I was now. Somebody must have told her after our little collision, and apparently learning I was one of the Kings hadn’t convinced her to stay away from the man we were protecting. If anything, she seemed more interested.

Nichlas kept talking, trying to frighten her with Hunter, with us, with whatever version of our reputation he thought might save him. Echo stepped closer instead. She said something too low for me to hear, and Nichlas went pale enough that I almost smiled.

Then her hand moved behind her. Echo’s hand moved toward the faculty display beside them. She pulled the narrow metal letter opener from its stand before Nichlas realized what she was reaching for. The letter opener came forward so smoothly I nearly missed it.

I crossed the remaining distance before she could bring the blade forward. My hand closed around her wrist, forcing it away from Nichlas as I pulled her back against me. Echo reacted immediately. She twisted hard, her free hand coming up toward my face, and I caught that wrist too before she could connect. She was strong enough to make the movement interesting and angry enough not to care that she was outmatched in size.

“Let me go,” she said, fighting my hold instead of wasting breath sounding frightened.

Nichlas had flattened himself against the wall. Blood still marked his mouth from earlier, and he stared at the letter opener in Echo’s hand like he had just realized how close he had been to finding out whether she meant everything she’d said.

I looked at him over Echo’s shoulder. “Go.”

Nichlas hesitated and Echo stopped struggling long enough to turn her head. “Don’t you fucking move.”

He looked between us as I tightened my grip around her wrists and kept my attention on him. “Run like a good boy while I’m still helping you.”

Nichlas pushed away from the wall and disappeared down the corridor at a pace that was only technically short of running. Echo surged forward the second he moved, and I caught her around the waist, hauled her back against me, and took the letter opener from her hand before she could decide to use it on me instead.

“You let him go.” She twisted in my arms and finally managed to turn enough to face me. Her eyes were bright with fury, her breathing hard, and there was a smear of Nichlas’ blood across one of her knuckles. “I wasn’t finished.”

“I know.”

Her expression shifted for half a second, anger making room for curiosity, and I felt the same pull I had in the hallway earlier. Up close, she didn’t look rattled by being caught. She looked annoyed that I had interrupted something she had been enjoying.

Footsteps sounded somewhere beyond the stairwell. I caught Echo by the arm and pulled her toward the nearest classroom before whoever was coming could turn the corner. She fought me for the first two steps, then followed when she realized where I was taking her. The room was empty, lights off except for what came through the narrow windows in the door. I pushed it shut behind us and locked it.

Echo immediately reached for the handle and I put my hand over hers and stopped her. She looked at my hand, then up at me. “Move.”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You always this annoying?”

I leaned closer, still holding her hand against the door. “You always pull knives on protected men between classes?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead she looked down at the letter opener I had taken from her, then back at me, and the corner of her mouth lifted.

The room was small enough that Echo only had to take two steps before her back met the door. She was still furious about Nichlas, and I could see it in the way her chest rose under her shirt and the way she kept glancing toward the hall as though she might decide I was only a temporary inconvenience. I still had her letter opener in my hand. She looked at it, then at me, and whatever she saw on my face made some of the anger shift into something more curious.

“My friends told me you were dangerous,” she said, and there was something deliberate about the way she gave me the words. She wanted to see what I would do with them.

I set the letter opener down on the nearest desk without taking my eyes off her. “Your friends talk about me?”

“They talk about all three of you.” Her fingers moved to the front of my shirt, not quite touching at first. “Mostly warnings.”

She was still pushing, testing me. Echo had spent the last hour threatening a man she hated, pulling a letter opener on him, and now she was standing in a locked room with someone she had been told not to trust. Instead of backing off, she was leaning closer.

I stepped into her space until there was barely room left between us. “And you decided to ignore them.”

“I decided I’d rather figure you out myself.”

Her hand finally closed in my shirt. The movement was small, but it dragged my attention down to her mouth and back again. I had been thinking about her since the hallway. Watching her with Nichlas had made it worse. She had looked happy when he was frightened. Hurt when he mentioned her family. Furious when he tried to turn what he had done into something noble. None of it had felt rehearsed. Every reaction had been hers, even the ugly ones.

I wanted more of them.