Page 7 of Hateful
Or, at the very least, they did in the past.
An unsettled feeling starts to nag at the back of my mind. Did something happen over break?
Or maybe, just maybe, Jasperdoesfeel shame after all. Now that’s a novel idea.
Jasper doesn’t look at me. I study his profile while I warm up, through the reflection in the window of course. It wouldn’t do to stare. his sharp, angular jaw is clenched, and his blue eyes are deliberately facing away from me. His shoulders are rigid. What’sheacting so weird and stiff for?
Aren’t I the one who should be nervous?
He’s the one who tried to assault me, after all.
He doesn’t talk to me at all throughout the drive, which I’m more than fine with. I find myself leaning further and further away, practically melting into the side of the door by the time we reach the top of the mountain. I fiddle nervously with the zipper of my coat, expecting him to say something any second now.
He never does.
The car pulls up to Bleakwood and Jasper scrambles out of the car before I can even grab my backpack. I struggle with my suitcase as the driver gets Jasper’s bags out of the trunk, but he’s already halfway across the courtyard by the time I shut the car door.
“Thanks for the lift,” I say to the driver, who just nods curtly.
And just like that, my first interaction with The Brotherhood is over as quickly—and painlessly—as it began. Somehow it does nothing to make that unsettled feeling go away.
If anything, it only grows.
Grumbling, I tug my suitcase up the walk toward the school. People mill about the courtyard between me and where Jasper’s made a beeline for the front doors. I recognize a few other students, but no one I really need to stop to talk to.
There aren’t many who I can call friends. There are many more I can call enemies.
Rafael, my roommate and quite possibly the only person I’ve really been looking forward to seeing, is nowhere around. I wonder if he’s here already. I should have thought to ask.
I trudge up the front steps, already frozen through again, and slip between the double doors of the entrance. Jasper’s gone. That should be a blessing. But I can’t help but feel disappointed as I lug my things up the stairs and toward the dormitory wing.
I was looking forward to going back to normal.
But just like the last time I came back from break, it seems I’m in for anything but.
The dynamic has shifted again, and this time, I have no idea where I stand.
Fuck.
Chapter Four
My dorm isempty when I arrive, but Rafael has definitely been here. I unzip my puffy coat and hang it up before starting the process of unpacking.
I’m in the middle of tucking shirts into my dresser drawers when the door bursts open and Rafael darts inside, kicking it shut behind him. He grins at my startled posture from his newly tanned face.
“Alex!” he says happily, coming forward to hug me. “I’ve missed you!”
“You have?” I ask, freezing at the touch.
He laughs and lets me go, but my middle is a little sore. “Ofcourse,I have.”
I open a different drawer and start putting my underwear into it. They were theonething I insisted on buying new. Just the idea of borrowing some from my brothers … it makes me want to gag even now.
“You seem happy,” I say, as Rafael breaks out in a cheery whistle.
Unusually happy.Rafael has a habit of finding the worst in well, everything.
“Ah,” he says with a contented sigh, “Iam. We went to Fiji over Christmas. I spent a long time swimming and sunbathing, and I had a whirlwind romance with a local boy who worked at the resort.” He sighs and drapes himself dramatically over his bed. “I feel infinitely better now that my balls are empty.”
