Deity

I made a face. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then go. This room is already occupied.”

Luke sighed. “You’re being ridiculous.”

I thought that was fu

Missing him wasn’t getting any easier, I realized suddenly.

“It sucks not having any friends, doesn’t it?” Luke asked after a few moments.

I frowned. “You know, it’s a good thing you can’t become a therapist, because you really suck at the whole ‘making people feel better about themselves’ thing.”

“But you do have friends,” he continued as if I hadn’t said a damn thing. “You just seem to have forgotten us.”

“Like who?”

“Like me.” Luke stretched out beside me. “And there’s Deacon. And Olivia.”

I snorted. “Olivia hates my guts.”

“She does not.”

“Bullshit.” I dropped my arm, facing him in the darkness. “She blames me for Caleb’s death. You heard her the day at his funeral and in the hallway yesterday.”

“She’s hurt, Alex.”

“I’m hurt, too!” I sat up, crossing my legs.

The mats shook as Luke rolled onto his side. “She loved Caleb. As impractical as it is for any of us to love someone, she loved him.”

“And I loved him. He was mybest friend, Luke. She blames me for my best friend’s death.”

“She doesn’t blame you anymore.”

I smoothed back the tiny hairs that had escaped my ponytail. “When did that happen? In the last twenty-four hours?”

Undaunted, Luke sat up and somehow found my hand in the darkness. “The day she came up to you in the hallway, she wanted to apologize to you.”

“That’s fu

“I don’t know what she was thinking. She wanted to apologize, but you wouldn’t stop to talk to her,” Luke explained softly. “She lost it. She was a bitch about it. Olivia knows that. Then you owning her ass in front of everyone didn’t help, either.”

The old Alex would have snickered at that, but it didn’t make me feel good.

“You need to talk to her, Alex. You both need each other right now.”

I pulled my hand free and came to my feet swiftly. The room suddenly felt stifling and unbearable. “I don’t need her or anyone.”

Luke was standing beside me in an instant. “And that was probably the most childish thing you’ve ever said.”

I narrowed my eyes in his general direction. “And I have something even more childish to say to you. I’m like two seconds from hitting you.”

“That’s not very nice,” Luke teased, stepping around me. “You need friends, Alex. As hot as Seth is, he can’t be your only friend. You need girl time. You need someone you can cry to, someone who isn’t trying to get in your pants. You need someone who wants to be around you not because of what you are, but who you are.”

My jaw hit the mat. “Wow.”

Luke must have sensed my stu

I opened my mouth to tell Luke that I wasn’t the one being the bitch, that it was all of them who’d been treating me like a three-headed dog since I’d returned—and even before then—but nothing came out. Besides spending time with Seth, I had isolated myself from everyone.

And sometimes I was a terrible person. I had reasons—good reasons, but they were just excuses. Weight settled over my chest.

In the silence and darkness surrounding us, Luke found me and wrapped his arms around my stiff shoulders. “Well, maybe we do have to tolerate it a little bit. You are an Apollyon after all.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “And even though you’ve been a giant bitch, we still love you and we’re worried.”

A lump formed in my throat. I fought it, really I did, but I felt tears stinging my eyes as my muscles started to relax. My head somehow found his shoulder and he patted my back soothingly. For a moment, I could believe that Luke was Caleb and in my head, I pretended that I told him everything that had happened. My make-believe Caleb smiled at me, held me closer, and ordered me to pull my head out of my ass. That no matter what had happened and everything I learned, the world hadn’t ended and wasn’t going to.

And for the time being, that seemed to be enough.

Aiden was waiting for me when I finally pulled myself out of the sensory room. He didn’t say anything as we headed outside. Both of us had said and probably thought too much as it was. There wasn’t any awkwardness between us, but there was this vast sense of… uncertainty. Although, it could just’ve been I was projecting my own feelings onto him.

We made our way up the walkway, heading toward the dorms. The wind kicked up sand and there was a cold, damp feeling in the air as we neared the garden.

Two pure boys were staring at the marble statue of Apollo reaching for Daphne as she changed into a tree. One elbowed the other. “Hey, look. Apollo is getting wood.”

His friend laughed. I rolled my eyes.

“Alex.” There was something about Aiden’s voice, a roughness that told me that whatever he was about to say was going to be powerful. His gaze moved to my face, then behind me. “What the hell?”

Not what I was expecting.

Aiden brushed past me, solely focused on something other than me. Dammit. I whirled around. “You don’t— oh.”

Now I saw what had cut Aiden off.

Two half guys carried a barely conscious Jackson between them—a hardly recognizable Jackson. He looked like he’d woken up on the wrong side of an ass kicking. Every visible inch of his skin was bruised or bloodied—eyes swelled shut, lips split wide open—and the deep, angry mark smeared across his left cheek suspiciously resembled a boot print.

“What happened to him?” Aiden demanded, taking the place of one of the halfs and practically supporting all of the boy’s weight.

The half shook his head. “I don’t know. We found him like this in the courtyard.”

“I… I fell,” Jackson said, blood and spit trickling from his mouth. I think he was missing some teeth.

A dubious expression crossed Aiden’s face. “Alex, please go straight to your dorm.”

Nodding mutely, I stepped out of the way. I was still pissed at Jackson. He had tried to stomp my head in, but what had been done to him was horrific and calculating. Compared to the fist Aiden had planted in his face when Jackson had…

My wide eyes met Aiden’s for a second before he carried Jackson off toward the med building. My conversation with Seth came back to me.

“So, who did you spar with in class?”he’d asked.

“I always get paired with Jackson.”

My gods, Seth had done this.

It appeared that Seth was avoiding me for the most part, probably because of the whole ham sandwich incident. Our practices were either cancelled or consisted of working on my mental shields. For a whole week, whenever I saw him, I asked him about Jackson. With a look of complete i