Broken Compass

“Anyway,” she twirls a copper lock around her forefinger, “I saw him, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t old. Or ugly.”

“He stinks,” I insist, just to see her reaction.

He stinks of lies. Or at least of half-truths.

She blushes. “I don’t believe you.”

Yeah, I don’t like her reaction at all. Why is she so interested in him?

“What’s his name?” She gets up and goes back to the window. The light makes her curls glow, and I blink, not sure that I’m not seeing auras again.

But no, it’s just the light. “Kash. Kash Graham.”

She nods, as if that explains everything—or anything at all, dammit—and sighs. “I need to go to work. Maybe I’ll meet him some other day.”

Or never, if I have any say in it, though why I’m so pissed, no fucking clue. “Yeah, sure.”

“Aren’t you going running today?” she asks, picking up her backpack from the floor where I dropped it when I first came in earlier. “With West? Or is it Assassin’s Creed day?”

“You know we’d invite you to play with us if it was. No, today is running day.” I grab my phone, expecting to find a text from Weston asking me what the fuck happened, but there’s nothing. “This is weird.”

“What is?” She lingers at my bedroom door, all sexy and cute, but my mind’s elsewhere now. “Everything okay?”

“Dunno. Was West acting normal today at school?”

“He was distracted.” She frowns. “Didn’t do his homework, he said.”

Shit. Weston likes rules. He’s like clockwork, showing up on time, doing his homework, never deviating from his schedule.

Unless something’s wrong.

It has happened before, and the thought has my spine stiffening. I think of the spare key he has given me to his apartment, just like I gave him mine, and wonder if I’ll have to use it. He could be sick and lying there all alone.

Wouldn’t be the first time. Or it could be his sister again.

So many bad possibilities.

“I need to go,” she says, her mouth tight. “Is West okay?”

“Yeah.” God, I hope so. “Yeah, he is.”

Because we all have our secrets, and I’m keeping West’s as if it were mine.

Chapter Three

West

“What happened?” Grandpa asks me for the hundredth time, standing at Della’s bedroom door, his black walking stick pointed at me like the devil’s own finger. “What’s the matter with her?”

“Nothing, Grandpa. Go watch some TV.”

“Della. What’s the matter with her?”

“She’s just resting. Now go.” Go before I lose my temper and explode into a million fucking pieces.

“Weston—”

“Just go.”