Hang out with a cute psychic who has a weird sense of humor and dark predictions
Send everyone on a wild goose chase for no good reason
Re-enact the scene that got you into trouble at the last wedding you’ve been to
Make out in front of people who already have the wrong idea about you
Confess your darkest secret to an uninvited audience
Refuse to follow the rules—and that’s the first rule of all
Chapter Fifteen
Shane
For a while I have high hopes we’ll get lost and never find our way to the wedding. Cassie seems distracted—whether from my confession or something else, no fucking clue. Maybe she’s reconsidering taking me with. If she had her doubts before, she has to be sure it’s a mistake now, after she found me sitting naked on the bathroom floor, blabbering and lost inside my own head.
Something that’s been happening more and more often.
Figures this would happen when the girl I’ve wanted for so long was right there to see it happen, over and over again.
Despite the nonchalant front I’ve been putting on for her, I’m scared shitless of what it means. Plus, I can’t decide if losing my mind is worse than having my paranoia confirmed: that someone is after me, someone who knows my triggers and is playing on them.
Christoph and Marco.
Fuck.
Lost in thought, I’m startled when the car slows down and Cassie maneuvers it into a space at the curbside.
“We’re one minute late,” she says, pulling the key out of the ignition and checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror. “If we’re lucky, we’ll make it.”
Luck, as my half-brother and cousin Seth has always said, isn’t part of the equation for us. He always thought he brought bad luck to me—got me into prison, then on the streets.
But it’s me. Lost my mother. Lost myself to drugs. When Seth tried to help me, told his mother not to sell me drugs, her boyfriend took us down, put us behind bars.
Seth. I need to talk to him tonight about the flashbacks. Can’t put it off any longer. Last thing on my mind is the fucking wedding, but I get out of the car, manage not to slam the door closed and follow Cassie through the tall iron gate that’s flung wide open and into the house.
All doors open. Anyone can walk in.
Working to hide how uneasy that makes me, telling myself it ain’t any different from Damage Control or a coffee shop where everyone comes and goes as they please, I school my face into what I hope is a bored expression, but most probably comes off as a dark scowl.
If my face is supposed to be the mirror of my soul, then it’s goddamn fitting, I guess.
Murmurs waft down the hall we’re crossing, a lofty place with high ceilings and bunches of flowers in vases placed strategically on low tables on either side.
Cassie grabs my hand and tugs on it to make me walk faster, muttering something about her last chance not to piss off everyone again. Nobody manhandles me without having their face rearranged by my fists—except for her. Her thin fingers around mine feel nice, and I find myself relaxing, my scowl slipping—
Until we step into a long room packed to bursting with people, and the tension returns. Normally I deal okay with packed rooms. I’ve come a long way since my release from prison, even more since I started training at Damage Control and finding the stability Zane and his friends offered.
If only I wasn’t slipping. Going backward instead of forward.
Fix it, I tell myself, keeping my eyes ahead as Cassie drags me between people, opening a path for me to follow. Fix it like you told Cassie you would.
Fight the past. It can’t fucking claim you, not anymore.
A raised dais dominates the center of the room and the soon-to-be-wed couple is standing there. Zane’s blue Mohawk stands out as we approach, as does his dark outfit—black with silver metal over his shoulders—and Dakota is dressed in a long blue dress with long, fingerless gloves and huge, white wings strapped to her back.
The demon and his angel.