Page 140 of Defend Me
“Nobody specific,” I said quickly. “I was just curious, but I don’t think I’ll even consider an actual relationship until after I graduate. Can’t let them get attached to this glorious hair anyway, you know?”
“Your hair?”
“Anyway, I need to go. I have a paper to do. Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too.”
My heart was still racing as I headed back to the house. I shouldn’t have brought up a relationship. He might suspect something now. When they came to visit, he could be curious and try to get information, then everything would be ruined.
These two worlds I was caught between couldn’t collide. They were mutually exclusive like perfection and failure.
Anything outside of the future I’d been pursuing for eighteen years would shove me off course from the former. Like my tattoos, if nobody saw them, they didn’t exist. And if my mom found out, she’d probably carve those from my skin.
I could keep this. I had to keep this.
Chapter 39
Tilian
Staring up at the ceiling, I watched smoke disperse across the surface. It slowly billowed outward, thinning as it went. Since there was no texture, it seemed to glide in a way that was a bit unnerving. My mind conjured an image of a demon snake slithering above me while I slept.
“I think I smoked too much,” Dean stated.
I laughed from the foot of the bed. We were both lying down in Brooks’ guest room, facing opposite ways, and I couldn’t even guess how long we’d been here. Long enough to split a joint and work halfway through another.
I heard him take another hit. “Fuck,” he said around the smoke in his lungs. “I wasn’t supposed to hit that again.”
“Let it be,” I said casually.
“You’re always so fucking chill,” he noted. “I didn’t even know you were stoned when I first met you.”
“Always assume I’m stoned. I’m a high functioning smoker, always in a perpetual state of highness.”
“Highness,” he mumbled. “Highness. Is that a word? It doesn’t sound like it anymore.”
“Dude, you’re toasted.”
“Take this before I die.”
“You won’t die but go off.”
“Where’s Brooks?” he wondered.
“He was hanging out with Kai last time I talked to him.”
“Is he tired of you?”
“He’s allowed to have other people in his life.”
“And he just lets you chill in his place?”
“If I go too far, he’ll hunt me down anyway.”
“Clingy as hell,” he laughed.
“I’m just waiting for him to get bored of me.”
He sat up with a frown. “I don’t know him too well, but Brooks isn’t gonna stay where he doesn’t want to be. He’d either dip or make sure to bring things up to his standard. Relax. He’s obsessed with you too.”
