Kami Garcia - Dangerous Dream

“See ya,” John said, grabbing the onion rings. Liv and Lena followed him out the door. They knew better than to say a word.

All four of them ran for it.

Link might as well have lobbed a grenade at Ridley, instead of three little words. He didn’t know what all the fuss was about. But she stood there staring at him like he’d whipped off his pants in the middle of the Dar-ee Keen.

You could drive a monster truck through her mouth , Link thought. That’s how far it’s hanging open.

“Don’t be stupid,” Rid finally said, without looking at him.

Link shoved his hand through his spiky hair. “So, yeah. That’s not what you’re supposed to say when a guy tells you he loves you.” He wiped pink lipstick off his face.

Rid rolled her eyes. “What am I supposed to say? I love you, too? Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

“No. But I get the feelin’ you’re about to spell it out for me.” Link looked grim. In the distance, Charlotte, the Dar-ee Keen’s only full-time waitress, held up a pitcher of refill soda. He shook his head.

Not now. Not when all hell is about to break loose.

“Do you know how many guys have said those words to me? And do you know how many times I’ve said them back?” Ridley was losing it.

“I’m going to go with ‘all of them’ and ‘zero,’ based on this whole conversation.” Link exhaled. Keep it calm. Talk her down. You know how to do this, bro.

“Ding, ding, ding.” She was furious, and anger brought out her nasty side.

“You don’t have to be nasty about it. I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I get it. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.” Link flicked a piece of melting ice across the table.

“Really?”

He looked up. “You don’t love me. You don’t love anybody. You’re a Siren. I’ve heard it all before.”

“Then, why—”

“The thing is, Rid, that’s not what it feels like when you’re with me.” He had to be honest. He had nothing left to lose.

“Please,” she snapped.

Link kept going. “I gotta be honest with you. I kinda feel like you—”

“Don’t say it.” She held up her finger. A threat.

“You love me.” He smiled because he knew it was true, whether or not Rid would ever admit she felt that way. He didn’t know why that didn’t seem to cut it anymore.

“I said not to say it.” Ridley was backing her way out of the booth.

“You don’t have to be so tough all the time. Not around me, Rid.” He got up after her.

Her hands were against the glass door of the restaurant. “I am tough. It’s everything else that I’m faking.”

“See that? You’re a liar. A big fat liar.” He leaned against the wall next to her.

“I’m none of those things. Not big. Not fat. Not a liar.” She was like a cornered polecat, and he’d never seen her so panicked.

“Yeah? Then what are you?” He raised an eyebrow, waiting. He could wait all night.

“Out of here. That’s what I am.”

True to her word, she wasn’t lying. Before Link could say anything, Ridley was gone.

There were lots of ways to forget about a guy. Especially a mostly Mortal guy. Especially one who was only part Incubus, and not even the good part. Especially a dumb guy who kept trying to force you to be something you’re not. Something you couldn’t possibly live up to…

Ridley tried to forget every way she knew how.

She bounced her way through Europe with a broken heart, country hopping the way some guys go barhopping.

She met a handsome Italian football player on a train to Otranto and stayed in a castle for the next two weeks. The Florence of the South , Marco had said.

No more dinners with your mother , Ridley had said. Not even in a castle.

She had cruised down the Dalmatian coast with Bela, a handsome sailor in an even more handsome yacht, from Split to Brac to Hvar to the walled city of Dubrovnik. The orange-red tiles against the blue-blue sky had seemed romantic at first. Then they just reminded her of Link with his Lake Moultrie sunburn.

In Paris, she had grown tired of champagne and oysters, and of Etienne, who had come with them. There were only so many baguettes you could break at Ernest Hemingway’s former table or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s afternoon bar. And the café Les Deux Magots probably meant something about two maggots, so what was that about, anyway?

Berlin was arty; Ridley was not. Moscow liked salty; Ridley liked sweet.

By the time she finally felt like she had left Gatlin behind, it wasn’t just Gatlin that was over.

The whole summer was behind her.

Ridley didn’t know why she’d come back here—to New York or to Suffer. The Dark Caster club didn’t have enough alcohol or enough sugar to keep her mind off all the things she had spent the summer trying to forget.

The one thing—or the one person.

Nothing had helped. Ridley was beginning to think that nothing would, which scared her more than she was willing to admit to anyone, including herself.

The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”—the personal sound track that Rid had adopted after the deliciously disastrous winter formal at Jackson High—blasted from her clutch.

Ah! She never gives up.

It was her phone. Her perfect half-Light, half-Dark cousin, Lena, had spent the last two months trying to convince Ridley to put a cork in her champagne bottle and come back to Gatlin.

Ridley was tired of being lectured. “I texted you a hundred times and told you I’m not coming back there.”

“Wow. I was expecting, ‘Hi, Lena. It’s nice to hear from you,’ ” her cousin said. “ ‘I’m sorry I ignored your texts and never returned your calls.’ ”

“You don’t have to be so dramatic,” Ridley said. “I’ve been busy. And I know he put you up to this. But I’m not coming back there.”

I can’t , Rid thought.

“Link didn’t put me up to anything. He’s online all the time looking for an apartment in New York. I called because it’s the end of the summer. Ethan and I are leaving for college next week, and Liv and John are heading to London. I thought you might want to see us before we go.”

“What do you mean, he’s looking for an apartment?” Ridley knew what it meant. He was going without her. As if he’d survive a week here by himself.

Lena sighed. “Leave it alone, Rid. You broke Link’s heart, and he was miserable all summer. I think he’s finally accepted that things would never have worked out between you two. Let it go.”

Ridley felt like someone had kicked her in the stomach. “How do you know he’s accepted it? What did he say?”

“Rid, please—”

“What did he say?” Ridley repeated, her voice growing louder.

“Just that some things aren’t meant to be.”

The words hit Ridley harder than she ever would’ve thought possible. “I gotta go, Cuz.”

“Rid—”

Ridley hung up before Lena had a chance to say anything else. There was no way she was going back to that wretched town. She had stayed there too long. That was the problem.

There was always something—John Breed taking off with her cousin back when he was still one of the bad guys. Ethan jumping off a water tower to save the world, then being trapped in the Otherworld. Ridley coming home to take on Abraham Ravenwood and save Ethan. Then Lena had begged her to stay for graduation. “It won’t be the same if you aren’t there,” she’d said.

Whatever.

Ridley had pretended that she didn’t want to go, but secretly she’d wanted to see her cousin graduate. At least one of them had made it through the mind-numbing Mortal high school experience without being burned at the stake. Ridley had always known it would be Lena. Rid wasn’t cut out for all that insecurity and angst and BFF crap. Best friends forever? As far as she was concerned, it was more like bitches, frenemies, and freaks.