Sherrilyn Kenyon - Infamous

Just don’t be more mortent demons out to attack me while I’m alone. Caleb would kill him for being so stupid.

“Nick!” A car moved and then he saw Jill running toward him, waving.

What was it about Jill that made him so uncomfortable? And it wasn’t the same kind of nervousness he had with Kody. He was twitchy with Kody because when she was around all he could think about was how good her lips tasted. And his body would go white-hot with horomonal overload until he could barely think of anything else.

He wasn’t attracted to Jill at all. So what about her was fueling his aversion?

Give her a chance, Nick. She’d been nervous on her first day … Just like you’d been.

True. Not to mention, he’d had more than his share of off days since then. He shouldn’t hold one of hers against her.

“Hey, Jill,” he said as she stopped in front of him.

She grinned broadly. “I didn’t know you lived out this way.”

“I don’t. I came by to see Brynna.”

Her face blanched. “The girl who made all those awful photos with animals?”

“No,” he snapped. “The girl someone lied about. Those pictures were doctored.”

She actually got huffy with him. “That’s not what I heard about her.”

Keep talking, babe, and you’re really going to alienate me . And seriously tick him off. “Yeah, well, you’re hearing it now. I was there and can tell you that they were forged. It was obvious. Brynna has never done anything like that, and wouldn’t.”

She smiled. “If you say so. I don’t know her well enough to comment.”

“Then you don’t know her well enough to carry a rumor that is completely untrue.”

Jill went silent for a few seconds. “That’s a really good point. I never thought of it that way.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like gossip.” He’d had too much of it spread about him and his mom. “As my mother always says, great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. And life’s too short to worry about what other people do or don’t do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.”

“Wow, that’s deep. Are you, like, one of the scholarship kids?”

He hated that question. In theory, scoring high enough to get a scholarship should be a mark of honor. But somehow it’d been twisted around by his classmates to mean that anyone who had a scholarship couldn’t afford to go to school at St. Richards and had no business there because they weren’t worthy.

“Yeah, I’m one of the scholarship kids.”

“That’s so cool. Me and my brother got in last year, but we weren’t able to get one of the scholarships. We tried twice, though.”

Now he felt awful. “I’m sorry, Jill.”

Her smile returned. “It’s okay. The church was real good to us. They were taking up a collection to help my parents with tuition when this really nice old couple volunteered to sponsor us. They’re paying for everything … right down to the pens and book bags. They even took us shopping to get new school clothes.”

“That’s decent of them. They must be really great people.” His mom would never have allowed someone else to pay for Nick’s school, never mind his clothes. She was fierce in her beliefs that you take nothing from no one. What you had, you earned, or you did without until you could afford it.

No one owes you a living, Nick, and they definitely don’t owe you respect. Just because they have excess doesn’t mean we’re entitled to it. Life isn’t about what you can take from someone. It’s about what you can earn.

As Kyrian would say, he who dies with the most toys wins and the spoils always go to the victor. So win big.

But then his mom was also the first one to donate to charity any time the nuns called for toys or food or such for the underprivileged. He’d never quite understood that, especially since most of those “underprivileged” people were a lot better off than they were. However, he had too deep a sense of self-preservation to ask her about the dichotomy in her rationale. She could get real testy if she thought someone was calling her a hypocrite.

“They are the best,” Jill continued. “Mr. Gautier is a banker and Mrs. Gautier’s a lawyer with an office downtown. You don’t know them, do you? I was wondering since you had the same last name and all.”

“I don’t. But then Gautier and its variants are fairly common in Louisiana and southern Mississippi. There are four other kids at St. Richards with the same last name. I guess if you go far enough back, we’re all related, but I don’t have any living relatives that I know of.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, my parents are both only children.” Something he’d learned from Ambrose after he’d confessed that he wasn’t really Nick’s uncle. Ambrose didn’t want anyone else stepping forward and claiming to be a long-lost relative of Adarian’s. The last thing he wanted was for Nick to put his trust into the wrong person.

“That’s so sad. I’ve got almost two dozen cousins and a little sister in addition to my brother Joey. What about your grandparents? Surely they weren’t only children, too.”

“I don’t know anything about my grandparents. My dad’s parents died a long time before I was born and my mother never talks about hers.”

“I’m sorry, Nick.”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Nothing to be sorry about. It just is. You can’t miss what you don’t know.”

She smiled again. “I like talking to you. You’re really smart and you have a great way of looking at things. It’s unique and makes me think.”

Every warning bell he possessed rang out. Flattery and insults both brought out the same reaction in him— What do you want? In his experience the people who flattered him to his face were the first ones who stabbed him whenever he turned his back. He hated it. Maybe he was judging her wrongly, but he’d been burned enough to be very wary of people’s motives.

He heard the sound of the arms about to lower over the street. “My streetcar’s coming. I need to get back to the Quarter.”

“Oh, okay. It was good talking to you. I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Later.” Nick ran to the platform, grateful to have an excuse to get away from Jill. He had no idea why she bothered him so, but …

He didn’t trust her and he didn’t believe in wasting time around people he didn’t trust. While they might be all right, it wasn’t worth the gamble. He’d rather be doing his homework, which said it all.

It didn’t take that long to get back to Sanctuary. His mom was busy with customers so he headed straight to his corner booth and resumed pulling his books out.

A few minutes later, he was tugging at his hair as he tried to understand his chemistry assignment when something white appeared next to him. Arching a brow, he looked over to see a double fudge sundae.

His jaw dropped as he looked past the three cherries to see his mom smiling at him. “Should I be scared? I get a burger and a sundae, and it’s not my birthday? Who are you, strange woman, and what have you done with my mother?”

Laughing, she rolled her eyes—something that would have gotten him grounded for a week. “Mr. Addams called me and told me what you did for Brynna. I don’t have any hero cookies, so you get a hero sundae instead.” She added whipped cream to the top, then set the bottle down next to him. “I love you, Nick.”

“Ditto.” He grabbed the spoon and dug in before she changed her mind or he did something else that got him into trouble and made her take it back.

With a shake of her head, his mom started away, then stopped to frown.