Sins of Sisterhood

22. Secrets of the Irresponsible

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~ 22 ~

Rule #22: If he's cocky, steal his diamonds

"I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
Living in the past, it's a new generation
A girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do"

Joan Jett & the Blackheart - 'Bad Reputation'

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I finally make it to Cade's tree and flop down next to him, deliberately bumping his knee to make him lose his place in his book - because of course it's "Advanced Algorithms in Distributed Systems" because only Cade would read that shit for fun.

"She lives!" he says lowering his book, without looking at me. "I was starting to think you'd finally gotten arrested."

I slam my flask onto his precious textbook. "Don't be dramatic. It's been three days, not three years."

He finally looks up, and his eyes widen, doing this little dance over my face before settling on my glasses.

"If you keep looking at me like that, we're going to end up in bed," I drawl, nudging him jokingly.

Something passes across his face - that same unreadable expression he'd worn when Dante requested some privacy - before he schools his features.

"Hey, wait," he says, like he's just noticed. "Is that my lucky hoodie?"

Oh shit. Right.

"Yeah, about that..." I dig in my bag and pull out his USB drive. "Try not to leave your entire academic career at my place next time, genius."

"The glasses look good," he says, catching the drive without looking because of course he does. "Finally decided to join the seeing world?"

"Was at my niece's birthday party," I shrug. "Figured it was time to actually see whose birthday cake I was eating."

That's a lie, of course.

Want the truth?

I got these because trying to watch your back when everything beyond is a blur is a fantastic way to end up dead. And given that I've promised a certain mysterious someone their necklace back - a necklace that I've torn apart two locations looking for - well, let's just say clear vision suddenly became a priority.

But Cade doesn't need to know all that.

"You look like a hot librarian," he declares. "In a good way. Like you could either recommend a book on quantum physics or step on someone's throat."

"That might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

He grins. "So what new chaos have you been creating? Besides finally addressing your obvious vision problems?"

"Just the usual. Renee's birthday, got drunk with Raven and Jade..." I trail off, picking at a loose thread on my jeans.

"And?"

I look up. "And what?"

"Please. You've got that look you get when you've done something monumentally stupid. Spill."

I sigh, checking around us before dropping my voice. "So... I might have had another run-in with Mr. Diamond. And now he's coming to collect."

"Coming to collect what? And who the hell is Mr. Diamond?"