How to Be Cliche (A Novel)

(23) Grounded for the Rest of My Peppery Life

Hybrid.

                  HYBRID?! Honey... I could give you one-hundred reasons why should be turned by that gorgeous hunk of blindness.

                  'Hybrid,' I mouthed, staring at the spot where Hunter once stood. So he wanted to turn me into a hybrid. Had that been his plan all along, or was this his new purpose in life? To put a leash around Paprika's neck and keep her forcefully at his side and naked in his bed?

                  Not that the second part wouldn't be completely willingly...but still.

                  Half-leech, half-dog. Would I be a hybrid for an eternity? Be his for an eternity? His mate? Was I his...? Oh, god. Oh, goody-goody-god-god, chiddy-chiddy-bang-bang. This took Bella Swan four books to get asked and here I was. FOUR. And there I was after a few weeks in Orange Gate County, standing in the middle of my room, stunned that Hunter Trinidad, the blind sex god that I had once thought hated my guts, had offered me immortality. And in return, he would help me kill Smiley. For good.

                  "I promise you the only bitch that will be smiling will be me when Smiley is dead."

                  This had to be a trick.

                  But what if it wasn't? What if Hunter Trinidad wanted me at his side forever and had some sort of creepy attachment to me like a smarty that's been licked on one side and stuck on some nerdy kids t-shirt while he wasn't looking by a group of annoying guys that think they're all hot and amazing but secretly all four of them have a spare pair of underwear in their backpack encase they pee themselves because of their "bed wetting" issue?!

              "Pepper! Pepper, come down here!" Mom shouted from downstairs.

                  I shook myself from my thoughts. "Coming!"

                  I turned all of my lights on in my room and stared at myself in the mirror. There was Pepper Ballard standing back. Yes, she had a little bit less frizz than before. Yes, she had a little bit more makeup on. And yes, she had on her new kickass ninja outfit. But it was still me staring back at me in the mirror. Me: Pepper Ballard the average human being with a lot of sass and a lot of punch. Honestly, I wasn't anything special. Maybe being a hybrid would change that. Maybe...

                  I stopped, moving my attention to my abandoned phone on my bed. What would Sin Trinidad have thought about Hunter's proposal?  Surely, he would have been furious. Absolutely, positively furious. He already had an unbelievable amount of jealousy for Hunter and I, and Hunter and I didn't even have anything to be jealous about. Right?

                  Most importantly, wouldn't Sin have helped me find Smiley without any gigantic changes to my life?

                  As I rubbed my eyes, willing the monstrous headache within my skull to cease, when I realized my bedroom door was now open.

                  "Miss Ballard?"    

                  I leaped twenty feet in the air, slipping on a pink scarf that Hunter had thrown to the floor and landing hard on my butt. "Bern-turd!" I shouted, "you scared the freaking Cheerios out of me! I didn't even hear you come in!"

                  Bernard adjusted his monocle, his stoic expression never wavering. "Yes, well I knocked many times and you were talking fairly loud to yourself. Your mother and father want to speak with you downstairs."