JAG
Secrets are hard to keep—especially if your girlfriend can read minds.
“She shouldn’t be a secret,” Vi said, tossing me a pointed look over her shoulder as she straightened the blanket on her bed.
“She is not a secret,” I argued, she being my ex-girlfriend, Indiarina Blightingdale.
“You did not mention her,” Vi said, turning to face me. “Until I asked you about her—and I only asked you about her because she’s all you think about!” By the end of her sentence, she had started to yell.
I suppressed the desire to roll my eyes. “I’ve had more girlfriends than you, Vi. Do I need to detail my relationship with each one of them?”
She narrowed her eyes as if she knew I’d only had one girlfriend—Indy—before her. “Only the ones you still have feelings for.” Her voice echoed off the low-hanging rocks of her bedroom and down the hall. No way everyone in the hideout couldn’t hear this conversation.
“I do not have feelings for Indy.” I deliberately kept my voice low.
Vi curled her fingers into tight fists. “She’s all you think about.” She cocked her head to the side, as if reading my thoughts right now. I wondered if she’d already discovered that I used to have a schoolboy crush on her sister.
“You don’t have to listen if you don’t like what you hear,” I shot back. “And I’m only thinking about her because I’m worried about where she is. It’s been two weeks, Vi.” I swallowed back the fear that accompanied the thought of Indy being dead somewhere. “Only she knows what’s happened in the Resistance while I’ve been…gone.”
Her fists unclenched and she closed the space between us with three steps. “Where were you? You know, while you were ‘gone’.”
I thought about Indy. I remembered the way our eyes would meet across a crowded room. I thought about how she knew exactly what I needed, and when.
Vi shoved me in the chest. “Stop thinking about her.”
“Stop asking me about where I’ve been.” I stepped close to her again, leaning against the archway as if it would lend me strength to endure this argument.
“You’re only worried about her because you still have feelings for her.”
“Not true,” I growled, our faces only inches apart. “I’m worried about Thane too, and I can’t stand him.”
“Thanks a lot.” She pushed past me, striding toward the makeshift tech lab where my brother, Pace, was standing in the doorway watching us. “So glad to know you hate my father.”
“You hate him too!” I yelled after her, refusing to give her even an inch. She disappeared into the tech lab, and the fight left my body. I retreated to the hole in the wall I called a bedroom, but I couldn’t figure out how to stop thinking about Indy.
