To Be Or Not To Be » Stefan Salvatore

Chapter 16 - Some Secrets Are Stronger Than Family

Time was a fickle thing. It could slip through your fingers in the blink of an eye, or stretch endlessly, each second dragging like a weight against your chest. Sometimes, you begged for it to slow down. Other times, you wished it would disappear altogether.

For Skye, it did both at once.

Too fast, too slow.

A dizzying paradox that left her thoughts tangled and her mind adrift.

She supposed that was life. Or at least, the version she was forced to live.

The day after the party—the night that had blurred into something more like a fever dream than a celebration—Skye was drained. Exhaustion clung to her bones, heavy and suffocating.

The werewolf venom had finally burned out of her system, leaving her raw and hollow. Only then had she dared to leave her room, only to find that Rebekah had suffered through the same twisted nightmare.

They didn't talk about what they had seen.

They didn't have to.

The haunted look in Rebekah's eyes was enough. Skye knew hers must have looked the same.

At least now they knew where it had come from—the beer. Every last drop of that tainted, bitter liquid had been disposed of, wiped from existence like it had never been there in the first place.

How the venom had been mixed in was an easy enough puzzle to piece together. There was a hunter in town. The real mystery was how he had managed to get his hands on it in the first place.

Not that Skye particularly cared.

She was too tired to care.

Too tired to do anything but curl beneath her covers, the weight of last night pressing down on her like a suffocating fog.

Rebekah had left early, off to meet April Young at the Grill. Apparently, the girl had stayed behind to help clean up the wreckage of their so-called party. She'd been kind to Rebekah, which, naturally, meant that Rebekah had already decided they were friends.

Skye only hoped April wouldn't get caught in the crossfire of the supernatural.

By the time she finally crawled out of bed, the sun had begun its slow descent. The day had already slipped through her fingers, and she had nothing to show for it.

So, she spent the rest of it cleaning.

It was easier than confronting Nik. The promise to give him a piece of her mind was shoved aside, buried beneath the weight of everything else.

After last night, she wasn't sure she could handle another battle.

But no matter how hard she tried to keep herself distracted, her thoughts kept drifting back to him.

Green eyes.

A voice like silk and steel.

A presence that stole the air from her lungs.

She hated it.

Hated how easily Stefan had crept into her mind, how he lingered there like a ghost she couldn't exorcise.

She knew better than this.

Knew that falling for him was reckless, dangerous—stupid.

And yet, her stomach fluttered at the thought of him.

The feeling was intoxicating. Addictive.

Skye had only been in love once before, and it had nearly destroyed her. She wasn't eager to relive that particular agony.