Silver Stilettos

EPILOGUE | I will always love you [3]

Why should he care about the future of someone who stole Mayuri's away?

"It wasn't his fault," said Lenox with a hint of pique.

Matt was unable to hold back his surprise. "How did you know—"

"You're not the poker face you seem to think you are." Her smile was wry. "Anyway, I just thought you'd like to know."

"I wouldn't like to know," said Matt. "I don't give a rat's ass about Fenris fucking North."

Lenox tightened her hand into a fist and let it rest in her lap. Her eyes stared at him, strangely unblinking.

It unnerved Matt and he looked away, aware that he was being rude, but also not able to summon the guilt required to feel bad about it. Lenox Hill talking to him was like getting an eleventh chicken nugget in a box of ten. A surprise, and not a bad one, but he didn't know why and didn't know why now.

"You're talking to me more now than you have in the last four years of high school," he said.

"I'm sorry." Lenox finally blinked. "We didn't have the same group of friends."

And a good thing that was, too, considering all your friends are now missing, dead, or on the run.

"Too cool for the likes of me," said Matt, not without some bitterness.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah." Matt leveled an understanding look at her. "You did."

Lenox's eyes flashed. "Does your shoulder hurt with that huge chip on it?"

Matt couldn't help it. He laughed. As far as insults went, that was a pretty good one, and the wit of it surprised him even though the insult was aimed his way. It would be easy to slip into banter, to point out that he didn't think she had the esprit to make that repartee, but the fierce look on her face made him think better of it.

"I had a huge crush on you during freshman year," he said instead, gratified to see her face light up like a sunburst.

"Really?"

"Yeah. You didn't finish your math homework and you asked me if I had the answer to question fifteen." A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. "And when you realized I did, you asked me for the answers to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty."

"That's when you started to like me?" Lenox brushed her blond hair behind her ear.

Matt's smile faded. It was when he had realized that pretty girls like Lenox would never be into him for anything other than his brain. The moment she had asked him for his answers had been the moment he'd fallen out of like with her.

"Um, yeah," he lied. "That was when."

She smiled at him like he'd just given her the whole world and it broke Matt's already shattered heart into a billion more pieces. He couldn't look at her anymore, so he turned his face toward the embossed letters of the encyclopedia and tried to remember a time when it didn't hurt so much to be human.

"I think he's gone after her," said Lenox. "Fenris, I mean."

Oh, so we're back to that. Matt exhaled, frustrated with how intent she was on rehashing the topic.

She swept past the disgruntled scowl on his face and said, "He's so in love with her. I used to work on Yearbook Committee. They're voted most likely to stay together forever."

"Used to?"

"Yeah, I, uh, I had to give it up." She averted her eyes and stared at a fixed spot behind Matt's head.