Lure To The Woods

XXIII

"I'd like to meet him. He needs the stamp of approval from your very best-est friend."

"It's still early days, but if the date goes well then of course. We should have a sesh or something- all of us there." I proposed, keen to get Heather's actual opinion on Xavier.

"Can't promise that I won't steal your man, but that sounds good."

I felt a bubble of jealousy come to surface at that, which I quickly popped. This mate bond thing was so irrational- she was only joking, but I felt the need to snap at her. The bond was so overprotective when it came to Xavier and Kodiak.

"You have a boyfriend." I rolled my eyes, managing to fight off the jealousy.

"Not anymore." She shrugged, "We broke up while you were in the hospital. Didn't feel like I should be taking the spotlight from your little hospital episode, though."

"Shut up." I barked a laugh, rolling my eyes at her theatrics, "Sorry to hear that."

"No you're not." She barked a laugh, puffing smoke into the air cheekily, "You didn't even know his name. Besides, I did the breaking up... I've got my eye on somebody else."

"Already? Who?" I was quite surprised- Heather didn't usually bounce from relationship to relationship like that.

"I said that I was interested, not that I was pursuing. Besides, you're not one to judge- you've had how many girls in the last year?"

"Fair point." I chuckled, flicking the butt of my cigarette into the usual make shift ashtray down here, "Who is it?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you." Her face went deadly serious, fixing me with a stone cold look.

I shook my head at her theatrics and pushed her shoulder, making her crack. She laughed as she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, shoving me back. It was good to talk about Heather's love life on the fire escape once again; things felt normal again.

"If you're keeping a secret, so am I." She shrugged.

"You're so petty. Whatever, don't tell me." I didn't need to know that badly, "It must be a pretty embarrassing crush if you won't even tell me."

"It's not embarrassing." She blushed, confirming my suspicions to be true.

"As long as it's not Mike, I don't care." I decided.

"Poor Mike." She cringed.

We both laughed, heading back up the fire escape together. I was glad that we had cleared the air because I couldn't deal with Heather being mad at me for long. She was one of my main pillars and without her I don't think I'd be able to handle this whole Xavier/mate situation.

As we entered the common room, it instantly quietened down. People weren't looking at us, but it was obvious that we were the cause for the volume adjustment. My eyes flittered over the place, cringing internally at how obvious they were all being. How the hell did they manage to keep such a massive secret when they behaved so abnormally?

"They did this when you walked in earlier too." Heather whispered in my ear, "It's seriously fucking weird."

"I'll talk to Xavier about it." I whispered back, "Try to ignore them."

She side eyed me, obviously finding the whole exchange as strange as I did. I needed to ask Xavier to tell them to either ignore me or treat me normally, because I can't have them staring at the floor and going quiet every time I walked into the room; I wouldn't survive the rest of the school year.

"What did we miss?" Heather grinned, flopping back onto her spot on the sofa.

"Cam, you're seriously not going to tell us who you slept with for this to happen? It seems like everyone but us knows! That's unfair." Mick pouted, gesturing to all of the quiet people.

"Ava left in tears and Oscar ran out after her." Mike ignored Mick, letting us know.

"Is she okay?" I frowned, "If it's her homework, we could all help."

"It looked a bit more serious than homework." Fred sighed.

"Should we go check on her?" Heather suggested, seeming concerned.

It wasn't really like Ava to get so upset over something. Sure, she was usually grumpy in the mornings, but other than that she was such a bubbly person. She was always super warm towards everyone and she handled things very well; I had definitely never seen her cry before.

"I think we should give her some space with Oscar, if you catch my drift." Mike muttered darkly, shocking all of us.

Oscar and Ava were the most solid couple I knew- they never argued and they were joined at the hip. If Ava's upset at Oscar for some reason, he must have really fucked up. I had a bad feeling in my stomach about all of this.