Andrew was still angry at no one he could take it out on. Cassandra was hesitant on what she wanted to talk about. Ryder and I were just strange...I mean, when he was here, his last words made it seem like a breakup, and in school, he treated me not as hostile as before despite not carrying my books or walking me to class. When he saw me, he greeted me politely or opened doors regardless to the fact that I didn't respond to him. It was days after the day with Zander and the will and learning my mother was alive and the breakup, but it all felt so numb to me.
And surprisingly, on Wednesday, seeing a familiar car in front of my house was what snapped me out of my insensitivity.
"Andrew, don't come home," I immediately thought to my brother because I knew he had spontaneously decided to go with Aaron after school. A bullet was dodged on that end. I sped walked to the door and found it to be unlocked.
Immediately, my sensed heightened and when I neared the first corner of the downstairs area, I spun to turn into my would-be attacker. It only caused him to bump into me and have us both crash to the ground. And surprisingly I was laughing.
"Wow, a laugh," he noted as we got up. He extended a hand and I used it to stand up as well. "Part of why I came to visit was to check up on you, but I guess you're not as bad off as I thought."
I rolled my eyes before hugging my cousin's torso. Oliver and I weren't always close growing up, but we were there for each other when needed. I inhaled in his chest and familiarized myself with his scent mixed with metal and cologne and something I couldn't put my finger on. I pulled away and forged a smile. But Ollie wasn't stupid. He could tell something was wrong.
"But things are still pretty bad..." he noted. I sighed and didn't even know where to start.
Even though Andrew stayed out with Aaron or his friends, Oliver, Cassandra and I ate dinner and Oliver was sure to come upstairs to my room to talk to me about whatever I needed to afterwards. For hours, we were up there talking about how I was adjusting to Tyriette, but I could tell Oliver was trying not to tell me something just as badly as I was trying to cover up huge secrets from him.
"I need to tell you why I really came here," Oliver suddenly announced as it was pretty late. I looked over at him as he was stretched out on my bed and I was sitting at my desk. He sat up and I knew it was serious. But how serious could it be? He can't exactly drop the your brother and/or mother is/are alive bomb on me. "So I'm getting married..."
"WHAT!?" I yelled and jumped over to the bed by him to smack his muscular shoulder. "But you just drove across the country to see Iris! How could you just get married to someone else—"
"I'm getting married to Iris," he interrupted with a smile. I took a second to understand what he was telling me before I was genuinely smiling myself and hugging him.
"Congratulations," I said.
"Thank you," he nodded. "I wanted to personally invite you to the wedding—or really the court signing and reception."
"A date is already set?"
He nodded once more. "This Monday."
"This Monday?" I asked. Why so abrupt? Not that I thought their marriage was doomed to fail, but a couple of days?
"They're shipping me off for a real tour," he revealed. And now I knew why he was trying to hide something. It wasn't the engagement. It was him headed off to the Middle East. The first time he had a mission, he was sent to a base in France for a couple months, expecting the worse. He was on edge until he was clear about his location. But this time, it was different. "I didn't plan on proposing when I got there, but it happened and I'm happy."
"I'm glad," I told him genuinely. He feigned a quick smirk at me while letting go of a sigh and I knew just how he was feeling...to love someone so much it was draining. But his presence was different now that everything was off his chest. And I was left feeling guilty for keeping things from him.
"So I'm going to let you go to sleep since you have school tomorrow," he decided before standing up. He began walking towards the doorway. "I don't know if you're still not a morning person, but if you want, we can get breakfast and I can drop you off—"
"Ollie," I named, making him frown because I was interrupting an invitation for potentially free food. I had to tell him at least something. I didn't want him starting a new life and heading off to war without knowing something as important as what I knew. "Andrew's alive."
Now, his frown changed. It feigned anger briefly before utter confusion and he shifted positions in order to try to wrap his head around what I was saying. I was just as confused because I thought revealing something to him would make me feel better, but it didn't.
"He's probably trying to sneak in downstairs because I told him not to come home for a while, but he's alive," I added. Oliver still gave me a perplexed look before reluctantly turning his shoulders to leave.
***
The next morning, I trotted downstairs to see Oliver waiting for me. For a second, I thought that him visiting was a dream, but I was glad it was real.
"Andrew didn't come home last night, but I did talk to Cassandra before she left for work and she filled me in," he greeted. I paused slightly because I didn't know what exactly Cassandra told him. "I'm glad Andrew left and laid low from whoever targeted your dad, I just wish he would've reached out to me."
"He barely reached out to me until I forced him," I snickered, hoping Cassandra only told him about Andrew coming back and nothing about this werewolf thing or our mom or even Ryder if that was something she could tell.
"Well I hope I get a chance to see him before I leave town," Oliver wished. "Maybe he'll be around the school and I can drop you off?"
"Sure..." I muttered. Oliver then invited me to go get breakfast, and because it was distanced from the school and involved food, I obliged. The first thing we talked about was where the mustang was and how I got the blue Shelby. I had to explain to him that I destroyed Andrew's car—he gave me the same reaction that Andrew had. When I said the blue one was a gift, he frowned slightly and mentioned that at least it was a fair trade to make up for the original destroyed mustang...but then I caught myself mentioning that Ryder got it fixed for Andrew. It was the only time I mentioned his name and I think Oliver caught on the look I made once I did it.
Thankfully, I was able to glance down at my phone and notice that it was the exact time the first bell rang, which didn't give him enough time to ask about Ryder. Oliver rushed me right over to the school and he pulled up to the parking lot right as a familiar person was running purposely late as usual.
"I'll see you after school!" Oliver yelled through the window as I fast-walked towards the school. I turned to him while still walking backwards to near the front doors.
"See you then! And do not go through stuff in my room," I urged because I knew if he sat there all day and got bored, that's what would happen. When I turned around, I saw the other tardy student holding open the door for me. I paused and nearly tripped over my feet while my eyes locked in with Ryder's.
"Thank you," I told him, blushing and looking down as if I had something to feel guilty over.
"Anytime," he returned and I stepped through the threshold. I glanced over my shoulder as I pulled up the other strap on my backpack and noticed Ryder looking through the door after Oliver's car.
***
At lunch, I sat with Bailee, Evan, Aaron, and Andrew, however I was the only one seeming to eat aside from my brother shoveling food into his mouth like usual. The others stared at me as if they asked a question I hadn't responded to. The past few days it had been like this, but only with Bailee. Not all three of them.
"What...?" I asked, making Andrew look up from his tray.
"Are we going to act like you haven't been weird this week and then have some guy drop you off at school this morning?" Bailee asked. I looked over at Andrew in a frown before replying to Bailee.
How did anyone even know someone dropped me off? I know I got to a campus full of students who weren't exactly blind, but why was my transportation a relevant topic of discussion that had everyone on edge? The confusion of the topic mixed with my overall annoyance since the full moon and situation with Ryder made me snap back at her. "Are we going to act like it's anyone's business?"
Bailee almost choked on air at my attitude towards her, but instead of caring about or censoring my attitude like usual, I was feeling anger fester and fester for good reason.
"So you and Ryder broke up," Evan said or maybe asked.
"Uh—" Aaron began to warn towards his best friend as I narrowed my eyes. But now, the relief of Oliver's visit was replaced with the underlying tones of annoyance, anger, and aggression. I glanced over my shoulder at Ryder's table. He was in the process of talking to his friends, but at my glance, his eyes met mine. I held the gaze for a second before turning back around towards Evan.
"I don't know; you tell me," I hissed before I stood up and grabbed my stuff.
"Stop lashing out on them," Andrew thought to me, in which I couldn't react to, but I walked through the cafeteria, past everyone's tables, instead of going out the back courtyard door. My intention was to make it to the front of the school, where there were other benches and hopefully no one else.
I preferred to be alone when I got like this. I was noticing my resentment making minor annoyances seem way worse and the werewolf gene made me weary of how much damage I could do while being vexed in multiple ways at once with no specific person to take it out on.
For the remainder of lunch, I ate by myself, noticing the clouds darken as if it would rain later. Towards the end of the period, I ignored the upperclassmen coming back from off campus, but I couldn't resist noticing Trevor and Stella arrive. They didn't hold hands or anything, but they were clearly smitten with each other even as they were near one another. At least they got something out of this full moon.
But when I looked at them a bit too long, Stella caught my gaze and parted from her new beau.
"Hey," she told me. I didn't answer, but she sat down and then said it again. Then she shook my shoulder. I glared over at her, but for some reason, I couldn't find a source of reasonable bitterness for Stella right now. Not one thing. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," I lied. "I just want to be left alone."
"Outside?" she asked. "What, did Bailee's gossiping get too excited or something?" She smiled because she was joking at the fact that Bailee was always over enthusiastic when she gossiped, but it was the one thing that I couldn't deal with today. She had known to keep rumors about me and Ryder out of conversation, but even asking about what people were saying about someone dropping me off today was just unwanted banter. "I haven't really been able to ask you about the whole Ryder thing, but I did talk to Ryder this morning—"
"Of course you did," I forced a laugh. She narrowed her hazel eyes as if warning me it was a low blow, but like I said, I was in a bad mood for multiple things and maybe I found the one quality of Stella that would always be hated by me...or at least by my wolf. "Even when you have Trevor wrapped around your finger, you're still going back to Ryder. Just pick one, Stella. You have a fifty-fifty chance that one of them will love you as much as you love him."
She stood up and I realized how deep my words cut. "You didn't mean that," she told me. "I only talked to Ryder because I could tell something was wrong with you and I thought we were friends so I wanted to know what I'd be walking into."
She was right about one thing; I didn't mean what I said. She wasn't still pining after Ryder. They weren't even amicable in public enough for me to even think she could have the slightest remains of feelings for him. I hated how my wolf's temper carried out more of a punch than my passive anger did.
"But, hey, maybe I'm wrong," Stella added. "Maybe we're not friends, you meant what you said, and I deserved to hear it."
"You're not wrong," I muttered and rolled my eyes. She looked at me for a second of skepticism before sitting back down across from me. "I just...Everything is hitting me at once and then when I think I'm okay to try to ignore things, my wolf is making it apparent that I'm angry about everything...And then I explode on people who don't deserve it because I don't know who does deserve it—if anyone does. So I'm sorry."
"It's fine," Stella told me and then lifted her chin. "I can't exactly blame you. At least you're not excluding yourself from your friends to mope outside over some guy."
"Ha ha," I feigned.
"What? You're not!" she laughed as if to convince me. "What do you have to mope over? You have cool friends like me and Bailee who care, a questionably great guy who loves you—not to mention kickass werewolf powers—"
"Eh..." She and Bailee cared in different ways. Ryder was...a mess. And should I consider that I have kickass werewolf powers even though I refused to use them? Stella shot me a look.
"It's the Ryder thing, isn't it?" she pin-pointed, making me almost roll my eyes at the situation. She shifted positions. "So when I talked to him this morning, he didn't really tell me much...which I expected, but he did ramble off 'why don't you ask your new best friend's new chauffer about us?' before walking off."
I put my head in my hands, knowing what that meant. But Stella laughed and shook my shoulder.
"You know what that means," she said. "He's jealous. So obviously he cares."
I looked over at her. "He shouldn't be jealous," I hissed. "He knows very well that all turbulence aside, I'm his and he's mine. We've been over it before. He shouldn't be jealous of anyone. Even if we weren't mates, if he was jealous then that obviously means he's doing something that would imply I'd have it better with someone else."
"Well that's good then," Stella said. "Maybe he should feel guilty for once."
"He always feels guilty," I defended. "He's insanely guilty. Meaning he feels guilty over shit again and again without changing the cause of the guilt. It's insane to do the same thing over and over and expect different results, but that's what he does. Something happens—or doesn't happen, he shuts me out, and then he feels guilty when it's all said and done. Over and over again he does this without realizing the common denominator of shutting me out for no reason."
Stella shrugged and then the bell rang. "Whatever," she said. "Just keep hanging around this guy and then maybe he'll grow the balls to do something about his inevitable guilt." Yeah right. Ryder isn't stupid enough to believe my cousin was anything more than that. I halfway wanted to think to him Oliver's identity, but at the same time, I knew our telepathy was blocked on my end and maybe I wanted to see Stella's suggestion play out. "Okay, you gonna be okay for the rest of the day?" she asked me. I nodded apprehensively before she hugged me briefly and left for class.