Page 16 of Bad Moon Rising
What if I ask the twins and they reject me, too?
7
JACKSON
I could get used to this.
The thought slithers past my defenses, but I find that I can’t take it back. I don’t want to. A feeling of contentment seeps in unbidden as Lily’s laughter echoes through the cafeteria. There are over a hundred different conversations, nearly five hundred voices blurring together, but all I can hear is her. Only her.
It’s always been her.
She sits across from me in the cafeteria, her orange hair falling over one shoulder in a careless braid. She thinks that she’s invisible but she has an effortless beauty about her that has been the topic of more than one conversation in the school—she doesn’t even realize that the girls are jealous of her and the guys desire her. I shut the last one down real fucking fast.
You’d think she rolls out of bed looking as perfect as she does, but I know that isn’t the case. The last time she slept over—unfortunately too fucking long ago—her hair was plastered to her face from sweat and a tiny trickle of drool made her lips glossy. She was a mess…but she was perfect to me.
She still is.
I swear this girl gets more beautiful every second.
How long have I been in love with Lily Dean, you might ask? Too fucking long. I quite possibly fell for her the day she stumbled into our backyard, doe-eyed and painfully innocent, with her cute fucking daisy dress that still haunts my every waking moment.
“Jackson.” Her sweet voice pulls my attention back up to her face. “Earth to Jackson. Did I lose you on planet Mars for a second there?”
I offer her a sleepy smile and rest my cheek in my palm. “Sorry, Daisy. Just tired.” My jaw slackens with my yawn to emphasize my point. Damn Brooks and his stupid werewolf to hell for keeping me up all night. Why can’t he do his own dirty work?
Orion, sitting beside Daisy, taps his black-painted fingernails against the table and narrows his eyes on me. “Out late, hmmm?” His tone holds a hint of accusation that I don’t fucking like. Not one bit.
“Yes,” I grit out. “Is there something wrong with that?”
Orion shrugs his shoulders innocently and begins to untangle his headphones from where he wrapped them around his phone.
“Nothing,” he replies nonchalantly. “Just remember that the pull-out method doesn’t work.”
I swear if I could, I would beat my brother to death right here and now. He’s my twin, and I love him, but I also want to kill him ninety-nine percent of the time.
Daisy stiffens almost imperceptibly next to him, a look of pain flitting across her face before she can contain it. I hate that expression more than anything. I would quite literally cut off my own foot before I allowed a single hair on her perfect head to be harmed. And to know that I’m the cause of her pain? It breaks me.
Orion damn well knows that I haven’t been with a girl in ages. I tried at first—trust me, I did—but every person I’ve been with is a troll compared to Daisy. Even before I came to terms with my feelings for my best friend, I found myself comparing every woman to the one I secretly wanted in my arms.
Her hair was the wrong shade of orange.
Her body wasn’t nearly as curvy.
Her lips didn’t part in surprise the way Daisy’s did.
It only took a few failed hook-ups for me to realize I was a goner. I was so far gone, you could probably find me in outer space, orbiting around this ethereal entity too good for the likes of me.
Apparently, Daisy makes me wax poetic. Who fucking knew?
“You know I was in the library researching shit,” I grit out with a pointed look in Orion’s direction, wondering what the fuck he’s doing. But I know what he’s doing, even if I don’t want to admit it.
You’d have to be blind or a fool to not realize my twin is as in love with Daisy as I am. And I may not be an A-plus student like those two, but I have two perfectly working eyes, thank you very much, and I’m no idiot.
Orion casts me an unreadable stare as he slowly, almost languidly, finishes untangling his headphones. I meet his unflappable gaze with a narrowed one of my own.
He knows damn well what I did last night and why I was out so late.
Breaking and entering a library is harder work than you would think. For one, it’s a community building owned by the county, and those bitches are locked down tighter than a nun’s asshole. Secondly, I had to hack into the computer system—which is more Orion’s speciality than mine, but it was an easy job and I didn’t want the smart one to get in trouble if we were to get caught—and find a name that connected with the library card we found. And finally, when I tried to leave, I was caught by a bunch of dudes from the football team on their way to a party. I played the entire interaction off as a dare gone wrong, but then I was forced to spend the rest of the night chugging beer and jostling with the team. Did some of the girls at the party try to hit on me? Yes. Did I politely tell them I wasn’t interested? Also yes.