Page 14 of Alluring Darkness
The three of them exchange a glance.
“He’s probably still in the hospital wing,” Paulo says carefully.
I raise my eyebrows as if this is news to me. “Why?”
“Eli Hunter and his brothers gave him the beating of a lifetime.”
“Connor is that unlikeable, huh?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“So he just knows how to make enemies then?”
Gabriel chuckles. “Are you kidding? Half of the senior class are jealous of him for being so fucking good at everything.”
My mind churns as I turn that over in my head. So, a lot of people are jealous of Connor? But the question is, who is jealous enough to sabotage his rifle in order to bring down Eli’s wrath on him?
“Apparently, he’s Harvey Smith’s son,” Paulo says, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
Gabriel raises his eyebrows. “TheHarvey Smith?”
“Yes.”
“Hey,” Magda interrupts, leveling her pale gaze on me. “Isn’t your last name Smith too? Don’t tell me you’re also—”
“Harvey Smith’s spawn?” I fill in, and then snort as if that’s ridiculous. “Oh, I wish. But no, I’m just one of the millions of normal Smiths in this country.”
It’s better if no one knows who I really am. Because if it becomes known that Connor is my brother, then Eli might realize that I’m purposely drawing his attention away from Con and towards me instead.
“That reminds me,” a new voice says.
I turn to my left to find a girl with an incredible resting bitch face lean over from the table next to us. I don’t know her name, but I’m pretty sure she’s in our year too.
“You’re that new girl who transferred in like five days ago right?” Resting Bitch Face continues.
“Yeah?” I reply.
“What are you even doing here? I’ve been watching you in all of our classes this week, and you’re fucking terrible.”
A flash of irritation shoots through me. I know that she’s right, of course. I am fucking terrible. At everything. Well, except for chemistry. But that class hasn’t started yet. So all I do now is to walk into training hall after training hall and fail at everything we’re supposed to do. And it’s already grating on my nerves, so I sure as hell don’t need this girl to rub it in my face.
“And I don’t mean just because you started three weeks after us,” she continues. “Your basic skills are so far below average that you’ll never catch up to the rest of us. So why even bother coming here at all?”
Adopting a lazy expression, I give her a nonchalant shrug. “Because I was bored.”
“Bored?”
“Yes.”
When I offer no further explanation, she shakes her head at me. “You’re fucking crazy.”
I narrowly prevent myself from grabbing the nearest book and hurling it straight into her stupid face. Instead, I let a psychotic grin curl my lips. “I know.”
She jerks back and blinks at me.
Before she can recover, I turn to my table companions. “Excuse me, I have somewhere else to be.”
“Uhm, yeah, sure,” Gabriel manages to press out.