I’d had two tireless days and two sleepless nights by the time I stepped into class Wednesday afternoon. I’d waited to run into her on campus yesterday, expected I’d at least catch a glimpse of her, and hoped for a call letting me know she was all right.

     I received none. Three strikes—I’m out.

     I could have teleported into her room last night, but that seemed like cheating. I couldn’t carry on a one sided relationship by using supernatural gifts that she wasn’t aware of. Of course I could have knocked on her door at anytime to check on her too, and I almost did a hundred different times, but some egging thing that felt a lot like instinct told me showing up unannounced at her door could make things worse. I’d never gone against my instincts yet, and for my acquiescence, they’d rewarded me by saving my butt on at least a semi-annual basis for a couple centuries.

     Maybe she needed time, maybe she was crazy busy catching up from her day of playing hooky, or maybe she didn’t feel like there was any need to check in with me, but whatever it was, if my gut was telling me to lay low, that’s just what I was going to do.

     It was the single most difficult thing for me to follow through on.

     Diving into my front and center seat in Psych, it felt like I was breaking through the finish line at the end of a marathon. I’d obeyed my internal compass, did my time, and now it was time to reap the reward of seeing Emma.

     My stomach did a twist when I realized she might pull a repeat of Monday’s no-show. If that was the case, guts be damned, I was going find her and harass her until I got my Emma fix.

     Professor Camp was already a few snide comments into his lecture when the auditorium door screeched open. I didn’t need to look to know it was her—I felt her an instant before the door opened, and while I probably didn’t have to look to see if Ty was leeched to her side, I did.

     They were sliding into the last two seats of the back row when I turned in my seat to steal a glimpse. Emma was dressed like she was ready for winter in Montana instead of a cloudless Indian summer day in California. If that wasn’t cause enough for concern, her face was a tomb. It wasn’t just expressionless, it was dead. Like an emotion would never play over it again.

     Sagging a meat-hook arm around her shoulders, Ty’s eyes shifted my way. His face was so lined with smugness it might get stuck that way. Well, stuck that way more than it was most of the time, at least.

     I knew he was waiting for me to be the first to look away, but I didn’t want it on my permanent record that I’d been the first to tap out to Ty Steel in anything. I returned his stare, holding it long enough several of the other students took notice.

     The attention increasing, Ty flipped me his favorite finger as his stare left mine to settle over Emma. Giving her a head to toe, he managed to convey ownership, supremacy, and downright creepiness with one once over.

     Emma stayed zombie-fied, ignorant of the guy molesting her with his eyes next to her and the guy down in front staring at her like she was everything he wanted and could never have. The poor girl didn’t deserve either stare.

     I turned forward in my seat to relieve her of one.

     Class was hell. A solid fifty minutes of gibberish of which I didn’t process a lick.

Every student in class would have a strong opinions that I had a serious tick after today’s class. I tried to keep my head forward, eyes locked on some arbitrary point, but as soon as I’d find it, they’d head off target and boomerang to the back corner of the room.

My eye seizures were bad, but Emma’s state of stone nothingness was far worse. I was half convinced Ty had arrived with a mannequin look alike until I detected her pencil moving across that ratty spiral notebook she loved so much.

     She never once looked my way.

     “All right, everyone. Time to wake up now that class is almost over,” Camp hollered, clapping his hands like a cymbal monkey. “As there are no classes this Friday, I want to remind everyone that the big second date for the Love Project is scheduled for this weekend. I don’t care what day or time you choose, but as last week was guy’s pick, this week it’s girl’s choice. Choose well, ladies, but make sure you make him pay.”

     The soprano grade laughter was drowned out by the baritone wave of groaning.

     “Have a groovy long weekend. Work easy and play hard,” he continued on, but the roar of laptops snapping shut and backpacks zipping close muffled his closing comments.

     Shouldering my bag, I took quite possibly the thousandth glance towards the back of the room, not sure what I was going to say or do. Just knowing I had to say or do something.

     Turns out, I wouldn’t be able to do anything because the formerly occupied seats in the back corner were empty.

     He was clever, I had to give him that, but that was about all I would give him. However, his grand scheme of arriving late and skipping out early would only keep me away from Emma for so long. About another ten minutes, I figured, or however long it took me to walk across campus to her dorm where I was banking on the theory that Ty hadn’t moved her to some undisclosed location.

     I didn’t put it past him to do just that.

     I jogged my way across campus, not able to shake the feeling that I’d find myself knocking on the door of an empty dorm room. Shuffling through a stream of bodies bounding down the stairs off to their next classes, I took the stairs by twos as I headed to the third floor.

     Halfway down the hall and I had my answer. I didn’t need to knock on the door to know it wouldn’t open.

     But I did anyways.

     No answer. Big surprise. Like the good stalker in love I was, I’d memorized her schedule days ago, so I knew she didn’t have another class after Psych and volleyball practice didn’t start for another couple hours, which led to one conclusion.

     Ty was making sure he kept her away from me or, I guess the truer way of putting it, is he was trying to keep me away from her. I didn’t want to admit that, after a half-day of Patrick dodging, Ty had unsettled me, but he had.

If keeping the girl I had it bad for just out of my reach when I’d waited forty-eight hours wasn’t enough, seeing the shadow of nothing on Emma’s face had been more than enough to unhinge me. I couldn’t imagine anything less than the death of a close member could twist the joy that had been Emma on Monday afternoon to the shell of herself she was today.

     Whatever it was though, I was going to find out. Ty and his covert ops couldn’t foil me. I’d uncovered rogue Inheritors halfway around the world—I could find a beautiful woman on the Stanford campus.

 

Maybe I couldn’t. My confidence, along with my sanity, had hit empty late last night after a second night of sitting in the shadows outside her dorm, watching, hoping, and praying she’d pass by. She never had.

     After a second night of staking out, I was expecting campus security or even the police to pay me a visit and possibly slap me with a warning or a restraining order to stay away. Of course, I would have heeded neither, but no one seemed to pay me any attention, like I was invisible or unworthy of their attention. Or maybe pathetic, lovesick guys hanging outside the dorm halls of the girls they loved was a regular thing here at Stanford.

     Cutting the Mustang’s engine in the black saturated night, I knew I couldn’t stand by as an inactive party another night. I was knocking on that door until someone answered—I’d teleport in if I grew really desperate, although that was a last resort.

     Ever notice how desperate men tend to go with their last resort as Plan A? I was hoping I’d gained enough mental fortitude and sheer willpower over generations of walking the earth to at least save teleporting for Plan B.

     It was easy enough getting in the building, despite the outside doors locking after dark. Everyone was either on their way to get drunk or already there, so no one noticed or cared who dodged inside when the door opened.

     I don’t know how I ended up in front of her door so quickly, but I knew I hadn’t used teleportation only because I’d ended up outside her door. I would have put myself dead center in her room if I’d employed any supernatural powers, no question about it.

     My heart was in my throat; I finally got what people meant when they said that, and it wasn’t a figurative use of the expression. I was certain if I reached a finger past my tongue, I’d find a beating organ blocking my esophagus.

     I rapped on the door, but in the silence it echoed through the empty hall like I was pounding on it.

     Soft footsteps padded towards the door, and my senses were on such high alert I could sense the air being disturbed as a form cut through it. I was so focused on these minute details, I didn’t process that the person twisting the doorknob open was not the one I’d come searching for.

     Opening the door a sliver width and a half, Julia’s nuclear green eye popped through the space. I took an involuntary step back, which was rude I knew, but it was better than lunging back like I’d wanted to do when that unsettling eye latched onto me.

“You,” she said, heaving the door open the rest of the way.

     Typical Julia greeting: succinct, sharp, and psychotic.

     “Me,” I answered back cryptically.

     She nodded once, like I’d just given her an answer to a silent question.

     “Is that a good or bad thing?” I asked, not even about to guess what she was thinking.

     “Depends,” she answered, lifting a shoulder as she turned and headed towards the back of the room.

     Taking her not slamming the door on my face as an invitation to come in, I took a few steps inside, but since this was a dorm room we were talking about, I was already halfway inside when Julia’s head got lost behind a mini-fridge. “You want a sparkling water?” she asked, already pitching one my way.

     “Eh, sure,” I said, snatching the green bottle somersaulting through the air. “Thanks?”

     Tilting the bottle she was holding at me in acknowledgement, she took a chug.

“And here I thought I was the goth,” she said, surveying me toe to head before taking another swig. “You look like you’ve been dead for the past hundred years.”

     I came close to spewing the sip of water I’d just taken. Despite knowing Julia was attempting to be amusing, the trueness of her statement wasn’t lost on me. Knowing her, I could tell her every last nitty gritty detail of my world and she’d shrug an unimpressed shoulder and get back to sacrificing small animals or brewing vex potions or whatever else she did on a Friday night.

     “Keep the compliments coming,” I mumbled, twisting the cap back on the water of nasty bubbly origins.

     “You’re a misogynist pig,” she said, like it was on the tip of her tongue, relieving me of the disgrace-to-water bottle.

     “Now that actually hurts. Why would you say that?” I asked, making myself comfortable on the edge of Emma’s bed. I wasn’t sure what the antonym of misogyny was, but that’s what I was. I was possibly the most devote lover of woman out there.

     “Because if you cared anything for Emma’s peace of mind, you wouldn’t be here right now,” she answered, leaning into the mini-fridge and appraising me with those nutty eyes.

     “I just needed to know if she was all right,” I admitted, transparency coming naturally in Julia’s presence, or maybe she was a bonafied witch and was forcing me to spill my guts. Not that I’d come across an actual witch in my existence, but as a being of supernatural quality, it seemed hypocritical to believe Immortals had the market cornered on all things paranormal.

     “I don’t think all right  are words I’d ever use to describe Emma’s state of being,” she said, talking into her bottle. “But she’s still breathing.”

     I smiled humorously. “Where’s she been? I’ve been looking for her.”

     “Really? I haven’t noticed you lurking like a creeper in the shadows the past couple nights.” Julia had perfected the tone of sarcasm. You see, anyone could season their statements with it, but it took a true pro to be able to make each word burrow itself under your skin. “She’s holed up at jerkwad’s bar and brothel. Also known as his frat house,” Julia finished, curling her nose.

     I put the lid on the shot of pain that was blooming into a grimace. I knew Emma wasn’t the frat house cockroach type, so either she was doing her best to avoid me or doing her best to cater to Ty’s overbearing ways. It made me feel like a bit of a dirt-bag to hope for the latter.  

“You know,” Julia said, shifting her eyes at me. “You don’t have to hide the way you feel about her with me. I saw amore in your eyes the first night I met you, but I suppose that’s to be expected with someone like Emma.”

“Yeah, she kind of crawled into my heart and stayed there,” I admitted, rolling with this whole transparency with Julia thing.

She nodded. “If I believed in angels, I’d believe she was the bloody gold star one of the bunch,” she said, kicking off one of her purple boots and sailing it into the wall across from her. “She doesn’t deserve to be dicked with.” Another thud against the wall as the other boot landed beside its mate.

“I know, I know,” I said, trying to roll the tension out of my shoulders. “I’m not trying to . . . dick”—I wasn’t brought up to use crass language in front of a woman, but Julia transcended the gender into something else entirely—“around with her. I swear my intentions are pure.”

Julia arched an eyebrow.

“Well, ninety-nine percent pure,” I confessed, the implied meaning in Julia’s face and slouching into Emma’s bed forcing a scorching heat to my face.

“Thanks for the confession, my son,” she said, crossing herself theatrically. “But the slime I was referring to ‘dicking with Emma’ was the turd she believes is her boyfriend,” she said, practically snarling before smiling at me for the first time. “You, I like.”

I was stunned stupid by the compliment. Something told me that a girl who believed black wasn’t a color, but a state of mind, didn’t hand out compliments readily.

“Why?” the genius inside me asked.

“Hell if I know,” was her immediate answer.

Roundabout as it was, I’d take any compliment aimed my way at this time in my life. “Thanks for that, Julia. Really. But how do I get the other girl to like me?”

“That’s the easy part,” she replied, taking a final chug of her sparkling water and launching the empty bottle under her bed. The garbage can was less than a foot away from her. “The hard part is getting her to admit it to herself.”

“Hold up.” I leapt up and squared myself in front of Julia. “Are you saying that Emma . . . likes me?” My bad day was threatening to take a turn for the best.

“Of course she does,” she answered, doling out a look like she thought I was the worst kind of clueless. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”

That jostle in my gut I just felt could have been my heart breaking loose. “Perfect,” I muttered, combing my fingers through my hair. “So she ‘likes me,’ she just doesn’t know it yet,”—I wasn’t muttering anymore, although I’d decided to add pacing to my emotional roller coaster—“and you know what? She’ll never know it because she has a boyfriend, she avoids me like I’m a walking freshman twenty, and as if those things aren’t convincing enough,” I said . . . I yelled, throwing my hands up in the air, “we have nothing in common.”

“You know what I hear when people say they have nothing in common with the person they want to be with?” she asked, her voice as calm as mine was crazed. She paused long enough for me to catch she was waiting for an answer. I shook my head, not trusting myself to open my mouth again. “A coward making chickenshit excuses.”

This conversation just pulled a brody on me.

“She’s got a boyfriend, she avoids me,” Julia was repeating my words in the same volume I’d employed, peppering it with a whiney voice. “We have nothing in common. Boo hoo,” she continued, wiping at the absent tears in her eyes. “Quit your whining and grow a pair.”

Under most circumstances, I would have had an insane comeback to this accusation, but arguing with a hardcore goth girl while Ozzy droned on in the background wasn’t normal circumstances.

“Her boyfriend is a tick that burrowed in six years ago and won’t go away,” Julia said, her hands flying about like she was juggling imaginary daggers. “She avoids you because she likes you—”

“She just doesn’t know it yet,” I said under my breath.

“And, and . . .” she repeated in a fury, searching around the room. Her eyes finally narrowed in on something and she was across the room after it in two lunges. “And sparkling water,” she shouted, throwing a heater straight towards my . . . pair.

I was taken by surprise, which was becoming a regular occurrence for me. Not by the bottle sailing at my man business, but by the violent change in conversation. Had I not already confirmed it, I would have said Julia was crazy. Bad crazy, not the cute, semi-amusing crazy.

“Wow,” I said, sliding my full-except-for-a-sip bottle into my jacket pocket, removing one weapon from her reach. “Detour much?” I asked, looking up at her.

She was the picture of calm now, arms crossed loosely and shoulders back. “Connect the dots much?” she threw back at me, trying on my voice for size. She must think I sounded like Sean Connery getting kicked in the nuts.

I opened my mouth, an automatic response to such a question, but no words came out. I tried again—still nothing. This thing with women striking me speechless was becoming a regular occurrence.

“There’s your one thing,” she said, thrusting her hands at where the bottle peeked out of my pocket. “You both hate sparkling water.”

I massaged my temples. “Life changing.”

“You made a claim that one of the reasons you two couldn’t be together was because you had nothing in common. Well,” she said, “I’ve proven that a lie. And who cares about how much they have in common when they love someone, tell me that? Do you think Mark Antony fell in love with Cleopatra because they both liked the color green? Did Tristan fall in love with Isolde because they were both morning people? Do you think Lancelot divided the freakin’ Knights of the Round Table because Guinevere shared his love of roast duck?” she continued on without taking a single breath, and I wasn’t going to interrupt. Don’t mess with a woman on a mission. I learned this lesson the hard way.

“Do you think Emma’s going to fall in love with you because you both like old movies?” she paused, sucking in a hard earned breath. “Well, do you?”

I knew I should tread lightly with Julia in her present scary-calm state, but I didn’t do what I knew I should very often. And this was one of those times.

“Let me take a three prong approach to my answer. One,” I listed, lifting my index finger, “those three lovely couples you aforementioned all died sad, miserable lives without the one they risked everything for as they gurgled their last words. And two,” I ignored Julia’s death glare and continued, lifting another finger, “are you implying that’s the bar Emma and I should strive for if, by some miracle, we end up together? And three,”—ring finger up to accompany the other two—“how does any of this help me?”

Clasping her hands in a prayer position against her face, she blew out a slow breath. I’d seen this nonverbal response dozens of times in my presence.

“Listen, I know you’re not a coward, but you’re scared of something,” she said, keeping her eyes closed and hands clasped. “Something is keeping you here when you should be charging through the doors of that Future Eunuchs of America clubhouse and carrying her off into the damn sunset.” Opening her eyes, she graced me with a second smile. “Or whatever it is you normal types do.”

Returning the sad smile, I answered. “I’m here—I’m scared,” I clarified, “because it’s like what you said earlier. If I care about her peace of mind, I need to leave her alone.” My head hung lower admitting it, but I knew she was right. Peace of mind and Patrick Hayward were mutually exclusive entities.

“That’s right, I did say that,” she said, walking towards me. “If you care about her peace of mind, you’ll leave her alone,” she said again, an undertone in her voice, some meaning I was meant to pick up on, but hadn’t yet. “But if you care about her best interests you’ll get your persistent little butt back to following her around like a little puppy.”

Julia was like the Buddha of clarity. Everything she’d said made sense and had cleared the fog that had been stalling me. I felt something for Emma, and she could avoid me as much as she wanted, but I wasn’t going away until I told her just how it was for me. I was done making chickenshit excuses, as master Julia had so eloquently put it.

“Which frat house is it?” I asked, my hand twisting open the doorknob.

Layering her hands over her heart, she fluttered her eyes. “There’s the man I’m going to still be doing dirty things to in my dreams fifty years from now.”

“Lucky me,” I said, not letting my mind go anywhere near that cringe fest.

Julia was off in some daydream or, maybe in her case, a nightmare, so before things got all hot and heavy with her and imaginary me, I cleared my throat. “Jules, focus,” I said, clapping my hands. “Where is Emma?”

She did a clearing shake of her head. “Just head out of the main road, and when you find the freshmen with water balloons for boobs puking in the front yard, you’ve found the place. Make sure you wear latex gloves if you touch anything. It turns out some new-found STDs devised in that house can be passed from surface to skin contact.”

My stomach clenched envisioning Emma in a place like that. I was halfway down the hall when Julia called down at me. “You called me Jules,” she said, her voice girly like I never imagined it could be. “Only my truest friends call me that.” Sticking two fingers in the air like a thin peace sign, she said, “There’s two things you have in common now.”

“Hey, that’s got to be better than one, right?” I called back to her, continuing down the hall, in a hurry to get to Emma.

Before I hit the stairs, I remembered my manners. Or at least what few I possessed.

“Jules?” I hollered.

Her dark head popped out the door.

“Thank you,” I said, my tone of sincerity hopefully demonstrating what two meager words couldn’t.

She grinned down at me. “I’m going to break tradition and make an expected, contrived response.” Pausing, she cleared her throat. “You’re welcome. Now, shoo,” she instructed, shooing with her hand as well. “Watch your back in there, Hayward. They’re animals,” she added as I charged down the stairs.

“Good thing I’m a hunter,” I said to myself, wrapping my fingers around the Mustang’s steering wheel a wink later.

 

It took me all of thirty seconds to hear the place once I’d pulled onto the main road off campus, but it was another thirty before it came into view. I shook my head, realizing that if these were the Ivy League youth of our future, I was going to be kept busy as a Guardian.

     Julia had under-exaggerated. The front lawn was smothered with the puking “girls” like she’d said, but even more were passed out cold and, thankfully less, girls having clothed sex with guys spewed over crippled lawn furniture.

    I was tempted to snap a picture and forward it to father to thank him for insisting I be put through the whole college experience thing, but calling upon a vast amount of willpower, I refrained. No father of a daughter should have to see another father’s daughter in such a state of disgrace.

     Classy joint.

     I wouldn’t have left my Mustang anywhere within a drunken mile of this place, but Emma was in there. My stomach twisted into an advanced yoga contortion when I pictured her in a place like that. Against every car worshipping bone in my body, I punched the Mustang over the curb and rolled it up on the grass since there was nowhere to park on the street. A fire marshal would have had a heyday if he’d been invited.

     I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough and, once I made it through the maze of girls whose makeup had melted to Joker-scary, I bound up the stairs in one leap. The kid who was supposedly admitting would-be party goers was passed out cold on his stool in the doorway. A few phallic-esque caricatures had been sharpied on his face. Poor guy was going to wake up with more than a headache.

     Squeezing by him, I took a survey of hedonism on earth. I couldn’t even imagine Emma squeezed into this seedy joint that was vibrating from the tasteless music and the bodies more-pounding-than-gyrating to the music. I had to find her and get her out of here, the mission impossible trained part of my mind repeated.

     This wasn’t going into a country of hostiles armed with semi-automatics and desperation, this wasn’t infiltrating the world’s most dangerous Alliance of Inheritors, this wasn’t even going up against a man twice my size in a hand-to-hand battle, this was weaving my way through a bleary-eyed brood of Stanford’s finest and escorting a woman I cared about away from here.

     This should be the easiest mission I’d undergone—in fact, it was laughable to consider it a mission, but something about the electric edge surging through me—like I was ready for a bullet to be fired at me from twenty different directions—was roaring to life.

     I tried to coax my fists flat, my muscles smooth, my mind calm, but I was unsuccessful at any calming endeavor. If anyone tried to mess with me tonight, they’d be wearing a body cast for the better part of the year.   

     Tucking through the entry and into the room where most of the fumbling bodies were congregated, I wished I would have heeded Julia’s warning and worn gloves or, better yet, a radioactive resistant body suit. The place stunk of vomit, that goes without saying, but vomit that had been baking in the sun during the apocalypse and right alongside the tantalizing scent of puke was a tangy scent of undeodorized armpits. The hideousness of this stench would haunt me to the end of time.

     Realizing my white-blond surfer hair, chiseled by the hand of God physique, and outfit that took a dump on the mall store jeans and branded t-shirts around me stood out, I knew I needed to make an effort to blend in with the rest of the genetically-impaired. Plus, I didn’t doubt that however drunk Ty was at this time on a Friday night, he’d have no trouble picking me out of the crowd.

     Grabbing an un-manned red plastic cup teetering on a windowsill, I plucked a red Phillies baseball cap off a guy who was college boy bouncing his head to the wrong beat of the music. I was already halfway across the room when I heard him holler out, but I knew even despite the hat’s overt color, he wouldn’t be able to identify the thief. I was the Dalai Lama of blending into a crowd when I needed to be.   

     Not finding Emma in the main room, I slipped into a dark hallway. Between the coupled bodies and choppy breathing, I saw her. It was like the dark hallway was pointing at her, as if I needed any other hints that I needed to get her out of this place. She was sitting on a sofa arm, legs crossed, hands twisting around each other like they didn’t know what to do, shoulders slumped, eyes in that faraway place again.

     I didn’t need a psych degree to diagnosis her with a bad case of get-me-the-hell-out-of-here. I’d shoved my way through most of the bodies when an arm snaked around her neck. An arm I wanted to dislocate from its socket.

     Ty handed her a red cup. “Here, drink this.” Perhaps the only good thing about having heightened senses in a room like this was that I was able to zone in on his voice through the deafening drone surrounding me. “Is it too much to ask that you try to look like you’re having a good time? These are my friends, you know. Maybe you could show them the same amount of enthusiasm you like to show your asswipe friend.”

     Emma took the cup from him, but made no other show of acknowledging him and, to my relief, he made no more attempts at acknowledging her presence. In fact, he turned to the girl glommed a little too close to him given his relationship status, the epitome of girl-you-don’t-take-home-to-mama, and bent his mouth down to her ear, whispering something in it that made her flick a wink his way.

     Through this entire trash hits on trash transaction, Emma played oblivious, but Emma was not one of those oblivious girls. She was choosing to ignore it, for lord knows what reason, but it made me want to claim her girlfriend rights that she wasn’t and bitch-slap one and knee the other in the balls.

     Ty got pulled a few feet away into another stimulating conversation on the finer qualities of beer pong, or where you could find a size xxxs-near-non-existent jockstrap, or whatever lame brain things his brand of losers gravitated towards, and I took full advantage of his distraction. Crouching against the wall at the end of the hallway, I slid my hand between her fingers and the cup that turned out to be empty save for a swig.

     The jackhole handed her a cup of backwash.

     She looked at my hand, a smile already in its early stages when she looked up into the face of the hand’s owner. Her eyes bulged when she saw me ducked in the shadows, but the smile stayed in place. Taking a nervous glance Ty’s way, she leaned towards me.   “What are you doing here?” she asked one level above a whisper.

     Returning her grin, I pulled at her hand. “What are you doing here?”

     She didn’t budge from the sofa arm, like she’d been crazy glued to it. “Having a great time,” she answered.

     “Sure looks like you are,” I said, giving her hand another tug. I’d pick her up and carry her out of here if I had to, but it would be a helluva lot easier if she’d work with me. “Why don’t you keep the good times rolling and come with me?”

     She stalled, biting at her lip. Throwing one more glance at Ty’s back, she set the cup on the ground and ducked into the hallway next to me. She was pressed against me so close, we took up no more space than one person.

     “Well, are we just going to stand here?” Emma whispered against my neck. Holy goosebumps, Batman. “I flew the coop with the promise of good times to be had.”

     I angled my face down towards hers, so close my nose was skimming her forehead. I lost purchase of the comeback I was prepared to deliver, but when she tilted her face higher to mine, so the breath coming off her lips flowed against mine, I lost purchase of all twelve languages I knew fluently.

     Wordless, I pulled her up with me and led her down the hallway. She followed me, weaving her other hand through my elbow, and together we cut our own path out of the darkness. Spilling out onto the middle of the expanding dance floor, I turned and pulled her against me. Harder than I should have, closer than I should have, but I didn’t give a damn.

     “Dance with me,” I said, my whisper breaking against her ear.

     She answered me every way but verbally. Her hands slid up my arms, settling onto my shoulders, her body swayed against mine until we caught the beat of the music and each other, and her eyes gripped mine, warm, inviting, and scared.

     My hands worked over the curve of her back, pressing her closer, trying to memorize every dip and curve of her back.

     “Why are you here?” she asked after we’d danced in silence through an entire track. “Really?”

     Doing a quick survey of the room, glad to find it Ty-free, I answered, “Well, it isn’t for the cheap beer or ear-numbing music I can assure you.”

     “That’s why everyone else is here,” Emma replied, doing her own scan of the room, her fingers constricting into my shoulders a little deeper.

     “Yeah, well, I came to this about this one girl,” I said, easing my way into laying it all out on the line.

     “Did you find her?” she asked, her eyes latching on the ground.

     Stilling us, I did another scan of the room, but this time, instead of looking for douchebag extraordinaire, I paused on a couple dozen women, earning a sigh from Emma.

     My eyes ended on her and stayed on her for so long a blush crept up her neck and her eyes couldn’t hold mine any longer.

     But they didn’t stay away long. As if thinking the better of it, they veered back to mine and she held mine harder she ever had, a smile spreading into every plane of her face. The Emma smile I missed. The real one that made me feel like I was the only person on the face of the world she cared for.

     “Ah, there you are,” I said, part mesmerized, part hypnotized, but mostly just falling in love. “Nice to see the Emma I remember. Where have you been?”

     Her smile warped into the sad one I hate to see as she sighed. “That Emma you want to believe I am—the smiling, carefree, world at her fingertips girl you see when you’re around—that’s not who I am. I’m the girl who’s insecure, pessimistic, runs away from her problems, or when that doesn’t work, ignores them, and spends most of the present terrified of the future,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “I know, I sound amazing, don’t I?”

     I couldn’t understand why she identified herself as the shell of the girl I’d seen her as a few times. That wasn’t a person—that was a corpse warmed over.

     “So you see yourself one way and I see you in exactly the opposite way. Which girl do you want to be?”

     Another song pumped through the speakers, making those predeceasing it seem tame.      “It’s not that easy,” she replied. “It’s not who we want to be, but who we are that defines us.”

     That sounded profoundly wise. Too bad it wasn’t true. “That’s positively the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”

     “What did I tell you?” she said, lifting her mouth to my ear to cut through the bass shock waving around the room. “I’m a pessimist.”

     Curling my neck into her, I repeated, “Who do you want to be?” I wasn’t going to let her distract me from this, not when we were making progress.

     When her hands slid from my shoulders to the curve of my neck, her fingers weaving through my hair, I would have let her distract me from saving the world. “I want to be the person you think I am.”

     We weren’t moving against each other anymore, but our bodies locked together immobile just as well as they had in motion. “Good news for you then. That’s who you are,” I said. “The rest is just staying on that path.”

     Her laugh muffled into my neck. “Sounds easy.”

     “It is if you just stick with me, never leave my side, move in with me—”

     “That,” she interrupted, “sounds anything but easy.”

     “By your own admission, you said that the person you are when you’re around me is the person you want to be,” I said. “Lucky for you I like you and don’t mind you hanging around twenty-four seven striving to be all you can be.”

     “How generous of you.”

     There’s a sliver of silence while the stereo system took a breather before the next song—and I use the word song loosely—pounded through the room. It’s enough to put a crack in the spell Emma cast on me whenever she’s around. I remembered why I’m here. And it’s not to dance and flirt back and forth with her, although that took a close second. I was here to get her out of this place.

     “What are you doing here, Em?” I asked, never an advocate of segues.

     “Dancing with you,” she said, a smile in her voice.

     Damn if she didn’t have me there. “Let me specify. What are you doing holing up in this bottom feeder of a house? Why have you been afraid of so much as making eye contact with me?” Instead of punching something in frustration, I drew her closer, until she stilled the raging waters within. “What are you doing?”

     This, perhaps more than any of the others, was the question. The question I had no answer for. The question she had every answer for. The question that would open or slam closed the crack in the future of us.

      I felt her chest rise before she answered, “It’s complicated.”

     “Yeah,” I said. “That be-all-end-all answer you girls like to use holds no sway over me.” Clenching her shoulders, I looked down at her. “Spill it, Em. All of it.”

     She held my gaze for a moment or two before her lids fell like heavy curtains. The tri-wrinkle between her brows smoothed right before the rest of her face did and, when her eyes reopened, I knew she was ready.

     She was just opening her mouth when I spoke up. “Hold up. I know that face,” I said, waving my hand at her. “That’s an I’m-ready-to-give-you-the-key-to-the-safe-of-deep-secrets face. That’s a serious face.” One side of her mouth curved up in amusement. “Let’s get out of here. I prefer sordid confessions and spilling of guts over a bucket of ice cream.” I was already tugging her towards the door I’d entered hell to save an angel.

     “Sordid?” she said, giving me a look.

     “You’re not the only one who has some dishing to do tonight,” I said, putting on a blasé front. “My confessions may or may not be of a sordid nature. I’ll let you decide.”

     “Would it make any difference if I put up a fight?” she asked, not putting up any of a fight as I carved a line for us through the dance floor.

     “Of course not,” I said. “I’d just throw you over my shoulder and kidnap you if I had to.” When I glanced back over my shoulder at her, her eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were no longer glinting with happiness.

     A cocktail of surprise and fear floundered in them. I knew why, I knew I’d more than pressed my luck staying as long as I had, pressed up against another man’s women on the dance floor, so I was expecting what came next.

     Spinning around, I backed into Emma, knowing I couldn’t keep her safe from flying limbs, bottles, and whatever else got thrown into the mix if I wasn’t melded into her until it was hard to distinguish whose body was whose.

     The first strike came in the form of an outstretched arm coming from my ten o’clock, sweeping the kipped hat clean off my head.

     I pivoted a quarter turn, furious at the cheap shot. Not because I’d been made a fool of in front of northern California’s future burger flippers, but because spit-wad’s arm had come within a hair of smacking Emma across the face. His arm wouldn’t still be attached to his shoulder had that been the case.

     “I don’t believe you were on the invite list,” hat sweeper hollered at me over the music, his oiled biceps, only to be outdone by his oiled hair, making me wonder if he was more the thing of bad reality television than real Ivy League college life.

     “I didn’t realize you needed an invitation to hell,” I answered, every muscle, every fiber of my existence, zapping to life. “I thought you just kind of got sucked in with the rest of the riff-raff.”

     “Metro has a smart mouth. Isn’t that precious?” oily boy shouted into the crowd. The promises of a fight had caught the attention of everyone within a two room radius; the hellacious music had even dimmed to almost-permanently-ruin-your-ear-drums volume.

     “Would you guys stop calling me a metro already?”  I replied, rolling my eyes. “Because I can promise you no metro can hit like this.”

     And to further clarify, I demonstrated on the wannabe reality-tv star.

     In all honesty, it wasn’t that hard of a hit. Just a soft right hook to the jaw that sent him spiraling backwards into the drywall. After witnessing the pucker in the drywall his head created before he slid to the ground, where he’d be sleeping it off the rest of tonight and tomorrow, I knew I had to recalibrate my “soft” when it came to whacking entitled, tough guy posers in the future.

     The crowd took a collective giant step back as a dozen more carbon copies with varying degrees of oiliness stepped forward. What I hadn’t wanted was a frat boy war on my hands when I’d entered the door, but now that they were in front of me, eager and willing, it felt like just the thing I needed to burn off a little steam.

     “Hey, Rapunzel,” carbon copy at my six o’clock called out, tilting his chin at me. “So you can land a hit on a rip-roaring drunk guy, good for you. What are you going to do when all of us come at you with an ass-whooping? Flick us with your golden hair?” He grinned into the crowd as he stretched his Thanksgiving day turkey sized arms over his chest. The guy preceded a fight by prepping and stretching his muscles. What—as the English would say—a wanker.

     “Why don’t you put some action behind those words?” I said, keeping one arm trained on Emma, the other slack at my side, but ready.

     “Hey, Emma,” idle threat boy called out, like he’d just remembered she was there. “Didn’t Ty tell you to steer clear of this loser?”

     I felt every muscle in her body going rigid in defiance. I wanted her to tell this guy off just as much as I wanted her to stay silent and let me “deal” with the situation. In the end, she proved we were more cut from the same fabric than I’d realized.

     “Ty doesn’t control my every move,” she said, her voice even and strong. “He can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

     Boy who was getting on my nerves, about to wear a dent the shape of my fist in his forehead the rest of his life, chuckled like she’d just said the cutest thing he’d ever heard. “That’s not what I hear, sweetie. That’s not what I hear.”

     With a cluck of his tongue, another guy behind us reached for Emma, but before he could pull her away from me, I was in his face, wondering if I’d used teleportation or just moved that fast.

     “Don’t. Touch. Her.”

     I didn’t think my words, or the breath steaming out of my teeth, needed any further clarification as to what the repercussions would be if my warning went unheeded. The guy I was staring down in front of me got it—he saw I was a man on death row with nothing to lose if he didn’t listen to me.

     The guy behind me didn’t get it.

     His arms had just ringed around Emma’s arms when I was on him. And by on him, I mean literally on him. Seeing him touching her in a way that was the opposite of gentle lit a stick of dynamite in me, and I became a bundle of muscle and fury controlled by animal instinct.

     “Keep your hands off her!”

     Tackling him to the floor, I pinned his shoulders to the ground with my knees and made good use of his head by imagining it was my punching bag back home. I made a Picasso of his face before the next guy could get to me.

     It was as simple as a tuck and roll to dodge a grown man’s best attempts at ending me. Pathetic. Why didn’t men learn to fight like men anymore, instead of the caveman-chimpanzee creature with raw physicality they’d supposedly evolved from?

     Two down, ten more to go, provided no else decided to join in and earn a purple heart of stupidity.

     Shoving off my back, I flipped to a stand as the goon platoon made a rush at their enemy target. An explosion of fists and feet peppered me. In holding to the man code I ascribed to, although man was a stretch in this instance, I allowed them all their one hit, punch, kick, or sucker-shot.

     And then it was my turn.

     I knew I had this great advantage known as Immortality, but even at that, it shouldn’t have been so easy. Yes, my muscles were like a kind of pliable adamantium, but they weren’t wielded with invincibility. Yes, my instincts were the sharpest kind of sharp, but they weren’t so perfect that they didn’t let a single shot land on me. Yes, I was a helluva good fighter, but throwing down with these guys was different.

     I was fighting for a purpose, a personal vendetta, a war I’d actively participated in instead of being told I was going to play a role in and that brought an intricacy to my fighting that shouldn’t be allowed in life, both Mortal and Immortal.

     Everything stilled, sound blurred into a dull echo, and I used this stolen moment in time to locate Emma. She was in the same place I’d left her, eyes bulging, hands covering her mouth, looking every shade of terrified, but she was far enough to the side she was in the danger free zone.

     But, just to be safe, I pushed our ball of man rage a few feet in the opposite direction. With the force of a tidal wave, time and sound crashed down on me again, right along with ten bodies weighing in at a deuce to a deuce and a half each. Calming my mind, the rest of me went into a frenzy, fists connecting with flesh, knees smashing unprotected soft spots, forearms crushing windpipes—it was all too easy.

     Like swatting away a handful of snowflakes swirling around me.

     Laughably easy, like world champion fighters shouldn’t engage in a fight with two year olds easy, but I was too deep into the rage zone to make adjustments. To pull my hits just before they landed. To put a lull in the whirl of blows escaping from my body. To call surrender before I really hurt someone. I’d become the animal, the mama bear whose cub was threatened. I was merciless, unrestrained by a conscience, and out for blood.

     The blood was splattered up to my elbows when a laugh cut through the almost silent room. It was a laugh that didn’t need a face. I would have recognized it a millennium away, it was that chilling. And menacing.

     Pulling the punch that was aimed at the cheek hollow of the guy I was keeping trapped with a fistful of tee-shirt in my other hand, I shoved him away, knowing who I wanted to be taking all this rage out on was behind me. The poor kid slumped to the ground as soon as I let him go, joining eleven others that were being dragged from the makeshift fighting arena.

     “Pretty boy can fight,” Ty’s voice snaked through the room. “Gotta say I didn’t see that one coming.” Another laugh, low and lazy—like he thought this unworthy of his attention—exploded into all the silent spaces of the room. “But I suppose the water boy could have done the same against a few guys that were so drunk they couldn’t locate their dicks to take a piss.”

     I wasn’t sure when a dozen men became classified as a few. I must have missed that memo. “I see your manners are still as confused as your sexuality,” I said, grinning at him in mock innocence.

     Ty Steel wasn’t a man who could take a joke, as was evident from the red hulk trembling before me. I’d learned from my psych course that a person sensitive to a personal jest was insecure and likely harbored a belief that he or she was exactly what the jest was implying. Was I to assume, given Ty’s reaction, that he was indeed confused about his sexuality? I didn’t really believe it, but man, it gave me a good laugh thinking about it.

     The first valuable, real world application thing I’d learned in college.

     “I have a strict no bitches policy allowed at my parties,” he said, breaking through the shoulder-to-shoulder circle around me. He was shirtless and fumbling with his belt. At first I thought it was because he was trying to take it off to use as a do-it-yourself weapon, but he was cinching it back on. A glance over his shoulder revealed the girl no boys’ mamas had met, hard at work adjusting her dress into the right spots of barely covering those spots. I didn’t think there was enough hate within me to loathe Ty more, but lo and behold, there was plenty.

     I glanced over my shoulder at Emma and, while there was a selfish piece of me that wanted her to see the cheating monster of a boyfriend in front of her—still slicked in sweat, girl of questionable reputation flushed and panting behind him—but every other unselfish bone in my body hoped she’d missed it. Prayed she’d be looking any other direction but Ty’s.

     Of course she wasn’t.

     And instead of looking furious, or ready to crumble in tears, her face barely registered emotion. Staring at her boyfriend, freshly sated from someone other than his girlfriend, her eyes narrowed the teensiest bit, like she was nothing more than mildly irritated at his “indiscretion.”

     However, I knew Emma, and unlike the rest of us, what brewed inside her rarely surfaced. She was the epitome of keeping her emotions bottled, but I hoped when that lid burst one day, it scalded Ty to a lumpy, unrecognizable blob.

     “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from this ass-wipe?” Ty directed at Emma, waving a flexed arm between her and me.

     “Ty—” she began, her eyes flickering to me.

     “Shut up,” Ty interrupted, lifting a flat palm at her. “I’m sick of hearing your voice. In fact, I’m sick of seeing your fugly face. Go grab me a beer. I’m going to need it when I’m done with this little bitch.”

     I saw red like I’d never seen it before. It took up my vision like a curtain of blood. The scrap of restraint I’d been grasping the past minute slid like sand through my hands and, once again, I was the thing of which nightmares were made of.

     I leapt in his direction, tackling him to the ground in the same movement. Ty’s eyes hadn’t even had a chance to widen in realization before my first fist pounded the side of his face. A splatter of blood exploded from his mouth, mixing with the rest of the guys’ blood that stood in my way on the floor.

     Ty didn’t put up a fight, not because he didn’t try, but because he didn’t stand a chance with me. My fists came one right after another, keeping a beat that surpassed the music that faded into the background. I found I had no conscience, no mental bells chiming, when I fought Ty.

     A man of his caliber didn’t deserve consciousness. A man like him deserved exactly what he was receiving, exactly what I was doling out, unsure if I could stop. I felt no guilt, no remorse, no bone crushing beneath my knuckles, like pounding a lump of bread dough.

     Blood was everywhere, taking up more real estate than the skin, clothing, and floor around us when the only voice that could have gotten through to me screamed behind me.

     “Enough!” Emma shouted, racing up behind me. “Patrick, enough!”

     I heard her and understood her words, but my rage wouldn’t obey them. When the elbow of the opposite arm that was landing a punch punctured the air, something reached out and snagged in.

     Her hands wrapping around me did the trick—I stopped mid-strike.

     “He’s had enough,” she whispered beside me, her voice shaking. Kneeling beside me, the ball of adrenaline, and the unconscious Ty, she tilted my face until I was looking into her eyes. Calm entered me then, chasing the rage back into its cages. “You need to go,” she instructed, lifting her eyes to the exit.

     When I stayed frozen, splayed over Ty, she added, “Now.”

     And then she turned her attention to Ty, her face lining. Looking up at a couple guys in close proximity, she said, “Let’s get him to his bedroom and get him cleaned up.”

     The duo did as asked, giving themselves a shake before carrying out their duty of dragging a limp Ty out of the bloodied arena. Emma watched him being dragged off, slumping where she kneeled and closing her eyes.

     What had I done? This wasn’t a fight between a bunch of guys. This was a massacre. I’d known it would be, and I still allowed myself to be engaged in hand to hand battle with Mortals. Inebriated Mortals. It was clear I wasn’t safe to be around, at least for any low life of the Ty Steel variety. Now, and maybe never.

     As long as Emma was in Ty’s life, I couldn’t be in hers. Look what I’d done to it. I’d gone all silverback on her boyfriend right in front of her eyes. Blood splatters dotted the side of her face. The blood I’d spilled from her boyfriend’s face.

     The one I’d just come close to killing.

     I leapt up, fighting a formidable urge to embrace her when it looked like she’d never needed one more, and plunged through the gape-mouthed crowd towards the door.

     This time, my guilt gave me unparalleled speed, not my Immortality. I was out the door and loping across the lawn towards the Mustang before anyone knew I’d left.

     The frat house was still silent from its shock, and those that had been puking, humping, or rambling in the front yard had succumbed to the slumber of the inebriated, so when the Mustang’s engine fired to life, it exploded like a sonic bomb. Yet through the growls and snarls of the engine, I heard her voice, soft and urgent.

     Fighting over heeding her words or punching the Mustang into reverse and driving until the road ran out, my choice was made for me when a soft knock came outside my window.

     Sucking in a breath through my teeth, I rolled down the window. I couldn’t look at her—my eyes stayed glued to the steering wheel. Again, the shame and guilt taking the lead.

     “Are you okay?” she asked, crouching down until her head hung just outside the window. Still, I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t deserve to.

     “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.

     “Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?” she asked, misunderstanding.

     It was almost funny, in that sick I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry kind of way, that she was offering me aid when I wouldn’t have a bruise tomorrow to prove I’d been in a fight of a lifetime and her boyfriend, a hundred feet away, was five punches away from dead.

     “No, no. I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks, though. You should probably get Ty to an emergency room though. He’s going to need some stitches.” I swallowed compliments of yours truly. “I’ll cover all his medical expenses.”

     Emma cut me off. “Don’t worry about Ty. His dad has this great medical insurance plan known as being a doctor.”

     Bloody doctors. I was surrounded by them at every turn in my life. I was going to become the anti-doctor, whatever that was. Although, I suppose after my actions tonight, I’d become just that.

     “Good for him,” I answered, not able to stand much more of this. I wasn’t good with long goodbyes; any goodbyes at all, in fact. Ty wasn’t safe around me, but he was around Emma most of the time. Therefore, Emma wasn’t safe around me either. At this juncture, good-bye was the only option.

     “Wait,” she said, reaching her arm across me, stalling my efforts of shifting into gear. “We’ve got a date scheduled for this weekend. Girl’s choice,” she said, like the fight that would become a legend at Stanford for the next two generations hadn’t just gone down. “Meet me at this address tomorrow night. Six o’clock?” she said, handing me a piece of paper with a location scrolled on it.

     She waited for me to show some recognition that I’d heard her and would be there, unmoving, her hand still folded over the one of mine gripping the shifter. She wasn’t allowing me to run away like I wanted to. She was holding me accountable, holding me to her.

     Knowing this was my chance to end it, to save her from the mess that was Patrick Hayward, I nodded my answer. “I’ll be there.”

     “Good,” she said, obviously satisfied as she removed her hand from mine and stepped away from the window. “Don’t be late.”

     As the tires screeched over the pavement, tattooing the road with a couple of black streaks, I knew I shouldn’t go. Emma getting stood up on our “pretend” date was a million times better than me showing up and dragging her further into my dangerous life. We were two different beings, our paths in life would never intersect, no matter how hard we tried to force them. When the stars had aligned, mine had been as far away from hers as the universe could put us. The only answer, the only acceptable solution, was to stay as far away from Emma Scarlett as Stanford would allow.

     A few miles, an on-ramp, and a hundred and ten MPHs later, all these warnings were forgotten. Setting barricades up between Emma and me was pointless—there was nothing that could stop me when I came charging through, as I knew I would every time.

     I wouldn’t only be on time tomorrow night, I’d be ten minutes early.