Chapter 43 Pebbles
POV: Carly
She could not sleep.
Four in the morning and she had been staring at the ceiling for three hours with her blanket pulled up to her chin and her phone turned off on the nightstand and her brain running the same loop on repeat with no signs of stopping.
Whitney was asleep. Katy was asleep. The whole building was asleep. The whole campus was asleep. The fog of Black River Falls pressed against the window the way it always did at this hour and everything was quiet and still and she could not turn her brain off for even thirty consecutive seconds.
She had replayed the classroom fight until she had every word memorized. She had replayed the words she said to him and the way his face went still and the way he walked past her and she had replayed the hallway and the door and both sides of it until she wanted to pull her own hair out.
She had also replayed the lounge.
And the empty classroom with Tommy.
And the way she had said everybody just needs to stop kissing me and walked out on him without an explanation and not texted him since.
She was a mess.
She closed her eyes.
A small sound hit the window.
She opened her eyes.
Then another one. Small and sharp against the glass.
She sat up slowly.
A third one.
She pushed the blanket off and swung her legs over the side of the bed and crossed the room on careful feet, wincing at every creak in the old floor. Whitney did not move. Katy did not move.
She pushed the window open just enough to get her head out.
The cold hit her face immediately. The fog was sitting low across the lawn below, the amber path lights barely cutting through it. She looked down.
Niko was standing on the grass with a handful of small pebbles and an expression that suggested he was aware of how this looked and had decided to do it anyway.
She stared at him.
He pointed down at the ground.
She pressed her lips together. "What are you doing." She whispered it barely loud enough to carry.
He pointed at the ground again.
"Are you serious." She whispered.
He pointed.
She pulled the window shut and stood in the dark room and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Then she grabbed her jacket off the hook and her phone off the nightstand and tiptoed out.
POV: Katy
She heard the window.
She had been awake for an hour already which was normal for her. Vampires did not keep human hours and Katy had been managing the gap between her natural schedule and the academy's required one since she arrived. She was good at lying still and keeping her breathing even and letting the humans around her think she was asleep.
She heard the window open.
She heard Carly's careful steps across the floor.
She heard the door click shut.
She lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling.
She had not said anything since the classroom day. Had watched Carly come back to the room that evening with red eyes and tight shoulders and the specific expression of someone who had been crying in a bathroom somewhere and was hoping nobody would notice. Had watched her turn her phone off and get into bed at nine thirty which Carly McPherson had never done once in the entire time Katy had been living in this room.
She had said nothing.
She was saying nothing now.
She heard the faint sound of footsteps on the path below the window and listened to them fade toward the east side of campus.
Katy turned onto her side and closed her eyes.
Whatever was happening with Carly and whoever was throwing pebbles at their window at four in the morning was not her business.
She was going to make it her business eventually.
But not tonight.
Tonight she was going to lie here and be uncharacteristically patient and let it play out.
She was almost looking forward to seeing how it landed.
POV: Carly
He was leaning against the building when she came around the corner, hands in his pockets, curls slightly wild from the cold wind coming off the tree line.
She hit him on the back of the head before he could turn around.
He spun and grabbed the back of his head with a look of genuine offense.
"Pebbles." She said. Keeping her voice low. "Really."
"It worked didn't it." He said.
She crossed her arms. "It's four in the morning."
"I'm aware." He said.
She looked at him more carefully in the dim light of the path. His eyes were glossy and his movements were slightly loose and she could smell the scotch from two feet away.
"Are you drunk." She said.
He considered this with more effort than the question required. "Umm. Yes?"
She pressed her fingers to her forehead.
"I can hold my liquor." He said. "Sort of."
"Niko." She said.
He waved his hand. "Don't worry love, don't worry. I came here with a purpose. I needed to talk to you."
"This couldn't have waited until morning."
He looked at her like she had said something genuinely funny. "As if you'd actually let me talk to you in the morning."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
He wasn't wrong.
She exhaled. "Fine. What."
He looked at her for a moment. Then his eyes moved over her slowly in the way that always made her feel seen even when she did not want to be. Her pajama pants and tank top and the jacket she had grabbed in a hurry and her hair completely undone from sleep.
"You look ravishing." He said. "Even in your pajamas."
She scoffed. "You're drunk."
"The two things aren't related." He said.
She pulled her jacket tighter. "Niko. It's four in the morning. What did you need to say."
He looked at the ground for a moment.
When he looked back up something had changed in his expression. The looseness was still there but underneath it something more serious had surfaced.
"I slept with Aurora." He said.
The cold air went completely still around her.