Chapter 62: Boyfriend

POV: Carly

He kissed her.

Right there. In the cafeteria. In front of everyone.

She was mid-sentence and his lips were on hers and the surprise of it lasted about half a second before she kissed him back and felt the specific relief of something that had been building for weeks finally having somewhere to go.

She pulled back first.

Only because she remembered where they were.

She leaned her forehead against his and looked at him and he was looking back with that expression. The real one. The one that only came out in specific places and specific moments and was now apparently also available in crowded school cafeterias in front of the entire student body.

She laughed softly.

He looked slightly dazed.

She pulled back properly and tucked her hair behind her ear and straightened up and felt approximately three hundred pairs of eyes still fixed in their direction.

She did not care.

She genuinely did not care and the not caring felt extraordinary.

"I didn't think I was too late." She said quietly. "That you were done waiting."

He looked at her. "I told you. You're worth waiting for Carly McPherson." He said it simply. Like it was just a fact. "Despite the daily threat to my sanity."

She laughed properly at that and felt him squeeze her hand under the table.

"Monroeson." Enzo's voice cut through. Low and pointed. "A word."

Niko turned to look at him with an expression that said very clearly that a word was not something he was interested in providing right now.

Enzo leaned forward on the table with his arms crossed and his jaw set. "How long."

"That's not one word." Niko said.

"Nik." Mauricio said from the end of the table. Quiet and even. "Come on."

Niko sighed. "A few weeks." He said. "And before either of you say anything I'll remind you that my personal life is exactly that."

Enzo sat back. "Right. Your personal life. That you are now conducting very publicly at our lunch table."

"Enzo." Niko said.

"I'm just saying." Enzo said.

Carly kept her eyes forward and her expression neutral and pretended she was not sitting approximately eight inches from where this conversation was happening.

"I'm Carly." She said because sitting there silently felt worse. She looked at Enzo directly. "We haven't officially met."

Enzo looked at her for a moment.

His expression was the specific kind of unreadable that came from someone who was deciding something and had not decided it yet.

"Lorenzo the Third." He said. "Enzo." He did not extend his hand. Did not smile. Just stated it.

"Enzo." She said with a nod.

"You lead the witch faction." He said.

"I do." She said.

"Who as of this morning." He said. "Also broke up with the alpha of the wolf pack." He glanced at Niko. "So you have both the wolves and the witches currently unhappy with you. And now you're sitting at our table." He looked back at Carly. "Making the vampires the next on that list presumably."

"Enzo." Niko said again. A warning this time.

"I'm not being hostile." Enzo said. "I'm being accurate."

Mauricio cleared his throat from the end of the table and leaned forward slightly. "Mauricio O'Neil." He said to Carly with a cautious nod that was at least attempting friendliness. "Nice to officially meet you."

"You too." She said. And meant it because he was the only one at this table currently making any effort.

"Well." Aurora said.

Everyone looked at her.

She had been quiet since Carly sat down. Quiet in the specific way that meant the quiet was doing a lot of work. Her arms were crossed and her green eyes were fixed on Niko with an expression that Carly had been tracking from her peripheral and had been dreading the full version of.

"I didn't realize I needed to hear about this from a cafeteria." Aurora said. Her voice was completely level. That was somehow worse than if it had not been.

"Aurora." Niko said.

"I'm fine." She said. Still completely level. "I'm just noting that a heads up would have been a courtesy. Given everything."

"I know." Niko said. "I should have told you sooner."

"Yes." She said. "You should have."

She looked at Carly then. Directly. For the first time since Carly had sat down.

Carly held it.

She had expected cruelty from this look. She had been bracing for it. What she found instead was something more complicated than cruelty. Something that had hurt underneath it and was covering that hurt with composure because composure was what Aurora did.

Carly understood that particular instinct more than she wanted to admit.

"He was thinking about you." Aurora said quietly to Carly. "While he was with me. The last time." She said it simply. Not as a weapon. As a fact she had been carrying and had decided to put down. "I knew it then. I just didn't say it."

Carly said nothing.

Aurora looked at Niko one more time.

Something moved through her face that lasted less than a second and was gone before it could be named.

Then she stood up and picked up her bag.

"I seemed to have lost my appetite." She said. "More in the mood for something warm and bloody." She looked at Carly. "Maybe miss cheerleader can offer a vein or two and feed the whole table."

Niko was on his feet immediately. "That is enough."

Aurora smiled. "You actually remember I exist. Good to know." She looked between them both. "I'll say this once and then I'm done. Whatever you two are playing at." She paused. "One of you is going to get hurt badly and we all know which one." She picked up her jacket. "You'll be reminded every single day what he is. That you'll never fully know that part of him. And one day that will matter more than all of this." She gestured at the table. At them. At the cafeteria. At all of it.

"Are you done." Niko said. Low and careful.

She looked at him for one last moment.

"Yes." She said. Quietly. Like she meant more than just the conversation. "I think I am."

She walked away.

Niko watched her go with his jaw set and something complicated moving through his face that he did not address. He sat back down slowly.

Carly reached over and put her hand over his on the table.

He looked at it for a moment.

Then he looked at her.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"Don't be." She said. "This was always going to happen. We knew that."

He turned his hand over under hers and held it properly.

"We're okay." She said.

He exhaled. "Yeah." He said. "We are."

She kissed him again. Quick and soft. Just because she could. Just because she was allowed to now and the newness of that was something she wanted to mark.

He smiled against her mouth.

She pulled back and found him looking at her with that expression and she was going to have to get used to seeing it in public and she was completely prepared to do that.

"Okay." Enzo said from across the table. "I need you both to stop that immediately."

"No." Niko said pleasantly.

Enzo pointed at Mauricio. "Are you seeing this."

Mauricio pressed his lips together. "I'm seeing it."

"And you're fine with it." Enzo said.

Mauricio looked at Carly. Then at Niko. Then at their joined hands on the table.

"Not my call." He said simply.

Enzo threw his hands up.

Carly bit her lip to keep the laugh from escaping and felt Niko squeeze her hand and looked at the cafeteria around them. The whispers were still going. The stares had not fully dissipated. Tommy's table was empty which meant he was somewhere and had not yet appeared.

She was going to deal with all of that.

She was going to deal with all of it.

Right now she was sitting at a table she had never sat at with a person she had spent five years telling herself she despised and his hand was holding hers and the cafeteria was watching and she did not want to be anywhere else.

She picked up her taco.

She kept eating.

POV: Enzo

He had seen a lot of things in his time at Black River Academy.

He had seen Niko talk his way out of a detention slip for feeding on a student in broad daylight. He had seen Marcel talk a teacher into giving him full marks on an essay he had not written. He had once watched Aurora compel an entire classroom into believing a fire drill was happening so she could leave early for a party.

He had never seen Niko Monroeson hold someone's hand in public.

He had certainly never seen him smile the way he was smiling right now which was frankly unsettling because it made him look like an entirely different person and Enzo was not sure he was prepared for that.

He looked at the witch sitting next to his best friend.

Carly McPherson.

He knew the name the way everyone at Black River Academy knew the name. Supreme coven leader. Cheer captain. Student council. The whole package. She had been the untouchable witch who stared across the cafeteria like the other side of the room did not exist for as long as he had been here.

And now she was sitting next to Niko eating a taco.

He looked at Mauricio.

Mauricio shrugged.

Enzo looked back at the couple.

He thought about Aurora walking out. About the expression she had been wearing since Carly sat down that she had been covering with composure and not entirely succeeding. He thought about six months of watching Niko not quite be present in anything that was happening around him and not being able to figure out why.

He looked at Niko's face right now.

He was present.

Fully. Completely. Like someone had turned a light on somewhere behind his eyes that had been dimmed for a long time.

Enzo picked up his drink.

He was not going to say he was fine with this. He was not there yet and he did not know if he was going to get there and he reserved the right to feel complicated about a witch sitting at their table for reasons that went beyond personal preference.

But he was also not stupid.

He could see what he was looking at.

He drank his drink.

Said nothing else.

Filed it away.

He would have opinions later.

Right now Niko looked like himself for the first time in longer than Enzo wanted to admit and that was going to have to be enough for the moment.