Chapter 58 Whitney
POV: Carly
She stepped fully away from Niko.
Not because she wanted to. Because Whitney was looking at her like she had never seen her before and that look required her full attention and all the space she could give it.
"It is what it looks like." Niko said from behind her. Calm and unhelpful.
She shot him a look over her shoulder.
He raised his hands slightly. Not sorry about it.
She turned back to Whitney.
"Can we just talk." Carly said. "Please. Just give me a minute to explain."
Whitney's eyes were still moving between them. The shock on her face was settling into something harder. Something that Carly recognized as the expression Whitney wore when she had already made a decision and was working backward through her feelings to justify it.
"Explain what." Whitney said. "Why you're kissing Niko Monroeson in a hallway or why his hands were on you."
"Those two things go together, love." Niko said. "No pun intended."
Carly turned fully. "Could you please not help right now."
He pressed his lips together.
She turned back.
Whitney had already started walking.
Carly went after her.
"Whit. Whitney. Stop." She kept her voice low and urgent and followed her down the corridor away from the gym doors. "Please just stop walking for one second."
Whitney stopped.
She turned around slowly and her arms crossed over her chest and her jaw was set and Carly had known this girl for ten years and had never once been afraid of this specific version of her face.
She was a little afraid of it now.
"How long." Whitney said.
Carly exhaled. "A few weeks."
"Weeks." Whitney repeated.
"It started with the project." Carly said. "Professor Swanson paired us and we had to spend time together and things just. Started happening. I didn't plan it."
"And Tommy." Whitney said.
Carly pressed her lips together. "I know."
"You cheated on Tommy." Whitney said. Not a question.
"Yes." Carly said quietly. "I know how bad that is. I know."
Whitney looked at her for a long moment. Something moved through her face that was more complicated than just anger. Something that looked almost like pain.
"You were going to tell me eventually." Whitney said. "Or were you just going to keep lying."
"I wanted to tell you." Carly said. "You were the first person I wanted to tell when this started. But I knew how you'd react and I was scared."
"So you lied to my face." Whitney said. "Every day. For weeks."
"Yes." Carly said. "And I'm sorry. I am genuinely sorry for that part."
"Just that part." Whitney said.
Carly felt the heat rise in her chest. "I'm not going to apologize for how I feel about him."
Whitney laughed. A short humorless sound. "How you feel about him." She shook her head. "Carly you don't even know what he is. What they are. What they do."
"I know exactly what he is." Carly said carefully.
"Do you." Whitney said. "Do you know what it is to have a vampire decide your life doesn't matter. To watch someone you love get taken apart piece by piece because one of them decided they were hungry or bored or just felt like it."
Carly went still.
Whitney's eyes were bright. Too bright. The kind of bright that came right before something broke.
"My father." Whitney said. Her voice dropping to almost nothing. "Is one of the most ruthless vampires in this region. He chose to leave when I was seven years old. Not because he wanted to. Because my mother made him. Because she found out what he had been doing to the families in our town. What he had been doing to our family." She stopped. "To her."
Carly's mouth opened slightly.
She had known Whitney for ten years.
She had never heard any of this.
"My mother is a witch." Whitney said. "The strongest woman I have ever known. And he nearly broke her completely. And when she finally got him out she sat me down and explained exactly what he was and exactly why we would spend the rest of our lives making sure nothing like him ever got close to us again." She looked at Carly with those bright burning eyes. "So yes. I hate vampires. I have earned every single piece of that hatred. And you knew that. You have known that about me since we were twelve years old."
Carly felt the tears burning at the back of her throat.
"Whit." She said softly.
"Don't." Whitney said. "Don't Whit me right now."
Carly took a breath. "I hear you. I hear everything you just said and I am so sorry about your father and what he did to your family. That is real and it is terrible and you deserved none of it." She held Whitney's gaze. "But Niko didn't do that. He has never once done anything to hurt either of us."
"Yet." Whitney said.
"That's not fair." Carly said.
"None of this is fair." Whitney said. "You standing in a hallway defending a vampire to me is not fair. You lying to my face for weeks is not fair. You cheating on Tommy is not fair." Her voice was shaking now. "You are my best friend. You were supposed to be the one person who understood why I feel the way I feel and you went and did the one thing that tells me you never actually did."
"That is not true." Carly said. "I understand you. I understand exactly where your pain comes from and I respect it. But you cannot ask me to hate someone because of what his species has done. That is the same logic that makes them hate us."
Whitney flinched.
"You're my best friend." Carly said. Her voice breaking on it. "Ten years. You have been the person I trusted most in the world for ten years and I need you to trust me on this. He is not your father. He is not what you're afraid of."
Whitney looked at her.
For one moment something shifted in her face. Something that looked like the ten years. Like the girl who had sat with Carly through every hard thing and been the soft place to land every time.
Then it closed.
"I can't." Whitney said quietly. "I cannot watch you do this and act like it doesn't terrify me. I cannot be your best friend and watch you walk into something that I know ends badly and smile about it." She straightened. "And I won't."
Carly felt the ground shift.
"So that's it." She said.
"I'm not going to tell Tommy." Whitney said. "That's yours to do. But I can't." She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "I just can't Care."
She turned and pushed back through the gym doors.
The sound of the crowd swallowed her up.
Carly stood alone in the corridor and felt the specific silence of something ending.
Ten years.
Gone in a hallway outside a pep rally.
She stood there for a long moment with her arms loose at her sides and her eyes burning and the gym noise muffled behind the doors and she could not make herself move.
POV: Whitney
She made it back to her spot in the bleachers before anything showed on her face.
She was good at that. She had been good at that for a very long time.
She sat down and crossed her arms and fixed her expression and watched the rest of the pep rally with the specific blankness of someone who was very busy not feeling something they were absolutely feeling.
She thought about Carly's face when she said Niko didn't do that.
She thought about the ten years.
She thought about her mother sitting across from her at the kitchen table when Whitney was seven years old explaining in careful words what her father was and what he had done and why he could never come back. How her mother's hands had been completely steady the entire time even though everything else about her was not. How Whitney had understood more than her mother thought she understood even at seven because she had always understood more than people thought.
She thought about the thing she had never told anyone.
Not Carly. Not her mother after a certain point. Not any of the coven girls she had grown up with.
The thing she carried so quietly that some days she almost forgot it was there.
Almost.
She uncrossed her arms and folded her hands in her lap and looked at the gym floor where the football team was now running drills for the crowd.
She was not angry at Carly.
She was terrified for her.
And underneath the terror was something she had no language for yet and was not going to look at directly in the middle of a gymnasium full of people.
She thought about what Carly had said.
That is the same logic that makes them hate us.
She pressed her lips together.
She was not going to cry in the bleachers of a pep rally.
She was absolutely not going to do that.
She looked at her hands in her lap and breathed and let the noise of the crowd wash over her and told herself she had done the right thing.
She was less sure about that than she had been thirty seconds ago.
She was going to be less sure about it for a very long time.
Author's Note:
Whitney's father is a ruthless vampire who nearly destroyed her mother and Whitney has been carrying that her whole life and Carly had no idea and I am not okay.