Page 131 of Inception

“Save him from what? What was the vision?” It came out loud and frantic, like a child lost in the woods, calling out for its parents. I hardly identified the sound as my own.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Nikki, shoving Morgan out of her way. “He’s going to get himself killed! Foryou—because ofyou—to saveyou! Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You’re lying!” My immediate instinct was to reject it. To reject these foul words that were nothing more than the desperate attempts of a desperate girl trying to hold on to a guy that no longer loved her.

“I’m not lying,” she said, her expression overcome with despair. “I wish to God that I was.”

I shook my head hard as though trying to shake the conversation loose from my mind.

“Just ask him. He’ll tell you the truth if you ask him.” Water pooled in her aquamarine eyes.

The veracity hit me like a gunshot, making me feel sick to my stomach. She wasn’t lying. Every cell in my body knew it. She was telling the truth and she was petrified to her core of it.

Trace was going to die.

Because of me.

41. PARTY CRASHER

It took me a while to get myself together enough to leave the washroom. Trace was waiting for me outside the door when I walked out behind Nikki and Morgan. The concern in his eyes only made it harder for me to look at him. To face him. I was angry with him for not telling me the truth about the vision—the real reason he had been keeping his distance from me when I first moved here. He knew getting close to me would eventually kill him and he did it anyway. My anger ebbed as a flood of other emotions cannonballed through me.

“Are you okay?” he asked me as the three of us circled around him. His hand came out towards me, a sympathetic gesture, but I twisted away from his reach.

“I’m fine.” I couldn’t find the warmth in my voice anymore. I was already building a wall around myself, laying out the bricks in a frenzy, only this time, it wasn’t to protect myself from the outside. It was to keep the outside—to keep Trace—from getting in.

Morgan stepped into Trace’s line of vision. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He tried looking around her. “Jemma—”

“It’s important,” she pushed.

With his shoulders back, he nodded and then followed her over to the main bar that was already swarming with students and faculty alike. His eyes grazed over me as she spoke to him, letting me know I was the topic of their discussion. I wondered if she was alerting him to the fact that I knew the truth. That I finally knew his secret. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking at that very moment. Would he be willing to accept the inevitable heartbreak that would come when I told him I could no longer see him?

“You need to stop this thing with him before it’s too late,” said Nikki, watching Trace from a distance like an implacable lioness stalking her prey.

“How am I supposed to do that?” I could feel a heavy thickness settling into the back of my throat. “What am I supposed to say to him?”

“Figure it out, or I’ll figure it out for you.” Her words were meant as a threat and she wasn’t even trying to hide it. “I won’t let him die, not for anyone, and certainly not foryou. You’re not even worth the gum under his shoes.”

“And you are?” I shot back, angered by her constant barrage of biting comments.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” she answered, her tone a sadistic song of secrecy.

God, I hated that tone. I hated everything about her.

She turned on her heel and started off towards Morgan and Trace but paused suddenly, mid-strut. “Oh. I almost forgot,” she said, spinning behind an umbrella of long, ebony locks. “Taylor’s outside looking for you. It sounded important.”

“Okay.” She totally didn’t have to relay that message to me. Maybe she was turning over a new leaf. “Thank you.”

Her lips curled up on one side. “You’re so very unwelcome.”

Okay then. Maybe not.

I made my way to the front of the Hotel and exited through the double glass doors. I spotted Taylor right away; under the veranda, chatting privately with Hannah and a senior guy whose name I couldn’t remember.

“Hey, is everything okay?” I asked Taylor as I approached the three of them. “Nikki said you were looking for me.”

“Walk with me?” There was something odd about her tone though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It definitely lacked that distinct bubbly pitch that was all Taylor.

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