Page 85 of Inception

“Are you alright?” asked Gabriel under his breath. He must have noticed the rigid turn my walk had taken.

“Perfectly,” I lied, though it was drowned out by Taylor shouting my name as she left Carly’s side and rushed over to greet us.

“I’m so happy you came!” She threw her arms around my neck and waltzed us into that jackrabbit dance again. And by us, I mean her. I just sort of got dragged along for the ride.

Gabriel’s cell phone rang, breaking up the moment.

“I have to take this,” he said and then ticked his chin towards my friends—his way of telling me to wait for him in a crowd. After all, there’s safety in numbers, though he’d probably think twice about the crowd he was sending me into if he knew anything aboutwitchyNikki Parker.

Taylor laced her arm through mine as we meandered back towards the Ring Toss game in no particular hurry. Her eyes blazing with anticipation and delight.

“Oh. My. God!” She tugged my arm playfully. “GabrielHuntington? What the heck happened to Dominic?”

Crap. What was I supposed to tell her? He turned out to be a vampire and attacked me in the middle of a make-out session? Right. That should go over well.

“It just didn’t work out,” I shrugged, aiming for vague.

“Oh.” She blinked at me, the disappointment filtering in over her eyes. “When did this happen?”

I could tell she was hurt that I hadn’t confided in her about the “breakup” sooner. She took things like that pretty serious.

“Last week,” I mumbled. “I was going to tell you. I wanted to. I just…I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.”

“Gosh, Jemma, you sure do move fast,” heckled Nikki. “What is that, like a brother a month you’re averaging? You may want to think about a bigger city. I don’t think this town has enough guys to hold a girl like you over.” Her hyena cackle rattled my ears. “I hear New York is beautiful this time of year.”

Morgan and Hannah snickered in unison like an exclamation mark to her public lashing.

If the urge to knock her over wasn’t strong before, it was damn near uncontrollable now. “Areyoureally one to talk?” I shot back before thinking good of it. It felt like the rage was manifesting itself in my face, burning up my cheeks and firing off my mouth like a weapon of mass destruction.

She unlatched herself from Trace and swarmed over to me in a cloud of her over-the-top designer perfume. “And what pray tell is that supposed to mean?”

“What does it mean?” I repeated with my own brand of sardonic disdain. “I think you know exactly what it means,” I said and glanced over her shoulder at Trace.

He buried his hands in his pocket and pumped his jaw muscle, entirely unaware of what was going on, or of what was coming. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He really didn’t deserve to be thrust into the middle of this.

Even though I wanted nothing more than to call Nikki out on her two-timing ways (especially after everything she’d done to me), I wasn’t sure I could do it if that meant hurting Trace in the process. I couldn’t do that to him, not like this. Not in front of all these people.

I turned to Taylor hoping she had some sort of viable exit strategy ready, but she just stared back at me dazed and confused like she didn’t know where any of that had come from, or where I was trying to go with it.

“If you have something to say, you better just go ahead and spit it out,” snapped Nikki, her brow arched high and mighty.

“Forget it,” I finally mumbled, dejected. It had to be one of the most anticlimactic moments of my life.

“Forget it?” she parroted, laughing. “Seriously, I can’t believe I ever wasted a second worrying about you. It’s like you’re completely clueless.”

I bit down my anger and tried to steady my voice before answering, “Well let’s just hope for your sake that’s true.”

“For my sake?”

“Yeah, I mean, hypothetically, how bad would it be if it turned out I wasn’t as clueless as you thought I was? That I actually knew a few things and was just waiting for the perfect moment to drop them on you?”

“Oh my God, drop them!” cheered Taylor beside me.

Nikki narrowed her eyes as though she were summing me up, wondering what information I could possibly have on her and why in the world I wasn’t outing her with it.

“Is everything alright here?” asked Gabriel, appearing on my free side. His timing was kismet—every time.

I nodded, “Everything’s fine.”

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