Page 45 of Torn Mate
“What?” Ranger said what I was thinking. “Am I Jett’s brother?” He cracked up laughing, but Clare looked at me, like who was this crazy guy? I didn’t know what to do… this was. Strange.
“Well, it was, ah…nice seeing you. Ada, we should catch up. I’m here for the week. My parents are having their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, so we flew in. This is my boyfriend, Frankie.” Her boyfriend stiffly nodded to me.
“Hi, I’m Lexi. It’s nice meeting you, I think it’s time we were going.” I was a little confused as Lexi stood up and took Ranger’s arm. I guess we were leaving.
“I’ll call you Clare,” I waved to her as I followed the love birds to the car like a third wheel. That was the weirdest interaction I had ever had with Clare.
Clare knew Ranger, hell she sat at the Kiba table every day for lunch. He was there… joking with her and stuff. Even in the hallways they would talk. She spent so much time with Jett and Mekhi, how could she forget him that easy.
Oh my gosh…no… Oh, yes. It made sense. I stopped just next to the car and blurted out.
“Holy shit… Galen compelled her.” They both turned to me, looking like I was crazy. I wasn’t. I nodded, it made complete sense.
I didn’t know before, it was only then that I realized that’s what had happened. If I didn’t know Galen could do that, I would have just thought Clare really didn’t love them. You couldn’t act that in love, talking about staying here to get married and then be smiling when they broke up with you and excited to go to college.
“It makes perfect sense. She had no idea who you were, Ranger. She was going to skip college and stay here, with Jett and Mekhi. Then they broke up with her…and she was upset, but for only a few days. Then she was super happy, like crazy happy. I always thought it was strange. And now…” I turned back to where Clare just was. She didn’t know who he was, she truly didn’t know Ranger.
“Why the hell would Galen do that?” Ranger questioned, I could see he didn’t believe me.
“So she would be happy…and so she would leave,” Lexi answered for me. She understood what I was getting at.
Well, that solved that for me. I thought Clare had some kind of a mental snap. She was crying one day all broken hearted and the next day all smiles and talking about how excited she was to leave. I had been kinda excited that she had wanted to stay here, we weren’t close friends, but I was hoping to be.
I wasn’t sure if I should call her… maybe best I didn’t.
