Page 136 of Cherish

She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head. But she holds on to me like I’m the only lifeline she’s got. It breaks my heart, has me holding her just as tightly.

She doesn’t let go, and neither do I. I just hug her as long as she’ll let me, rubbing soothing circles up and down her back.

Eventually, she pulls away and there are tears in her eyes. She blinks quickly in an attempt to make them go away before I see them, but it’s too late. I can’t pretend they aren’t there, any more than I can pretend that she’s not suffering.

“Oh, Mace,” I whisper, pulling her in for another hug.

And then she starts to cry. And cry. And cry.

I hold her through it all.

It takes a long time for her crying to stop, and the shower runs through it all, Hudson’s vampire hearing keeping him exactly where he is, belting out everything from Radiohead’s “Creep” to Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Ecological guilt has me feeling terrible about all the water we’re wasting, but thankfully, Adarie doesn’t have the same water shortages our world does.

Eventually, though, Macy’s eyes dry up, and her sobs become sniffles. “I’m sorry,” she says for the third time since she came to my room this morning.

“Nothing for you to be sorry for,” I tell her. “But I’m sorry. I really am.”

“For what?”

“For everything that’s made you feel like this,” I answer. “You’ve been through so much the last few months, and I’ve been in San Diego for most of it.”

She shrugs. “Nothing you could have done to fix it anyway.”

“Except this.” I push her hair back from in front of her eyes. “I’ve missed you, Macy.”

“Me too.” She takes a long, shuddering breath. “I’m so lonely, Grace. I’m just so lonely I don’t know what to do.”

Her words rip through me like a gunshot, leave a gaping wound where my heart used to be, and I press a trembling hand across my stomach. I nearly choke on the bile rising in my throat, my mind racing for the right words Macy needs to hear right now.

In the end, though, I can only find the truth. “This is all my fault.”

74

Too Cruel

for School

Macy gasps. “This isnotyour fault, Grace.”

“Oh, honey.” I wrap my arms around her again and hug her as tightly as I can. “I haven’t been there for you the way I should have been.” The way she was for me when I was lost and alone and in a new place that I knew nothing about.

Guilt seeps through me at the thought. I’ve tried to keep up with her since Hudson and I moved to San Diego for school. I text her nearly every day, and we try to FaceTime at least once a week.

But it’s not the same as me being there. I know it’s not, just like I’ve known she was holding things back when we talked. I just didn’t know how much she was holding back—and that’s on me.

I should have known, should have read between the lines.

“What can I do?” I ask her. “What do you need?”

“My father not to have lied to me. My mother not to have run off to the Vampire Court knowing how it was probably going to end. Xavier to still be alive. Katmere to still be standing—and my friends to still be there with me.” She gives a watery laugh. “Easy stuff, you know?”

“Super easy,” I answer with a small smile.

“And these schools they’re sending me to. It’s ridiculous how awful they are.”

“All of them?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah,allof them.” She shakes her head. “The other students either want to suck up to me because they know who I’m friends with or they try to sabotage me as soon as I get there—also because of who I’m friends with. Or because they and their parents are loyal to Cyrus and are pissed about what happened last summer.”

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