Page 4 of Bad Moon Rising

What were you thinking, Lil?

You totally can’t do this.

Why did you think you could do this, you big, dumb idiot?

Don’t be ridiculous.

You can’t—

“Daisy?” The familiar voice calls behind me, loud and too close. In my anxiety-induced state, the voice doesn’t register as belonging to someone I know.

It sounds like a threat.

Some wires in my brain must get crossed—or maybe they’re just not connected to my motor functioning unit—because before I can think better of it, I spin around and whack the intruder across the face.

Will I regain at least a portion of my “cool factor” if I tell you I punctuated the hit with a fierce battle cry? No? Yeah, didn’t think so.

“Ow. Motherfucker…” This time, the voice is muffled, probably because the voice’s owner is pinching the bridge of his nose to staunch the flow of blood.

“Holy crap!” I whirl away from my locker with wide eyes, aware that almost everyone in the hallway is staring intently in our direction. I can’t seem to pull my gaze off Jackson Bellua as he stands in front of me, his eyes shadowed in pain even as a bright, beguiling smile tugs up his lips.

“That’s my girl.” Jackson holds his nose with one hand. “I see that your fight-or-flight response hasn’t decreased with age.”

I touch my fingers to the knotwork flower charm hanging from a leather cord around my wrist, and work to get my rapidly pounding heart under control as I gape at him. How can he be standing so nonchalantly after I just decked him in the face?

In the hallway of our high school?!

In front of everyone, including Ashlee Beans, the most popular girl in school and probably the prettiest too?

But that’s Jackson for you. Despite his popularity, he gives even less of a crap than Orion about his status at school.

Then…his words register.

“Are you calling me old, Bellua?” I cock an eyebrow at him as I shakily twist to face my locker once more, sifting through the books stacked there until I find the one for my Advanced Placement Chemistry class.

“You, Daisy?” He tugs playfully at a strand of my long, fire-red hair. “Nev—wait. Is that a gray hair?” His voice lowers in feigned horror as he tugs even tighter on the curly strand like he’s trying to study it. “Yup. Definitely gray. Maybe even white. Damn. You’re beginning to look like my grandma.”

At that, I whirl around to glare at him while hugging my textbook to my chest. He offers me an unrepentant smirk as he stands in the middle of the hallway, not bothering to move out of the way when people walk by. Instead, our fellow classmates are forced to walk around him like he’s Moses chilling in the Red Sea. But that’s Jackson for you.

All of the Bellua boys have an aura around them that has people giving them a wide berth…or trying to get even closer. Even Orion draws attention from classmates and strangers like moths circling a flame—you know you’ll get burned, but you can’t resist the allure of all that fire and heat.

Jackson exudes a sheer magnetism that has every boy wanting to be him and every girl wanting him. He’s tall—both the twins are—with broad shoulders that lead down to a tapered waist. I remember when he used to be scrawny, a twig with no muscle definition, but his years as quarterback on the football team have done him good. I can clearly see the outline of hard, chiseled muscles through the thin, light blue T-shirt he likes to wear.

Both Jackson and Orion have dark hair, the color an enticing shade between mahogany and obsidian. It isn’t quite black, but it’s definitely darker than most browns I’ve seen before. Jackson keeps his waves swept away from his hard, angular face, accentuating the sharpness of his cheekbones and the cleft in his chin. Orion, on the other hand, prefers to keep his disheveled locks in front of his face, obscuring most of his features from view.

Jackson smiles at me in a way that showcases the dimple in his right cheek, and gosh darn it, I find that I can’t stay mad when he looks at me like that.

“You know…if I didn’t like you so much, I might’ve hit you with my textbook,” I jest as I spin back towards my locker again, grab the rest of my books for the day, and slam the metal door shut.

“You already punched me in the face, Daisy girl. What more can you do to me?” He reaches around me to grab the textbooks straight out of my hands. I whirl towards him, but he simply offers me a cheeky grin and dips his chin in the direction of our shared Chemistry class. I know better than to argue with him. He—or his brother, or both—has carried my textbooks every day since high school began.

At first, I protested, because feminism happened and I can carry my books myself.

But Orion’s face lit up with a rare, tentative smile. “We know you can carry your own books, sweetheart. But we like helping you.” He blushed then and ducked forward until that brown-black hair of his fell in front of his eyes once more. “Soon, you’re going to be too badass to need us.”

I’d wanted to scoff at that sheer ridiculousness.

First, I may have been taught by them how to fight, but that in no way made me a badass. I can throw a few punches at mischievous teenage boys, but holding my own in a fist fight? Laughable. I get squeamish at even the sight of blood, let alone spilling it.

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