Page 21 of Icing Hearts

He lays down and rolls to his back. I crouch down and tap his cheek a few times. He pokes my nose and says with a drawl, “Idiot? That’s the best ya got? I’m disappointed, Charity. Usually your insults are so poetic.”

I yank Tory’s chain mail and convince him to rise to his feet once again while I scold, “I didn’t mean help her like that.”

Tory apologizes and slurs, “At least I went ninety and waited for her to go ten.”

With a dramatic eye roll, I loop Tory’s arm around my shoulders. He has to get out of here. For all my playfulness, I do care for Tory, and I don’t relish in the notion of him engaging in more self-humiliation than he’s already endured for the evening. There’s something off-putting about someone like him imploding that rocks the social stratosphere.

Though, nothing seems to stick to the great Victory Winner. He’s committed some heinous social indiscretions, but no debt was ever collected. At least none that I saw. While the rest of us are held accountable for our actions, the beautiful, powerful, or talented are sadly…not. In many cases, anyway.

We move through the throng of people until I’m staring up the plush, creamy carpeted curving staircase in the foyer. Suddenly, he goes limp. His arm slides from my shoulders, and Tory falls, sprawling at the base of the stares. He’s a mound of clothes, muscle, and indiscretion. I roll him over and smooth his hair off his forehead, letting my hands frame his face. “What’s wrong, Tory?”

“I think I’m gonna puke,” he sings quite loudly, eliciting cheers from some wildly unhelpful partygoers.

“Get up,” I groan.

Somehow, I manage to get him up the stairs and into his room. At that point, he stumbles the last few steps and lands on top of the covers—no puke in sight, thankfully.

Several long moments pass, and I simply stand there, frozen in place, debating my next move. It’s Tory’s room. I’m standing…five steps into Victory Winner Amato’s bedroom—a place I never dreamed I’d be. On the one hand, snooping is wrong. On the other hand, I’ll never get the chance to poke around again. I don’t like to waste in any form, including once in a lifetime opportunities to poke around my lifelong crush’s room. The reasoning is flawless, scientific even. So I straighten out my swimsuit-turned-costume and turn to the wall on my right with the plan to work in a counterclockwise motion around the room and—

Holy…books.

Chapter 14

Clara

The entire wall is a bookcase filled with hundreds of books. Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and C.S. Lewis join the likes of Dasher and Collins.

There’s a groan from behind me. I whirl around and blurt, “I thought you didn’t read.”

“What made you think that?” he asks, rising from the bed with zombie-like movements.

“You didn’t know who Aaron Warner was…” I say while he rummages through a bureau and grabs a change of clothes.

“Just ’cause I don’ read your kind of books, doesn’ mean I don’ read,” he drawls from the open door.

“Apparently,” I mutter.

I tilt my head, thrumming my fingers along the spines as I read the titles for a few minutes. Until…my mouth drops in shock.

He has theShatter Meseries in a boxed set. The spines are worn until halfway through the six novels and five accompanying novellas. He isn’t finished.

“I thought you didn’t read my kind of books,” I call out as he emerges from the ensuite bathroom. Tory’s face is glassy with some sort of skin care product, hair pulled back with a black fluffy headband.

His wobbling gaze follows my outstretched arm to the series and shrugs. “You aren’t the first girl to ever mention Shatter Me. I wanted to see what the fuss was about.”

“So you bought the box set?” I raise my brows with suspicion.

He nods and slumps back down onto the bed, rubbing the back of his neck. If we were in school, I’d offer to give him a massage with a cheeky grin. But there’s no audience here—no one I must prove something to. No one I must convince that I’m okay. That it’s all a joke.

“Are you okay?” I ask him. “I haven’t seen you this drunk…ever.”

“This, too, shall pass, Charity. You’re a dream for getting me up here.”

“No problem.” I pivot on my heels, turning toward the door. “I’ll see you—”

“Sit.”

“What?”

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