Page 69 of His

“Well enough.” She squinted up at me. “How did you know her?”

“I don’t. I only met her here that one day. When she was working with you.” My voice was calm, smooth, remembering all the details. The romance novel on the cart.

“I can see how you would rememberme,” she said, tossing her green bangs back. “But how did you rememberher?”

“Well, she did kiss me.”

Now the girl’s eyes widened.

“Shewhat?”

My mind stumbled. Kat had told me that it had been a bet. That this girl had bet her to kiss me. Was that a lie?

“She kissed you? Are youserious?” The girl stood up,

“I—I mean, yes, she kissed me. Out of nowhere. I didn’t know her before, and when she asked me on a date I said I wasn’t interested. I was dating someone else at the time, you see.”

I clamped my mouth shut, stopping myself before I rambled off into a world of explanatory lies. Only liars ever gave explanations without being asked.

“Wow.”

The girl leaned on the wall of books, and a title caught my eye:Caught In the Act. I blinked my eyes back to her face.

“So she really did kiss you. I didn’t think she had the balls to do it.”

I shrugged, affecting nonchalance.

“When I saw her on TV, I thought:what a coincidence. One day she’s flirting with me, the next day…” I waved my hand away into the air.

“She told me that she chickened out,” the girl said in a half-whisper.

“I’m sure she didn’t want to bother me after I’d turned her down. You really think she didn’t run away? You think something else happened to her?” I leaned forward, and the girl looked up at me, frightened.

“I don’t know.” The girl shook her head, her bangs and earrings swinging in the air. “I mean, she had her demons, we all do. God, I don’t know anymore. She told me that she would never do something like that again, but… I don’t know. Maybe she was lying about that, too.”

“What was she like?” I asked softly.

“Kat? She was great. Funny, smart. She would have been finished with school already, except for all the loan stuff. I told her—”

Her eyes welled up suddenly with tears. Trembling, her lips pressed together so tightly they went white.

“I told her she was boring,” she said. “I called her a slacker. That was the last thing I said to her.”

Her face contorted with grief. I had the thought of putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, but that would be worse than nothing. The cause of her grief was standing right in front of her, and there was no way for me to fix it.

“Excuse me,” she said. Her hand wiped away tears, held back her sniffling. “I—I have to go now.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said. “I hope they find her.”

She nodded and fled, leaving the books on a pile in the middle of the aisle next to the cart. I could hear her sobbing as she walked down the aisle, her feet nearly running away from me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Gav

When I got back home, the house was quiet.

“Kat?”

---