Chapter 4 HIDDEN KISS
Sophie's POV:
The drive back to school was so awkward and silent.
It was not the comfortable kind of silence where two people don't need words.
It was the heavy, suffocating kind.
I sat in the back seat of Dante's black Cadillac and pressed my fingers against my lips.
I could still feel the kiss. That annoyed me.
I turned my face toward the window and watched the streetlights blur past as we moved through the streets of New Orleans.
And when I looked up, I saw him staring at me on the rearview mirror.
I did not sleep that night. Not even a little blink.
I lay on my back staring at the ceiling while Clara snored across the room like a person who had never had a single complication in her life.
I envied her deeply.
My lips were warm.
That was the problem.
They had been warm since Maggie's kitchen and they would not stop, which was extremely inconvenient and something I had absolutely no idea how to deal with.
I pressed my fingers against my mouth. And then I removed them immediately.
"Stop it," I whispered to myself.
Clara snored.
"It was for the bond," I told the ceiling. "It was a magical.... transaction. It meant nothing."
The ceiling did not agree or disagree. Very unhelpful ceiling!
I turned onto my side. Then onto my other side. Then onto my back again. I had been doing this rotation for approximately three hours and it was not working.
The mark on my chest pulsed once, also warm.
"Oh, shut up," I told it.
Clara's snoring cracked. I went completely still. She calmed and I exhaled.
I sat up, swung my legs off the bed, and pulled on my hoodie. I needed water and I needed air.
I needed to act like a person who had not kissed Dante Rodriguez in a witch's kitchen and then stood in a car park afterward wiping her mouth like that would undo something.
I padded to the small desk by the window and looked out at the dark campus.
Somewhere out there, Dante Rodriguez was presumably sleeping perfectly. Because of course he was.
He had said "I've fallen for her" with his jaw tight and his fists clenched and then probably gone directly to sleep like a person with a functional nervous system.
I pulled out my notebook.
I wrote at the top of a blank page:
"Things That Are Fine."
I stared at it.
I closed the notebook and I went back to bed.
Morning was worse.
Clara took one look at me across the breakfast table and said, "You look like something a cat dragged around and then reconsidered."
"Good morning to you too, Clara."
"Red eyes. Pillow crease on your left cheek. You're holding your coffee with both hands like it's the only thing keeping you alive." She bit into her toast. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened."
"Sophie."
"I didn't sleep well."
"Because of nothing?"
"Because of...." I stopped. I looked at my eggs. "Clara, can you do that thing where you're my friend and you don't ask questions?"
She considered this.
"I can do that for approximately ten minutes before it becomes physically painful."
"I'll take it like that." I giggled, nervously.
She faked zipping her lips.
I ate my eggs in peace for exactly four minutes before she unzipped them. "Is it Chase?"
"Clara...."
"It's not Chase," she said, reading my face with the accuracy of someone who had been studying it for two years. Her eyes went wide. "It's the new boy."
"Nothing happened."
"I didn't ask if something happened. I asked.... well, I didn't ask anything yet. But your face just confirmed everything."
"My face confirmed nothing. My face is a face. It does not confirm things."
She pointed at me. "You're doing the thing."
"What thing."
"The thing where you argue very fast and very precisely when you're embarrassed." She leaned forward. "Sophie. What happened with Dante Rodriguez?"
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it.
"We went to see someone," I said carefully. "About the bond. To fix it."
"And?"
"And it involved a.... a process. And the process is done and now we wait a year and then it's gone and everything is fine."
Clara stared at me. "What kind of process?"
"A witchcraft kind."
"SOPHIE."
"Keep your voice down...."
"You did witchcraft with the boy?"
I laughed stiffly.
"It wasn't.... it was a potion and a.... a small.... it was a formality...."
"What was the formality?"
I looked at my eggs.
Clara's mouth dropped open. "Did you kiss him?"
"It was magical. It was required by the spell...."
"YOU KISSED HIM!"
Three tables turned to look at us.
"Clara," I said, through my teeth, smiling at the tables, "I will end you."
She pressed both hands over her mouth, eyes wide, shaking with the effort of containing herself. After a moment, she lowered her hands. "Was it good?" she whispered.
"That is completely irrelevant to the magical bond-breaking...."
"It was good," she breathed. "Oh no. Oh my."
"Nothing is oh no. Everything is fine. We have a plan. One year. No feelings. Back to normal life."
Clara looked at me with the gentle expression of someone watching a person walk confidently in the wrong direction.
"Babe," she said. "You didn't sleep well all night over nothing."
I picked up my coffee.
"Drink your coffee fast," she said kindly. "He'll be at breakfast soon and you'll need your face to work properly."
I nearly choked.
"He won't be at...."
The dining hall door opened.
Dante walked in.
He was on a navy blazer, dark hair slightly damp and moving through the room with the ease of someone who was used to being looked at and had simply decided not to care about it.
Every girl in the dining hall performed the same instant reaction. Heads were turning, backs were straightening and a girl near the window actually put down her phone.
Clara watched me watch him.
I looked back at my eggs with great focus.
"Completely fine," Clara said, nodding slowly. "Totally normal. No feelings whatsoever."
"Eat your toast, Clara." I said through my teeth.
And Dante sat across from me.
Of course he did.
There were at least forty empty seats in the dining hall and Dante Rodriguez put his tray down directly across from mine and sat down with the calmness of someone who had decided this was simply where he was sitting and that was that.
Clara made a sound beside me that she changed, poorly, into a cough.
"Good morning, ladies." he said.
"There are.... Uhm.... other seats," I said.
"There are," he agreed. He picked up his fork.
Clara extended her hand across the table. "I'm Clara. Sophie's roommate."
He shook it. "Dante."
"I know who you are." She smiled pleasantly. "Sophie's told me absolutely nothing about you."
I kicked her under the table.
She didn't flinch. She had years of practice.
"That's fine," he said, and there was something in his voice that was almost.... almost amused. "I haven't told anyone about her either."
"How mysterious," said Clara.
"How is your...." I started, trying to change the subject to literally anything. "How is your schedule? For this semester?"
He looked at me. "Same as yours. I checked."
"You checked."
"The office gave me a copy when I enrolled." He said it completely innocently. I did not believe for one second that it was innocent.
Clara was looking between us like she was watching a tennis match and personally invested in every single player.
"Great," I said with small lame laugh. "That's.... great. Very efficient."
"I thought so."
I ate my eggs. He ate his eggs. Clara watched us eat our eggs with the barely contained intensity of someone sitting on the most exciting secret of her semester.
From across the dining hall, Chase appeared at the door.
He scanned the room, found me, and started walking over. His eyes landed on Dante.
Something changed in his face, quick and sharp.
