I swear my heart actually stopped. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do.” He leaned in closer to me. If he did it again, our heads would probably be touching. “You can trust me, you know. You can tell me anything.”

As much as I wanted to believe that was true, I didn’t. Yes, he was being nice to me, but I hadn’t forgotten how he’d treated me in the beginning. Or about the strange conversation I’d overheard between him and Aislin in the library.

He moved even closer. Our heads didn’t touch like I thought they would, but they were close. Oh God, we were so close. “Gemma, I promise you can trust me.”

Every inch of my body hummed, and my brain was getting foggy. Maybe I could trust him….

“Gemma! What are you doing?” Sophia’s sharp voice cut through my thoughts like a sharp knife, and it popped the tension between Alex and I like a needle to a balloon.

I turned around and found her standing in my doorway, her hand gripped so tightly around the door knob that her knuckles were paper white. I could only imagine how much this scene looked out of place to her.

Heck, it seemed out of place to me.

“Umm…this is Alex,” I told her, motioning at Alex. “We were just working on a project for school.”

She narrowed her eyes at Alex. “Hello Alex.”

Oh, my God. This was so embarrassing.

Alex seemed fine, though. He held her gaze steadily, never wavering beneath the burn of Sophia’s glare.

Man, to have such confidence.

Sophia moved her eyes on me. “It’s time for dinner so you need to wrap it up and come down and eat.”

I stared confusedly at her. Eat dinner with them...What the—“Since when do I eat dinner with you guys?”

She looked like she wanted to strangle me. “Since now.”

“Fine,” I said, my tone clipped. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Well, hurry up. I don’t want the food to get cold.” She shot another death glare at Alex, and then stormed out of the room.

I turned back to Alex. “I’m so sorry. She’s been kind of crazy lately.”

He laughed softly. “Yeah...I bet.” He got to his feet and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. “Well, I should probably go.  I’ll see you in class tomorrow, okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

He put his jacket on and started for the door, but stopped in the doorway and turned around. It looked like he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the words. Finally, he just waved and walked out.

For a minute, I just sat there, feeling torn. Part of me felt relieved that he’d left because, if he’d stayed, I might have broken down and told him things I didn’t want him to know. I almost had until Sophia had walked in. The other part of me, though, wished he’d stayed; felt sad that he’d left.

I let out a sigh. When did life become so complicated?

I got up, shut my music off, and headed downstairs for “dinner.” Like I said, we never ate dinner together, and it was weird to picture the three of us sitting around the table like a normal family. In fact, I couldn’t even picture it. It was that strange. But whatever. I guess I was about to find out firsthand was it was like to be part of a family.

Halfway down the stairs, I thought I heard voices coming from the foyer. I didn’t think much of it at first, until I realized who the voices belonged to. Sophia and Alex. Great. She’d probably cornered him and was saying God knows what.

This was so freaking embarrassing.

I sped up down the stairs—I needed to end this quick. But just before I reached the bottom, I heard something that made me slow down.

“You know the rules, Alex.” Sophia’s tone was razor-sharp. “So you should know better than to be getting close to her.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Rules? What was going on here?

“Yeah, I know the rules.” The sharpness of Alex’s tone matched Sophia’s. “But need I remind you that Stephan sent me here to get some answers from her. And in order to do that, I need to get close to her.”

Stephan. There was that name again. The same one I’d heard him mention during my eavesdropping session in the library.

“That’s not what you’re doing,” she snapped. “You’re crossing a line Alex. A very, very, thin, dangerous line.”

“I think you’re forgetting that I don’t take my orders from you.” Alex’s lowered his voice, and I had to lean forward on my tiptoes in order to make out what he said. “I’ll do what I need to do in order to get her to—”

I lost my balance and, being the graceful queen that I was, stumbled forward, banging my elbow into the wall, hard. “Ah!” I cried out, and then threw my hand over my mouth. Crap.

A few moments of silence ticked by. Had they heard me? Of course they’d heard me. They weren’t deaf.

“Gemma,” Sophia called out.

Crap. Now what?

Rubbing my elbow, I slowly made my way down the rest of the stairs, my legs feeling like two flimsy wet noodles beneath my weight.

Sophia was waiting for me at the bottom, hands on her hips, her eyes a fiery bright gold. “What in the world are you doing?” she asked.

I pressed my lips together and looked over at Alex. He was casually leaning against the front door, his arms folded across his chest. He met my gaze, appearing not the slightest bit concerned. But with what I’d just heard them talking about, it seemed like he should be.

I turned my attention back to Sophia. Every once in a while, when she got really, really mad, this faint bluish-purple vein would pop out on her forehead. Right now, I could see it bulging underneath her pale skin.

“I came down to get something to eat like you told me to,” I told her, still staring at the vein. It reminded me of a gross, bluish-purple worm.

“Gemma, what on earth are you looking at!” Sophia barked.

I flinched and shook my head. “What’s going on here between you two?” I asked her. “And why were you guys talking about me like that?”

She gave me a patronizing look. “Like what, Gemma?”

“Like, you know.” I waved my hand in the air, trying to come up with a word to sum up what I’d just heard. Problem was I wasn’t sure what I’d just hear.

Alex shifted his weight away from the door and raised his eyebrows questioningly at me.

What were they trying to do here? Make me look like a crazy idiot? Because they were doing a pretty good job of it.

“Look, I don’t know what you think you heard,” Sophia said, her tone tolerant. “But we weren’t talking about you. I know Alex’s father, and I was just telling him to pass along a message for me.”

My anger simmered. She was such a liar. “That’s such bull. You were talking about me. I heard you.”

She waved her finger at me furiously. “You better watch your tone young lady. I mean it.” I opened my mouth to say a few choice words that I think, under the circumstances, would have been totally appropriate, but she cut me off before I could even get the first one out. “Now, I don’t know why on earth you think you have the right to listen in on other people’s conversation, but you need to stop. Do you understand me?”

I eyed her over suspiciously. Was there a hidden meaning to her words? Did she know what happened at the library? But if she did, who told her?

I think I had a guess.

Without another word, I pushed by her, heading for the kitchen. Before I disappeared through the doorway, I glanced back at Alex.

Now he looked worried.

Chapter 10

The next morning, I woke up with red, swollen eyes.

I hadn’t wanted to cry last night, but I’d ended up doing it anyway.

I’d cried myself to sleep.

Now I could barely open my eyes.

I glanced at the clock and saw a blurry 12:10. 12:10 in the afternoon? What the heck? Why hadn’t my alarm gone off?

I sat up and stretched out my arms. Well, so much for school.