Rebel Belle

Chapter 38

WHEN I walked into the bedroom, David was standing in front of the window. His tux jacket lay crumpled on the bed, and his bow tie hung around his neck. From the look of his hair, he’d been pulling at it, and one hand was in his pocket, jangling some loose change.

“Nervous?” I asked, and he spun around.

“Are you—” he said, and then he saw me. “Oh. Wow.”

I’d had that reaction from a lot of people. Mom, Ryan, the saleswoman at the bridal shop. But hearing David say it, seeing David’s eyes go wide, made me suddenly self-conscious. I had to stop myself from twisting the silk skirt in my hands, and Ryan’s words rang in my head.

Harper, you and David Stark have been circling each other since kindergarten.

And maybe we had. But it’s not like any of it mattered anymore.

So I put my shoulders back and walked over to David. “You’ve seen the dress before.”

“It looks different tonight—” David said, but I just kept talking.

“Any sign of . . . well, anything?”

Shoving his hands back in his pockets, David turned to look out the window. “No. But . . . I can feel it. She’s here. Or close by.”

I could feel it, too. An awareness shivered along my skin, like I was being watched. For all I knew, Blythe was already in the house, waiting around a corner.

“Do you want to see if you can have a vision?” I asked, offering him my hand. He took it, but this time, there was no spark, no frisson of electricity. His hand was warm and soft in mine and he absentmindedly ran a thumb over my knuckles. Now there was a spark, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with our powers. Still, I’d had a boyfriend up until about ten minutes ago, and things were way too screwed up to start pulling romance into it now.

And added to the fact that I might have to kill David one day . . .

I pulled my hand back from his, moving a little bit away. “Well, speaking of visions, the one you had with me and Saylor. Do you remember all the red in it?”

He screwed up his face, thinking. “Yeah. A bunch of red stuff, really bright. At first I thought it was blood, but it’s the wrong color.”

Leaning against the giant four-poster bed, I clasped my hands behind my back. “Can I say something insane?”

Snorting, David turned his gaze back out the window. “Tonight would be the night for it.”

“I think . . . I think it’s my aunt’s punch. In the vision.”

David frowned. “That sugary stuff that makes your brain hurt? I . . . yeah, I guess it was that color red.”

“Do you think it means anything?” I asked, looking out the window with him. More cars were pulling up now, and I could hear the soft murmur of voices as people began milling around downstairs. Soon all the girls would come up here to huddle together in one of the other bedrooms, waiting for Cotillion to start. Would Blythe wait, too?

“I doubt it,” David said, and at first, I thought I’d spoken my question out loud. But, no, he was talking about the punch. “If shit goes down, it seems likely the punch will spill, right?”

I didn’t want to think about shit going down, people running and screaming, my aunt’s punch sloshing to the floor.

“Ryan isn’t coming,” I told David. His head jerked up, but I didn’t elaborate. “So you’ll have to escort me. Which is probably for the best since it’ll keep me close to you for . . . whatever.”

“Right,” he said, and then his lips lifted in something close to a smile. “Whoever would’ve thought we’d end up going to Cotillion together?”

I smiled back. “That? That’s what’s bothering you about this night?”

His laugh was low and husky, but nice, and I suddenly wished I’d spent more time getting to know David instead of always competing with him. Somehow, in these past six weeks, we’d become friends. It might’ve been nice to have him as a friend all along.

I heard the discordant sounds of the band starting up somewhere downstairs, and I glanced at the delicate silver and diamond watch around my wrist. “Damn,” I muttered. “I guess it’s time to get started.”

David started pacing again, hands still in his pockets, practically vibrating with nervous energy. I remembered when that used to annoy me. Now, all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around him and tell him everything was going to be okay. I wanted to rest my cheek against his collarbone, and have him tell me we were going to get through this. But the music was getting louder now, turning into a recognizable song.

“I’m going to go see where the other girls are and check things out one last time,” I told him. “Escorts need to start lining up on the stairs in”— I checked my watch again—“about ten minutes.”

David stopped pacing, dropping his head into his hands with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “God, what is the point of being able to see the future if you can’t actually see the future? I keep . . . it’s like digging through sand. I can’t see anything,”

“Hey,” I said, pulling one of his arms down. “It’s okay. You know what Saylor said. The closer you get to eighteen, the clearer the visions are going to get.”

He looked at me, eyes wild. “Harper, I saw you die. I saw you in that dress, bleeding to death on those stairs.” He pointed viciously out the door. “So don’t tell me it’s going to be okay.”

I swallowed hard. “Saylor said not every single one of your visions comes true. This one won’t. I won’t let it.”

I must’ve sounded braver than I felt because David gave me a tiny smile. “You would be too stubborn to die.”

“I am, trust me.”

We stood there, staring at each other. I didn’t even realize we were holding hands until I turned to go and had to disentangle myself.

I was already to the door when he called, “Harper.”

“Wha—” was as far as I got, because in a few long strides, David crossed the room and pulled me into his arms. I was so stunned that it hardly even registered that he was kissing me until . . . oh. Oh.

This kiss didn’t make my stomach flutter; it made my skin sing. It made me raise myself up on tiptoes so I could kiss him back harder. It made me want to kiss him anytime, anyplace, even if we were in the middle of Main Street.

I tangled my fingers in his hair, and his hands gripped the silk around my waist before sliding around my back, holding me so tightly that it should have hurt. But it didn’t, not even the littlest bit.

When we broke apart, we stared at each other, dazed and breathing hard. “I just . . .” He took three more quick breaths. “I needed to know.”

“Oh God,” was all I could manage to say. This was what was between me and David Stark? This was what seventeen years of snarking and fighting and competing had been covering up?

His eyes dropped to my lips. “I think we should do it again, though. To be sure.”

He barely got the last word out before I was pulling his mouth back down to mine. Any idea I’d had that maybe it had been the shock, or the fact that it was my first kiss with someone who wasn’t Ryan since ninth grade, flew right out the window.

This time, I nearly shoved him away when the kiss ended. “This,” I panted, pressing a hand to my abdomen, “is really inconvenient right now. We— No!”

David had been moving closer to me, but froze as I held up my other hand. “Okay, so now we know. And we will deal with that later. Provided we don’t die.”

He shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “Now that I know, I really, really don’t want to die.”

The smile that broke out over my face had to be the goofiest, giddiest thing ever, and I quickly tried to suppress it. Tonight was about being a stoic superhero type, not a flustered teenage girl. I cleared my throat. “Me neither. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen, okay?”

He took another step closer, but I was already moving toward the door. “Wait here until it’s time to go to the stairs. Keep an eye out for Blythe, and . . . stay.”

And then I made myself walk out of the room. Shutting the door firmly behind me, I leaned back against it and blew out a long breath. This was absolutely the last thing I needed. I had been single for all of fifteen minutes, I had an insane tiny witch person trying to kill me, and she was going to attempt a spell that might take David away from me for good. Now was not the time to feel all swoony and weak of knee.

Still, I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked onto the landing, peering down at the room below. It was nearly full now, and I noticed nearly everyone had a cup of Aunt Jewel’s punch. It was the weirdest thing to me how everyone openly acknowledged that it was terrible, but kept drinking it anyway. Manners in action, I guess.

Scanning the crowd, I looked for anyone who seemed out of place, but these were almost all faces I recognized. There was no sign of Blythe, no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

“Harper?”

Miss Annemarie stood at the top of the stairs, an empty punch cup in her hands, a faint pinkish mustache on her upper lip.

“Miss Annemarie,” I said, straightening up. “What are you doing up here?”

She placed her cup on the little marble-topped table on the landing. Downstairs, I could hear the string quartet playing something stately and elegant. “Looking for the little girls’ room. The one downstairs has a line you wouldn’t believe.”

There was a small powder room off the main landing, and I walked toward it. “It’s right here,” I told her, opening the door.

“Oh, goody,” Miss Annemarie said. And then with a shove way harder than any octogenarian should be able to give, she pushed me inside.