Covet (Clann)

best friend’s ex.” She glanced at me with one eyebrow raised as if to say I ought to know that.
    Except I didn’t. I felt like I didn’t know her at all lately. And it was killing me. “Well, if you don’t want people getting the wrong idea about you two, maybe you shouldn’t be sneaking off to meet him in the library all the time.”
    She turned and scowled at me with her hands on her hips. “I’m not sneaking anywhere. Anne even gave me permission to help him with English lit in return for his help with chemistry class. And it’s really none of your business anymore. Why are you even here tonight? Shouldn’t you be with your girlfriend?”
    “Who?”
    She stared at me like I’d gone insane. “Bethany Brookes. You know, the girl you’ve been seeing for months? Where is she, anyways? Did you leave her downstairs at the punch bowl so you could come up here and lecture me?”
    Oh crap. Bethany. She was still at the Tomato Bowl. I’d forgotten to give her a ride home. I snuck a glimpse at my watch. “She probably caught a ride home with another Charmer or her parents.” I hoped. “And besides, she’s not my girlfriend. She’s just a friend.”
    “Uh, you might want to tell her that, because she’s under the impression that you two have been a couple ever since you and I broke up.”
    “You mean after you dumped me.” Twice.
    “I did not dump you. I saved you.”
    I blew out a long breath. “That is such crap and you know it, Sav. You didn’t save me. You just chickened out. And I’ve never dated Bethany.”
    She flinched, opened her mouth, closed it, then tilted her head to the side. “You’ve never dated Bethany.”
    “Nope.”
    “And all those images in your mind of the two of you kissing under the practice field bleachers and outside the gym and just about every other place possible on campus?”
    I grinned. “What can I say? I have a great imagination.”
    She stared at me then shook her head, her cheeks turning pink.
    She knew she had just sounded jealous.
    Did she have any idea how cute she looked when she was jealous?
    I walked over to her. When we were only a few inches away, her eyes widened. She looked around the room like a bird searching for somewhere to fly off to.
    She disappeared then reappeared at the bedroom door, bending over to grab her sneakers from where she’d dropped them. She disappeared again, reappearing at her closet, where she tossed the shoes inside. She slapped the closet’s folding door, apparently trying to shut it. But she only succeeded in knocking it out of its track at the top, and she was too short to pop its plastic wheel back in, though she rose up on tiptoe to try.
    Moving slower now so I wouldn’t startle her, I closed the distance between us then reached over her head to fix the door.
    “Do you really think I could move on that easily after losing you?” I said.
    She looked everywhere but at me for several long seconds. Then she finally dared to make eye contact. “I’ve heard Bethany’s thoughts. If you’re not really dating her, then you’ve been lying to two girls. She truly believes the two of you are a couple.”
    “I haven’t lied to her. Maybe she just got the wrong idea. Kind of like I did about you.”
    She frowned. “What are you talking about? I never lied to you.”
    “What about all those times you said you loved me?”
    Her breath caught and held. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. “I wasn’t lying.”
    “Then why? Why break us up? Why throw it all away? Why didn’t you help me fight them?” I was hissing out the words without meaning to, all the anger I’d been pushing down for months rising up and out of me. I wanted to grab her, shake her, but I kept my hands clenched in fists at my sides.
    “I did the right thing,” she snapped back at me. “I made a promise, to the council and the Clann, and I’ve kept it. I did what I had to in order to keep you safe. And someday you’ll thank me for it.”
    “You really expect me to thank you for ripping out my heart and stomping all over it?”
    “Yes, I do! Someday, when you’re not being stupid and hardheaded about it.”
    “Stupid and hard—”
    She held up a hand. We were standing so close it would have been easier for her to just rest the hand on my chest. I noticed she was careful not to touch me, though. “I really don’t want to argue with you anymore, Tristan. What’s done is done.”
    “You know, I’m not too crazy about arguing with