Juliet Immortal

We’re friends. I think maybe she wanted it to be more for a little while, but—”
    “But you love her.” What is he saying? Is he out of his mind?
    His eyebrows lift. “I do?”
    Anxiety tightens my chest. How can he not realize he’s in love? His aura is even rosier than it was the day before. “You
know
you do.”
    “I don’t. I’ve never been in love.” He pauses, considering me too carefully. “Have you?”
    “I don’t matter.”
    “Really?” He leans into me, until I can smell the wine sweet on his breath.
    “Really.” My heart beats faster, slamming in my chest.
    “You do matter,” he says, voice soft. “You matter to me.”

THIRTEEN
    B ut I—I’m not—” I stumble over my words and fall into the first question that crosses my mind. “What happened when you were arrested? Why did you hit that guy?”
    Ben doesn’t blink. “He was beating up his girlfriend. Right in front of their house, where everybody in the neighborhood could see. No one else came out to stop it, so I did.”
    I should have known. He was coming to the rescue, as usual.
    “I called the police, but I didn’t think they would get there in time. She was pregnant. I’d seen her at the mailboxes a few times.…” He shakes his head, sadness on his face for this woman he barely knows. “She seemed so excited about thebaby, even though her
pedazo de mierda
boyfriend was the father.” He takes a drink of his wine, letting the silence wrap around us as he swallows. “Is that love, do you think?” he asks, sounding genuinely curious. “Being crazy about someone no matter how much they hurt you?”
    “You know it’s not.”
    “I don’t,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen it, not the way I imagine. Not even my brother and sister-in-law. He’d never hurt her, but he doesn’t love her the way he should. He doesn’t tell her everything he’s thinking, doesn’t look at her like she’s the best thing that ever happened to him.”
    “Ben …” My heart squeezes in my chest, a beautiful ache that makes it even harder to breathe. I want to cup his sad face in my hands and tell him how glad I am that he really
is
a knight in shining armor, and a romantic, even if he doesn’t know it. I want to tell him he’s special and promise him he’ll find someone who will love him the way he imagines.
    But I can’t promise that, not when his soul mate is Gemma. A girl with mood swings that make roller coasters seem tame, a mean streak, and a family biased against him, and who—at the moment—seems more preoccupied with potato chips than his feelings. And not when I’ve seen so many things that have weakened my own faith in love and happily-ever-after.
    “They dropped the battery charge and let me off with counseling and twenty hours of community service, but …” He shrugs. “I guess you probably still think I’m a thug or something.”
    “No, you’re … good.” I reach out, unable to resist the urge to touch him. I scratch a bit of white paint off his arm, fingerslingering on his warm skin. His hand whispers along my cheek. My lips part and the smallest sound escapes, a barely audible betrayal of the way his touch makes me feel.
    “Good enough for you to tell me the truth?” he asks.
    For a moment, I think he means the
real
truth—my truth, not Ariel’s—and something inside me thrills at the idea. To tell Ben my real name, my real thoughts, the real things “I Never” and the things that I have …
    I want him to know me. Even though it’s impossible. Dangerous.
    “Why were you so upset yesterday?” he asks. “Was it because of Dylan?”
    Dylan. The spark inside me dies. It always comes back to Romeo, to the miserable half-life he condemned us both to so long ago. I shake my head, trying to hold my sadness in, to bury it deep. “No. It was just a bad day.”
    “Please, tell me the truth,” Ben whispers. “It’s been driving me crazy. Every time I see Dylan in class he gives me this sick smile.” His jaw clenches, and for a moment I see violence shimmer beneath his skin, see the face of the boy who broke a man’s nose with his fists. “It’s like he’s got some kind of horrible secret.”
    “Who’s got secrets?” Gemma asks.
    Ben and I turn to find her standing a few feet away, watching us. I’m suddenly very aware that Ben’s hand still hovers near my cheek. We shouldn’t be standing so close, he shouldn’t be touching me, I shouldn’t be so conscious of his