Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Read online

  First the jeans, then her socks, and finally her sweater.

  Good as new.

  Apart from the sense that all of this was a mistake. She had been knocked unconscious. It was entirely possible a doctor was supposed to see her. Staying seemed like the wisest course of action—or at least it did whenever she couldn’t see Tate. When she glanced back at him she didn’t feel troubled about fleeing.

  She only felt a rising balloon of relief inside her.

  This time, she had escaped him for sure. He was actually snoring as she slipped through the door and out into the hallway. There was no chance in hell that he would stop her.

  No chance at all.

  No way.

  Impossible.

  “Hey, Letty!”

  Her hand was actually on the handle of the nearest fire exit when she heard Tate’s voice. The door was open a crack, and she could see daylight beyond. A little more and she would have been through. She could have pretended him hollering at her was some guys playing Frisbee just beyond them. Just could have kept going until she was free and clear.

  She almost did anyway. The temptation to was so all consuming it seemed to burn as it went through her. It made her eyes sting—though that might have been something else. Four years of frustrated, bitter rage pushing against them, maybe. Certainly it was something she had to contain before she could turn around and take him in.

  But years of practice had made her good at it. She gritted her teeth and looked up at the ceiling for a good thirty seconds, and the sensation passed. By the time she faced him her eyes were as dry as they had ever been. Her face was that carefully constructed blank slate, as though he bored her to death.

  And she held it, despite the things he had to say.

  “That nurse said you were supposed to stay overnight,” Tate told her. “She said you needed to rest—you can’t just run out on serious medical business.”

  She thought at first that she had misheard. There was barely an insult in there. He didn’t smirk while he spoke. Plus, what was that whole medical business remark about? He sounded like somebody’s dad.

  If somebody’s dad knew absolutely nothing about science.

  “So this is what you’re going with,” she said. “Faking weird concern to lure me in.”

  “No. No not at all. Who would even do that?”

  To his credit, Tate managed to laugh.

  The problem was, the laugh had no substance. It puffed out of him like a dying breath.

  “You would. You actually did do that.”

  “Name one time I did that.”

  “How about the time I was carrying textbooks for Merriman and you asked if I was sure I could manage? Then you threw them in the fountain outside the science block.”

  “Oh, okay, yeah, my bad. But apart from that one tiny incident of book destruction—of books I might add that were not even yours.”

  “Then there was the time the books were mine,” Letty continued. “Only you thought a fitting place for them was a toilet in the boys’ bathroom. Then when they wouldn’t flush you doused them in lighter fluid and set them alight.”

  “I…damn it, all right. But that was years ago; you can’t hold something against me I did as a kid. But this is different—you could go back to your dorm and start bleeding out of your eyeballs. I have, like, a civic responsibility to make sure you don’t.”

  “Are you serious with this shit? Who do you think I am, exactly—some kid fresh off the school bus? I know you, Tate. I know you better than your own mother probably does. I had to know you to survive high school. Do you get that?” She shook her head, surprised to find something like weary amusement in her voice. “Civic responsibility? Jesus, if you had even an ounce of anything like that in your whole meaty body you would have checked on me in the hospital last time.”

  He started to answer, but something seemed to pull him up short. More than that, in fact. It robbed his features of all animation. It took his half smile and the pretend concern, and replaced it with an odd kind of closedness. Like his face was a book and someone had just slammed it shut.

  “I really didn’t think you’d want me around last time.”

  “But you think I want you around now? After you drop me on my ass?”

  “Wait, what?” he said. “Now hold on a second, that is not what happened at all.”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to try gaslighting me over a fucking head injury. You grabbed me and then let go right when you knew I would slam into the ground.”

  “Jesus Christ, Letty I don’t even know what gaslight means. I’ve never known what it means. You say these things and I’ve no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

  Tate stopped there and took a breath in a way that seemed oddly familiar. Then she realized: it was like her glancing up at the ceiling to stop the tears, even though he didn’t appear tearful at all. She wasn’t sure Tate could cry, if she was being honest. So what was this? What exactly did he need to contain?

  Anger, she thought—and it was true, his voice was softer when he started talking again.

  But there was something else there, too. A kind of desperation that made her feel odd.

  “And that is fine. That is really cool that you’re super smart and know about this shit,” Tate said. “Shit that I probably did do once without, like, being aware of it. But I swear to god I’m not doing it here. I swear to you that I just wanted to stop you falling, and then you looked scared as fuck and like you wanted to kill me and so I just backed off. I just backed off, that’s all.”

  He drew a line under his words with his hands, firm and sure, and when he did that odd feeling tripled. It made her want to slide down the double doors and onto the floor, for reasons she couldn’t grasp. It had to be her not-that-serious-injury, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like something else. Like she believed him.

  And she couldn’t allow that.

  “Then keep doing it. Back all the way off until we can barely see each other. You understand me, Tate? If you really are concerned, just leave me alone.”

  Chapter 3

  It took a full three days to accept that Tate had listened. Three days of peering around corners before going in that direction. Three days of anxious messages from her dad, asking her ridiculous things like did she want him to call the police? Three days of wondering if she should call the police, even though there was nothing to tell them. He wasn’t doing any of the old bullshit he used to do—or at least none that warranted her dad getting as upset as he had the last time. She could almost see the four worry lines across his forehead in every text; the way he’d seemed to age overnight.

  She didn’t want him to get any older.

  So she messaged back that everything was fine, and only afterward realized that it was. Tate was just never anywhere, not even in places he was supposed to be. She braced herself for Harrison’s next class, but had no need to. When she dared to look in that direction, someone else sat in his seat. And a cursory glance around told her that he had not simply chosen another one. There were no six-foot-five-inch guys in the lecture hall, busy being too massive for their chairs.

  If anything, everyone else was more of a problem. Halfway through a PowerPoint presentation on gender bias in modern cinema, she got that creeping, self-conscious feeling. The one that used to come over her whenever she studied too hard in front of Tate in some class he didn’t care for. Usually it meant that he was watching her with that bright spark of amusement in the corners of his eyes, just waiting to make trouble.

  But when she scanned the lecture hall—with her head still down to appear as inconspicuous as possible—there were no signs of him. He hadn’t slipped in as her attention waned.

  It was other people. A girl seven rows down was looking directly at her with the oddest expression on her face. It seemed like curiosity, but it was lacking something. Some vital component that made it make sense—and after a second she realized what it was. The girl looked happy, not angry or cruel
or annoyed. Her eyes were bright, but not with evil intent. And then just to cap it off, she smiled.

  She smiled and waved.

  What the hell was a complete stranger doing smiling and waving? She checked behind herself to see if the girl was communicating to someone else, but the only thing back there was a wall and a window, several feet above her head. It was such a certain thing she simply had to wave back, in case she was just knee-jerk rejecting a potential friend. A good friend, the kind she’d hoped to find here.

  And then there was the other girl. The even more popular and pretty one, who was bizarrely being about a hundred times less subtle than the first. This girl had turned all the way around in her chair, and was actually whispering, “Hey,” over and over at her. It was so bad that her friend—who had quite possibly the most amazing haircut Letty had ever seen, like a stripe of animal fur down the center of her head—was tugging at her arm and kind of telling her to knock it off.

  “Sam, leave the poor girl alone,” Hair Stripe hissed.

  Yet even that seemed without cruelty. It still made her skin prickle all over, and she had the strongest urge to scratch the scar around her ear. But she couldn’t just ignore them. She even found herself leaning forward after a moment, to better hear what the girl was saying.

  But Professor Harrison got in the way.

  “Ladies, I am aware of how poorly I compete with the topic du jour. But if we could just leave that aside until the end? Especially in light of the fact that you two are not supposed to be here at all.”

  The two in question immediately slid back into their seats and paid attention. But though Letty tried to do the same, she found herself struggling.

  Once they were out in the hall, they kept on looking at her. Blondie’s face was so wildly animated it was scary.

  “So you’re dating the hunk, right? You have got to be dating him.”

  “The…what? Dating…who?”

  “The hunk! You know, the hunk.”

  Blondie made circles in the air with her hands, but it didn’t help.

  Nor did her friend’s expression—more reasonable but no less convinced that she should understand.

  “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. I can, however, assure you that I’ve never dated anyone that could even remotely deserve the label hunk.”

  “Soooo…he just carried you because he’s like…a super awesome Disney prince?”

  “Someone carried me? Carried me where?”

  She was laughing as she said it, though the laugh soon died.

  Now the more reasonable one was frowning, and when she whispered, Letty caught some of the words.

  They sounded a lot like she doesn’t know.

  “He carried you down this hall that we are standing in right now. Everyone practically applauded. Several girls fainted, probably in the hopes that they would be carried, too.” She paused, suddenly as concerned as her friend seemed. “Do you seriously not remember any of this?”

  “Sam, I think it’s hard to remember things when you’re unconscious,” the reasonable one said, but Blondie paid no attention. She was intent now on getting to the bottom of this mystery.

  “Yeah, but he must have told you. Didn’t he tell you that he swept you into his manly, macho arms and whisked you away to the campus med room?”

  “No. Nobody told me that.”

  Her own voice was flat, when it came out.

  Flat and cold and strange.

  But Blondie didn’t seem to notice.

  “Oh my god. Searing hot and modest. I think I have my dream man.” She paused again, but this time it was purely down to the elbow her friend gave her. It was hard and insistent, and it seemed to bring Blondie back to something like sense. “Unless you guys are a thing?”

  “I don’t even know who you mean.”

  She shook her head, to make it stick.

  But a sick feeling was starting to thread through her stomach.

  “You know, he’s the wrestling champ Coach Parker is completely in love with. Can’t miss him—he’s like seven feet tall and super beefy. Just really, really beefy.”

  “Sam, I think we should just leave this nice girl alone, okay?”

  “No, no, hold up—his name is something like…Trent.”

  “You don’t even know his name? Sam, seriously let’s just go.”

  “A guy like that doesn’t need a name. He has to learn to respond to desperate grunts.”

  “It’s Tate,” Letty said, but they didn’t hear her.

  Probably because she sounded like she was dying when she spoke.

  “I think it might have been Taylor. He looks like a Taylor.”

  “I don’t think it’s Taylor. Maybe Topher?”

  “Topher is not a name, Bea. Come on, where is your head?”

  “It is a name I—”

  “His name is Tate; you mean Tate. Tate Sullivan.”

  They both turned and looked at her, half surprised.

  Half so gleeful it sort of made her sick.

  “Yeah that’s the guy! So you do know him.”

  “No, I don’t. I really don’t at all.”

  She was glad that she sounded so sure when she said it.

  Only they didn’t seem to think she sounded sure at all. Blondie leaned and put a hand on her arm, her face a picture of completely sincere concern. “Hey, are you okay?” she asked, so kindly Letty couldn’t speak for a moment. Her throat was apparently full of very emotional bees. Her head was spinning and her stomach had clenched into a knot, so it seemed like the best thing was to just get out of there.

  She needed to get out of there, now.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, I just have to go. I left the curling iron on while needing to wash my hair just as my favorite show is starting. See you around, okay?”

  Chapter 4

  Letty decided the best course of action was just to pretend none of this was happening. But it was hard to, with ten girls a day coming up to her to ask if she was dating her mortal enemy. Most of them were lovely about it, but lovely was not the point. She came to this school to get away from Tate, and now he was everywhere.

  He was in their starry eyes and behind almost every whisper she heard. She had to endure a million iPhones being thrust at her so she could see herself being carried in his massive arms and hear comments like it looks as if it hardly took him any effort. And she couldn’t disagree, either.

  It was true. His biceps were barely tensed. She looked tiny and featherlight cradled between them, like some kind of doll of herself.

  Though that wasn’t what stuck with her.

  What stuck was the video she saw on her dorm neighbor’s phone.

  Her name was Lydia¸ and she had gloriously thick bangs and eyes that seemed to house seventeen souls. She had been the only one on her floor who offered to help when Letty moved in, and the only one who had struck up a conversation. As the girl approached her, Letty even remembered the substance of their conversation. “Man, you really have to be good at trusting complete strangers to get by at college, huh,” she had said, as if she’d known exactly what made Letty jerk back when she’d grabbed for the box full of knickknacks in Letty’s hands. She’d somehow seen the sharp spines that covered Letty’s skin and understood that a sudden move from a new acquaintance made them stand up.

  It clearly was the reason she didn’t just thrust her phone at Letty.

  And probably explained why the video she’d shot was different.

  This one didn’t focus on his arms, or her feet, or anything to do with the physical act of carrying. It instead focused on Tate’s right hand—the one that was carefully curled over her head, as though it were possibly made of glass on the verge of breaking.

  And on his face.

  She couldn’t look away from his face, tiny and blurry but still noticeably not right.

  “I just thought maybe you’d want to see this version. If you know what I mean?”

  “It…it just looks like all the others.”


  “You sure?”

  Lydia raised an eyebrow.

  Letty did her best to ignore it.

  “Yeah. Positive. He was just…being a good Samaritan. That’s all there is to it, I swear to god. We aren’t dating—he would never have wanted to date me. So if you’re interested you should totally go for it. I mean, you’re super hot so I can’t see any problem and even if there was I—”

  “Are you aware you’re talking really, really fast?”

  Not just fast, she thought. Calling it just fast was generous.

  Her breath had gotten all high and tight, and every word was hurting her as it escaped. She had to take several breaths before she could answer, and even then it wasn’t right.

  “I just heard it then, yes. But even that’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not trying to cover for anything he…he…” She gulped another breath in vain. Lydia was still looking at her with curiosity—of the kind sort, but curiosity all the same. And it was definitely making her jump and stutter and breathe in a completely clumsy way. “He’s just an acquaintance. I knew him in high school.”

  “Well, I guess that’s the mystery solved, then.”

  “Yeah. Definitely. Nothing more to it.”

  “Right.”

  She nodded, relieved that she could now safely escape. In fact, she was halfway down the hall to her own room when she heard Lydia speak again. Almost at her door, and through to safety.

  Though she was actually glad she hadn’t quite made it, after the words.

  “But you know, if you ever wanted to talk about how little there is to it, I’m right next door to you. Tap it in Morse code, if you feel more comfortable doing that. Send me smoke signals from a burned cheesy pita.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  “Anytime. College is hard.”

  “God yeah, sooooo hard.”

  “Guys are even harder. In more ways than one.”

  She laughed in response, sudden enough that it startled her. She couldn’t remember the last time she did that while talking to another person. Not so loudly at least, and certainly not as carelessly. It just popped out of her, new and alien enough that she tried to cut it off. She clamped her teeth around it as she disappeared into her dorm, but the laugh would not be denied.