Jek/Hyde by Amy Ross

Author:Amy Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

For the rest of the night I am mostly numb, wondering at what I have done. I’ve been wanting Jek for so long, it feels like a part of me. Even when I dated other boys now and then, in the back of my head I was always wondering, hoping, wishing that Jek would show interest in me. I never really thought he would, and it never occurred to me that I might turn him away if he did.

Still, I can’t help thinking I made the right choice.

I thought getting together with Jek would be simple, but everything between us is mixed-up and complicated. The Jek who came to my room last night wasn’t the Jek I grew up with. His face, his eyes, his voice are all familiar, but the rest? I don’t know, because he won’t tell me. Ever since Hyde came to town, Jek hasn’t been himself.

Of course, now he has promised to get rid of Hyde. Given what I know of him, Hyde doesn’t seem like the type to ride off into the sunset just because someone asks him nicely. But I’ll be happy enough if Jek just stops hanging around with him. The less Jek sees of Hyde, the better off he’ll be.

* * *

As days go by, stretching into one week and then two, I hear less and less about Hyde. It seems he’s lying low after all. It’s hard to believe he’s gone for good, but whatever Jek said to him must have worked. When I ask around about him, no one has anything new to add to the old stories, and Camila says he hasn’t thrown any parties lately. In fact, it seems like no one’s heard from him since the party I sort of crashed.

I know I should be happy, but...something about the whole situation makes me squirm. What exactly happened to Hyde? Did he mean so little to everyone that no one but me even wonders where he went? And what did Jek do to drive him off so suddenly and completely? Threaten Hyde with some kind of exposure? Pay him off? Beat him up, or worse? I try not to let my mind go down that path. I don’t want to believe my best friend is capable of anything violent...but I can’t deny the circumstances are strange.

But maybe strangest of all is how Jek’s been acting toward me—like he’s my boyfriend. Sweet, attentive, flirtatious, even, like he’s courting me. It’s wonderful...but somehow a little disconcerting, too.

On Tuesday it’s blustery but not raining for once, so he talks me into a walk after school to the Twice-Loved Thrift Shop so we can poke around, looking at dusty old lab equipment. It’s like old times—until I’m in the middle of spinning some silly story about how a Victorian phrenology bust wound up in a junk shop in rural Illinois and he slips his hand into mine. He definitely never did that before.

My sentence trails off as my brain stutters to a halt.

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