Mattie’s jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out. “What the hell, new girl? Why didn’t you tell me this?”
I sighed. “Because you guys are pretty clear on how much you dislike him, but I… I don’t know. I like him. He’s nice to me.”
She snorted a laugh. “Nice? You don’t want nice, new girl. You want some badass boy with muscles and tattoos who will throw you over his shoulder, carry you to his room, then fuck you ‘til you scream.”
My face heated. Not because she was wrong, but because I automatically pictured Rafe in that scenario.
“Besides,” Mattie continued, totally unaware of my train of thought, “we never talk bad about Alex… not in front of you, anyway.” She paused and I arched a brow. “Okay, not super often.”
“Mattie, Jordan literally told me that Alex murdered his fiancée the other day. That’s taking slander to whole new levels.” I frowned.
Her brows shot up. “He said that?”
“Yes, and before you ask, no I don’t believe him. Alex isn’t a murderer. There was no evidence.”
“She died under very suspicious circumstances,” Mattie added, trying—and failing—to keep her voice even. “No one was ever charged, but Alex was the last person seen with her. He had scratches on his chest. I saw them.”
Something shifted in my chest, a small painful tug. I mean, I didn’t know Alex very well, in the grand scheme of lifelong friendships. But I had followed every lead I could find on my palm reader. There was simply no evidence tying him to her death.
“Do you honestly believe Alex could have killed her?” I put it on Mattie, desperate to hear her response.
She swallowed hard, and I gave her credit because she didn’t just jump right in on the “Alex is evil” train that most of them pushed.
“I want to say no,” she finally whispered. “The Alex I grew up with would never have hurt her, but he did change. His family … they’re not the greatest, and he was growing more like his father every day. Power hungry. Tyrannical. He treated Jasmine like she was an object, not a person. Still, I find it so hard to believe he could step over the line from a spoiled, arrogant brat to an actual murderer.” She sighed heavily, rubbing at her eyes. “He was just acting so suspicious at the time, not upset at all and then he had these scratches that he said was from a cat but…” She trailed off, her cheeks heating. “Yeah, I know it sounds pretty weak.”
Jasmine. I ran the name through my mind, trying to imagine what she’d looked like. Probably like the princess of the same name.
“Maybe I should ask him,” I said softly, my head a mess.
Mattie shocked me when she grabbed my forearm and pulled me closer. She wasn’t hurting me, but there was desperation in her expression. “Please just be careful. I wish you’d just stay away from Alex, but I can already see that’s not going to happen. So please, please, don’t take any risks until you know you can trust him. Jasmine was my friend, too, and I don’t want to lose you.”
Risks like making out in dark, deserted places? Deciding to keep that to myself, I assured her I’d be wary of Alex, and she seemed to deflate a little.
We’d been early to class, but students were scurrying in now just before the bell, so we changed topics to something a little less controversial. It was only as the teacher entered the room, closing the door behind her, that I had to know one final thing.
“What was Jasmine to Rafe?”
I whispered it because Claudette was only two tables away from us.
Mattie shot me a look that I couldn’t interpret, and I wondered if I’d stepped way over the line. Tilting her body in my direction, her mouth barely moved, but I heard her as she said, “His best friend. His oldest friend. And that’s why Rafe will hate Alex until his dying days.”
Well, fuck.
“Good morning,” Professor Crosse said in a chipper voice. “Today we’ll be studying blood from various animals under the microscope. At the cellular level, you will be able to see the health of their DNA and determine which one was suffering from an illness.” She continued on, explaining that we would compare healthy cells to those that were sick, and finished with, “Specifically Babesiosos, a tick-borne disease that can be fatal untreated.”
For once I was actually interested in class. I might be hoping for a career helping people, not animals, but at least it was kind of medical. Finally, a subject that was sort of geared in the direction of my major.
“Collect the samples up here,” the teacher said, waving her hand toward the test tubes and beakers that lined a bench at the front of the room. “Healthy on the right and diseased on the left.”
Mattie was on her palm reader, brow furrowed—Nolan had probably done something stupid again—so I moved around our desk and went to get our samples. Half the class hadn’t moved yet, but Claudette was a few students in front of me. I tried not to grimace as I remembered the way she’d draped herself all over Rafe the last time I saw her. I mean, he never showed any sort of interest, other than not pushing her away, but it still irritated me. I mean, what was their actual deal? Did she know he was Fallen Angel?
Did she know anything about the snarly Swiss prince, or was this all just part of their arranged royal marriage thing?
Had Jasmine been the same thing for Alex? Could that be why he’d never really showed interest in her outside of being his arm candy? Because it was all just forced on him—and it would have been at a young age, too, since the prince was only twenty-three or -four now.
I’d been so lost in thought about the tangled webs of the royals, that I hadn’t noticed Claudette coming right for me until the warm splash of liquid hit my uniform, soaking in.
“Watch where you’re going, you clumsy loser,” she hissed.
I blinked as a sharp, coppery smell assaulted my nose, and I already knew what I was going to see when I looked down.
Red. Blood covered most of my shirt and was even dripping onto the floor. My head shot up as I took a step toward Claudette. “You did that on purpose,” I snarled. She hadn’t been anywhere near me before, and there’d been no reason for her to double back and crash into me. I might have been in my own world, but I was almost certain that bitch had purposely run into me.
Her lips twitched as she leaned in closer. “Prove it, gutter trash,” she whispered before turning and sauntering away, not a drop of blood on her.
Another thing that made me think it had been deliberate. Only her hand had hit me, not her body, leaving her uniform pristine.
“Get changed, Ms. Spencer, and hurry back to class,” Professor Crosse said, looking harried but also like she really wanted me to just get out and stop distracting everyone.
Part of me really wanted to go over and punch Claudette in the face, but with this many witnesses, it was probably a bad move. I sucked in some air in an attempt to calm myself before I marched out of the room. My palm reader vibrated—probably Mattie checking on me—but I was too pissed to read it.
Marching down the hall, I tried not to think about the sticky blood that was oozing into my shirt and my bra and probably ruining them both.
Claudette was a truly horrible piece of shit, and I was pretty sure she and Rafe deserved each other. Fallen Angel might have been the most beautiful fighter I’d ever seen—and I’d seen a lot of fighters in my life—but I couldn’t forget that Rafe had been the worst kind of asshole to me since I arrived. And all because Alex paid attention to me. All because he hated Alex.