Shift

RORY

I’m trying to push Jax off of me when Everett suddenly barges into the room.

He sees me sitting on the bed with Jax, whose hands are still clasped around my waist.

Instantly, Everett’s eyes dilate and the veins pop out of his forehead.

I’ve seen this look before…

Chaos is emerging from within Everett.

He’s about to shift.

Jax drops his hold on me at the sight of Everett, and I run over to my mate.

“Everett,” I say. “Nothing happened. I was trying to get him off of me.”

“Mine,” Everett says. But I know that Chaos is speaking.

He is eyeing Jax viciously, like he is ready to rip him to shreds with his teeth.

“Please, Everett,” I say, gripping at his chest. “Please control yourself.”

I lock eyes with him and try to get him to breathe in unison with me to calm him down.

“Mine,” he growls again.

“You can’t do this here,” I say. “You know you can’t.”

“Do what?” Jax says. “What’s going on?”

I look over my shoulder, shooting daggers at him.

“None of your fucking business,” I say.

“Seems like your boyfriend has anger issues,” he says.

I feel Everett’s muscles growing tenser by the second. I need to get him out of here.

“Don’t you dare follow us, Jax,” I say, and then I push Everett out of Oliver’s bedroom and into the hallway.

I close the door behind us and then pull Everett in close to me.

On my tip toes, I reach up and press a kiss onto his lips…the first one we’ve shared since our mating ceremony.

He kisses me back hungrily, like a starved animal.

When I lean away again, I can tell by the look in his eyes that Everett has taken control of Chaos again.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say to him.

“But—that fucker’s still—” he motions toward Oliver’s bedroom door. Jax is still on the other side.

“It’s not worth it,” I say. “He’s not worth it.”

I grab Everett’s hand and lead him out of the house and onto the street.

When we’re back in our car again, I turn to Everett. “You believe that I wasn’t going to do anything with him, right?”

“I do,” Everett says, although his tone sounds defeated. “I just hated seeing him touch you like that.”

“I get it,” I say. “I didn’t exactly enjoy watching you touch those girls in the pool, either.”

We look at each other, too exhausted to fight any more than we already have the past few days.

“Let’s just go home,” he says. Everett turns the key in the ignition and we start the drive back to the packhouse.

“You know,” I say as we drive along the long stretch of dark road. “Something seemed ~really~ off with Jax tonight. Do you think it’s possible that he’s still having side effects from Nemesis’s mind control?”

“Maybe,” Everett says. “Or maybe he’s just a disgusting high school boy.”

I stare out the window at my reflection in the side-view mirror. Rain starts to fall on the glass, cutting streaks across my face.

It makes it look like I’m crying. And honestly, it’s a pretty accurate depiction of how I feel right now.

***

At school the next day, I am rushing to class when I spot Jax leaning up against a wall in the quad, reading a book.

I don’t want to be late to physics, but it’ll be worth it if I can give him a piece of my mind.

Running over to him, I snatch the book out of his hands and throw it onto the ground.

“Woah,” he says. “What the fuck was that, Rory?”

“I should be asking ~you~ the same question,” I say. “What the hell were you trying to do last night?”

“What do you mean?” he asks me, acting totally innocent.

“You were being totally inappropriate,” I say. “You acted like a fucking asshole.”

I stare him down, but instead of looking defensive, he just seems totally confused.

“Really?” he says. “Rory, I don’t remember that—at all.”

I don’t want to be so quick to believe him, but he actually seems deadly serious.

“You really don’t remember?” I say. “We were in Oliver’s bedroom. You had your hands on my waist. Everett came in…”

He shakes his head in total dismay and disbelief. “Jeez. I’m so sorry, Rory,” he says. “I must have drunk way too much or something…”

~Huh…~

~This is too weird.~

~But I guess he did look pretty wasted…~

“I’m really, really sorry if I did anything to make you uncomfortable,” he says. “Being drunk is no excuse for that kind of behavior.”

His tone is completely and totally sincere. And when I look into his eyes, I detect none of the same darkness that I saw the night before.

I’m desperate to figure out what’s going on. But suddenly, I’m pulled out of my spiraling thoughts when I hear the loud honking of a car horn behind me.

I turn around and see the strangest thing: an old-fashioned Mustang convertible driving through the school gate and directly onto the quad!

Everyone in the vicinity gathers around to see what’s going on.

When I get closer, I see that Oliver is sitting in the driver’s seat, wearing a tight white tank top.

His hair is slicked back with pounds of gel like a greaser, and he’s blasting the song “You’re the One That I Want” on the car speakers.

He parks the car in the middle of the quad and gets out, carrying a bouquet of flowers. By this point, everyone has their phones out and is taking videos of the scene.

Oliver approaches Bethany, who is sitting at one of the tables in the quad, looking totally flustered.

“Hey Bethany,” Oliver says, getting down on one knee in front of her and presenting her with the flowers. “You’re the one that I want…to go to prom with.”

Bethany leaps out of her seat with a squeal. “YES,” she says. “Of course!”

She pulls him off the ground and he takes her in his arms and kisses her while everyone in the quad cheers and screams.

I cheer too. I’m so happy for them.

But I also can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy.

~This.~

~This is the kind of perfect high school moment that I want.~

~Something that I can look back on when I’m old and gray.~

~Something that doesn’t involve cramming for tests or tripping over my feet in the hallway and getting laughed at for it.~

Everything has been so crazy these days that I haven’t even given prom a second thought.

But it may very well be my last chance to have ~my~ perfect high school moment.

I’m sure that Everett knows nothing about the human tradition of elaborate prom-posals.

So I’m going to break the tradition a little bit. I’m going to ask ~him~ to prom, instead of the other way around.

And hopefully a grand romantic gesture will help to break down the walls that have built up between us over the past few days so that we can have the fresh start that we need.

***

After racking my brain all day at school, I finally land on an idea for how I am going to ask Everett to prom.

Ever since I moved into the packhouse, Everett has done me the favor of placing pillows all over to protect me from hurting myself when I fall.

As soon as I get home, I walk around the packhouse, gathering them all, one by one.

Each of them is a symbol of his love for me and his care for my safety. Now, I am going to use them to show my love and care for ~him~.

Just because things haven’t been so easy recently doesn’t mean that I don’t love him more than ever, and I want to make sure that he knows it.

I carry all the pillows out onto the front lawn in loads and start to arrange them into a single word:

^~PROM?~^

And then, I pick up a bunch of little tiny stones from the garden path and start to throw them at the window of Everett’s office on the second floor of the packhouse.

“Everett…,” I call out. “Everett, I have a question for you!”

Finally, the window to his office flies open and he pokes his head out.

I can see his blue eyes shining in the sun all the way from down here as he reads the word written out for him.

“Everett,” I say, “you make me feel safer than a million pillows ever could. I love you so much and there’s no one in the world I’d rather go to prom with than you.”

I peer up at him, waiting for a response.

“So…what do you say?” I ask.