Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(3)
Jeb shrugs out of his jacket on his way over, revealing muscular arms. His black combat boots clomp across the shimmery asphalt, and his olive skin glistens in the mist. He’s wearing a navy T-shirt with his worn jeans. A picture of My Chemical Romance is air-brushed in white with a red slash streaked diagonally across their faces. It reminds me of my blood art, and I shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asks, wrapping his jacket around me, the leather still warm from his body. For that fleeting second, I can almost taste his cologne: a mix between chocolate and musk.
“I’m just happy you’re home,” I answer, palms flat against his chest, enjoying his strength and solidity.
“Me, too.” He looks down at me, caressing me with his gaze but holding back. He cut his hair while he was gone. Wind ruffles the dark, collar-length strands. It’s still long enough at the crown and top to be wavy and is a mess from being under his helmet. It’s unkempt and wild, just the way I like it.
I want to leap into his arms for a hug or, even better, kiss his soft lips. The ache to make up for lost time winds tight around me until I’m a top ready to spin, but my shyness is even stronger. I glance over his shoulder to where four junior girls gathered around a silver PT Cruiser watch our every move. I recognize them from art class.
Jeb follows my line of sight and lifts my hand to kiss each knuckle, the scrape of his labret igniting a tingle that races all the way to the tips of my toes. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You read my mind.”
He smirks. The butterflies in my belly clash at the appearance of his dimples.
We walk hand in hand to his bike as the parking lot starts to clear. “So … looks like your mom won this morning.” He gestures to my skirt, and I roll my eyes.
Grinning, he helps me with my helmet, smooths my hair across my lower back, and separates the red strand from the blond ones. Wrapping it around his finger, he asks, “Were you working on a mosaic when I texted?”
I nod and buckle the helmet’s strap under my chin, not wanting the conversation to go this direction. Not sure how to tell him what’s been happening during my art sessions while he’s been gone.
He cups my elbow as I climb into place on the back of the seat, leaving a space for him in front. “When do I get to see this new series of yours, huh?”
“When it’s done,” I mumble. What I really mean is, when I’m ready to let him watch me make one.
He has no memory of our trip to Wonderland, but he’s noticed the changes in me, including the key I wear around my neck and never take off, and the nodules along my shoulder blades that I attribute to a Liddell family oddity.
An understatement.
For a year, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to tell him the truth without him thinking I’m crazy. If anything can convince him we took a wild ride into Lewis Carroll’s imagination, then stepped backward in time to return as if we’d never left, it’s my blood-and-magic artwork. I just have to be brave enough to show him.
“When it’s done,” he says, repeating my cryptic answer. “Okay, then.” He gives his head a shake before tugging his helmet on. “Artists. So high maintenance.”
“Pot … kettle. While we’re on the subject, have you heard from your newest number one fan?”
Jeb’s gothic fairy art has been getting a lot of attention since he’s been going to art expos. He’s sold several pieces, the highest going for three thousand bucks. Recently he was contacted by a collector in Tuscany who saw his artwork online.
Jeb digs in his pocket and hands me a phone number. “These are her digits. I’m supposed to schedule a meeting so she can choose one of my pieces.”
Ivy Raven. I read the name silently. “Sounds fake, right?” I ask, straightening my backpack straps under his jacket. I almost wish she was made up. But I know better. According to some Web searching I’ve done, Ivy is a totally legit beautiful twenty-six-year-old heiress. A sophisticated, rich goddess … like all the women Jeb’s around lately. I hand the paper back, trying to stanch the insecurity that threatens to burn a hole in my heart.
“Doesn’t matter how fake she sounds,” Jeb says, “as long as the money is real. There’s a sweet flat in London I’ve been looking at. If I can sell her a piece, I’ll add it to what I’ve already saved and have enough to cover it.”
We still have to convince Dad to let me go. I refuse to voice my concern aloud. Jeb’s already feeling guilty about the tension between him and Dad. Sure, it was a mistake for Jeb to take me to get a tattoo behind my parents’ backs. But he didn’t do it to make them mad. He did it against his better judgment because I pressured him. Because I was trying to be rebellious and worldly, like the people he hangs out with now.
Jeb got a tattoo at the same time, on his inner right wrist—his painting hand. It’s the Latin words Vivat Musa, which roughly translates to “Long live the muse.” Mine is a miniature set of wings on my inner left ankle, camouflaging my netherling birthmark. I had the artist ink in the words Alis Volat Propriis, Latin for “She flies with her own wings.” It’s a reminder I control my darker side and not the other way around.
Jeb tucks the heiress’s number into his jeans pocket, seeming a thousand miles away.
“I bet she’s hoping you’re Team Cougar,” I say, half joking in an effort to bring him back to the present.