Read Online The Love Story (The Things We Can't Change Book 4) by Kassandra Kush - Free Book Online Page B

lot and up the first few steps of the school. I come to a hard stop when I see Zeke is already here, leaning against the brick wall of the school. He looks just as he did all last year; baggy clothes, hard face, completely untouchable and scary. He’s even smoking, which I’d thought he’d quit for good. The only difference is the cut on his cheek and the slight pinkish swelling around it.
    For just a flash of a second, for one small, horrible moment, he feels like a stranger to me. Then I tell myself firmly that clothes and cigarettes and facial expressions don’t change a person overnight. They don’t change a person at all. It’s what’s on the inside that counts, and that’s where Zeke and I are alike, where we understand each other. That hasn’t changed.
    I hope. Desperately.
    Forcing myself to walk up and stand in front of him, I wait until he meets my eyes.
    “Are you all right?” I ask, unable to keep the worry from my question. “I wish you’d called me. I just heard about it from Koby this morning. He said he thought I’d know already.”
    Zeke exhales a long stream of smoke straight up into the air before looking at me again, his beautiful eyes hidden by his heavy lids. “Call you so that you could freak out and hover over me?” he asks, sounding bitingly sarcastic. “Thanks but no thanks.”
    I take a step back before I can help it, stung. “You don’t have to make it sound so horrible,” I mutter, cowed by his attitude. Then I say more loudly, “I thought you’d quit smoking.”
    “I don’t recall ever saying that I actually quit,” Zeke points out, and I’m even more put off balance because I can’t recall him ever actually saying it. He just… stopped at some point over the summer. I’d thought he realized he didn’t need to hide anymore, didn’t need that old image of himself and all that went with it. But he’s right. He never said he was quitting , not in so many words.
    “Well…” I say awkwardly, wondering what the hell is going on.
    Where is our easy camaraderie? The silent understanding and mind reading that we’ve always shared? Where the hell is it? I get the sudden, horrible thought that maybe this is it. Maybe I’m really, actually, truly losing Zeke here. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be around me anymore. Maybe the whole thing—our magic, the way we helped each other, the way we loved each other—is gone now. The thought sends me into a panic.
    “Okay,” I say quickly. “Okay. Well, I guess… I guess you can do what you want. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. I-”
    “Shit, Evie, I’m fine !” Zeke explodes suddenly. He comes away from the wall in a quick movement, standing before me with his arms crossed over his broad chest. There’s a hard look on his face that had never been directed at me before and I’m quaking all of the sudden.
    “I’m fine and you can lay off, all right?” he continues, his voice just as hard as his eyes, which are now wide open in annoyance. “I can smoke if I fucking want to and you can’t say shit to me about it, okay?”
    I stare at him openmouthed for a long minute and then, cowardly and pathetic as I am, my eyes fill with tears. I know Zeke sees, because his expression turns exasperated almost instantly. I don’t want his version of comforting, which in this current mood will probably end up being just as nasty and condescending as this conversation.
    Part of me is railing to talk back to Zeke, to tell him not to treat me like this, but the other, stronger part is saying that if I want to keep even the small bit of Zeke that I have right now, I need to do exactly as he says.
    “Okay,” I say, my voice thick with tears.
    I spin on my heel and walk as quickly as I can through the doors into school. People press in on me from all directions and for the first time in a while, I feel panic race through me whenever someone accidentally brushes or touches me.
    “Evie! Hey, Evie, wait a sec!”
    I can