Jack shifted toward me. “So, Jules gets a smile, huh?” I could feel his eyes on me, waiting for a response. He hadn’t tried to talk to me since that first day, and his voice directed at me again did strange things to me. Made my stomach flutter. Of course, Jack had always had that power over me.

I kept my eyes down, but I couldn’t stop my lips from turning upward.

“I see that,” he said. Jack always saw everything.

LAST YEAR

Christmas Dance. Three months before the Feed.

Jack took me to the Christmas Dance.

It snowed the day of the dance, making the Meier Farmhouse and Dance Hall look like something out of a painting, the lights on the roof glowing under sheets of white. And when Jack led me onto the dance floor and grasped one of my hands and tugged it up behind his neck, then placed his arm around my back, soft and low, I thought life couldn’t get better.

He pulled me close against him, our hands clasped next to his chest. The cedar from the farmhouse mingled with Jack’s aftershave, making a sweet, rustic scent.

“Becks, remember the first time we met?” he asked, his lips grazing my ear.

Of course I remembered. The events of that day were permanently etched into my brain. “You mean, the time you nearly beheaded me with a baseball?”

“I had to do something to get the new girl’s attention.”

“A simple ‘hello’ would have worked.”

He pulled me in tighter, as if that were possible. “Why did we wait so long to do this?”

“Um, because you were making your way through the entire cheerleading squad?”

He looked at me for a few moments, then shook his head and leaned in to brush his lips along my shoulder.

I closed my eyes. If this was what I could expect for the rest of my high school years, I never wanted to graduate.

Ever.

Later that night, I was alone in the girls’ bathroom. I’d just shut my stall when the bathroom doors opened. Several voices were in the middle of a conversation, and it sounded like one of the girls was fighting back sobs.

“You’re seriously, like, a hundred times prettier than she is,” one girl’s voice sounded loudly.

“Yeah. I mean, if her dress didn’t have those straps, she’d have nothing to hold it up.”

My cheeks went red as I glanced down at the thin straps on my shoulders. But what were the chances they were talking about me?

“Ignore them both! You’re at the Christmas Dance with Jake Wilson,” another girl gushed.

I froze. I’d seen who was on Jake’s arm as he entered the hall. Lacey Greene.

“Shut up, Eliza,” a new voice said. Lacey. It sounded like she was talking through tears. “That doesn’t help. I was supposed to be here with Jack.”

Crap. They were talking about me and my pathetic straps.

“But you guys broke up months ago…” another girl said before her voice faded away.

“It was just a break, Claire, and he knew it.” She sighed loudly. “I gave him everything. He told me he loved me. And the second that little slut gives him one opening, he takes off.”

“She didn’t—” one girl started to say, but then she stopped.

“If it makes you feel any better, Lace, he’ll be over her fast. She has no backbone. She’ll give it up, and he’ll get tired of her, like he does everyone else. Then maybe he’ll come back to you.”

My hands started to shake. I wasn’t just another girl; the gossip was overblown. Jack wasn’t going to get tired of me. Was he? He’d told Lacey he loved her. Was she lying?

I realized I was leaning against the stall door, my hand over my heart as if I could hold it in. Even if he did tell her he loved her, he was here with me. That meant everything, didn’t it?

The truth was, I didn’t know. I’d never had a boyfriend, and Jack obviously had more experience than me. I didn’t want to be like the others, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to be with him. It didn’t stop me from wanting him to want me.

I didn’t have an answer for that one, but at least I could show them backbone.

I flushed the toilet and swung the door open wide, staring straight ahead to the mirrors above the sinks. Their chattering stopped immediately, and they watched in silence as I marched over, washed my hands, took my time drying them, looked in the mirror, applied lipstick, and finally made my grand exit.

I hoped they were too busy looking at my determined face to notice my wobbly knees.

Jack was waiting for me when I opened the bathroom door. He grabbed my hand and whisked me away to the dance floor again, as if we were wasting precious seconds.

I tried not to let those girls bother me. The fact that Jack had dated Lacey Greene was common knowledge. Jack had dated everybody.

Everybody. Like really, everybody. Crap. What was I doing?

“Jack?”

“Mmmm?”

The band was playing a softer song, mellow and slow.

“Why did you ask me out when you did?” I tried to sound casual.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did something specific happen to make you ask me out?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What was it?” Had I thrown myself at Jack Caputo? Had I done something to get in Lacey’s way?

“You remember the first game of the season?”

“Yeah,” I said. It was Jack’s first game as starting quarterback, the youngest starter in school history. I remembered sitting in the second row, directly behind the team bench.

“After I threw for the first touchdown of the game?”

“Yes.” I still couldn’t figure out where he was going with this. Had I flashed him or something, and blocked it out of my memory? I was pretty sure I wasn’t holding up any large signs declaring my love or anything.

“Our defense took the field, and I was on the bench. When I turned around to look at the fans…” He paused.

Oh no. “What did I do?”

He smiled. “You looked at me. Not the game.” He sighed, as if reliving the memory.

I felt my face scrunch up in confusion. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He shrugged. “It was the first time I thought there might be a chance. I asked Jules about it.”

I bit my lip. “Apparently she doesn’t understand that trusty sidekicks aren’t supposed to spill secrets.”

In a flash, I was suspended in the air, the back of my head inches from the ground, Jack’s face a breath away from mine, his lips in a wicked grin.

I gasped, more from surprise at the sudden dip than from fear.

“There are no secrets between us, Becks.” His smile remained, but his eyes were intense.

I couldn’t answer.

He held me there for a few seconds more, then slowly raised me up, keeping me in his arms.

I bit my lip. “Then, can I ask you something?”

We stopped dancing for a moment, and he frowned. “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good. Shoot.”

“You and Lacey…” My voice trailed off.

“Me and Lacey…” he said, waiting for me to continue.

“Did you break up with her?”

“That’s what’s bothering you? Yes, we broke up.”

I thought about what I’d overheard in the girls’ bathroom. “Does she … know that?”

Jack smiled. “I hope so. She was there.”

As if the conversation were finished, Jack pulled me close and we started to dance again. Then he said in my ear, matter-of-factly, “She’ll get over it.”

When he pulled up to my house after the dance, we could see the silhouette of my father in the doorway. “I think I’ll say good night here,” Jack said.

“My dad’s not so bad.”

“Oh yeah, he was great … right up until the time I started dating his daughter.”

I’d seen how my dad had become considerably colder toward Jack. There were little clues, like the other evening when out of nowhere he told Jack about how every football player he went to high school with had gotten fat after graduation. We’d been talking about what to make for dinner.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe next time.” I leaned over to peck him on the cheek, but he grabbed my face in both of his hands and kissed me. His breath tasted like the mints the chaperones had passed out when the dance was over, and when he parted his lips against mine, I shivered, but not because of the cold. I pressed against him even more and hoped the dark inside the car obscured my dad’s view.

But I knew better than to push it. As I was about to break away, Jack put his hands behind my waist and pulled me even closer, practically lifting me over the center console, so I was sitting in his lap.

I pulled back. “My dad’s going to love that—”

He put his finger over my lips, cutting me off. “Please don’t talk about your dad when I’m kissing you. Besides, unless he’s enacted a law against it—”

“Which he may well do after tonight,” I interrupted.

He smiled and then brought my face to his again for a few moments before finally releasing me.

“After that kiss, we’d better dream of the same thing tonight,” he said with a smirk.

My face got even warmer, but I tried to speak in a calm voice. “I’ll probably dream my usual dream, where I show up to school without any clothes on.”

“Me too.” Jack chuckled. I gave his shoulder a playful shove.

He popped out of the car and went around to open my door, being careful to avoid any actual contact with me as I stepped out. I waited until his car had rounded the corner before I walked up the pathway and opened our front door.

“Careful, Nikki,” my dad said.

“What do you mean?”

“I just don’t want to see my girl so overwhelmed.”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “It’s just that even though I’m totally old and unhip, I remember what boys in high school were like. Especially the kind like Jack Caputo.”

“What kind is that?”

“The kind that doesn’t even walk a girl to the door.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, he would have, but he had to go drop off his other dates. There were three of us.” My dad finally cracked a smile. “Good night, old man,” I said, giving him a hug.

Wait a sec, honey. “Did I do that okay?”

“I pulled back. “Do what okay?” It hit me then that this was my first dance since my mom died. I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t realized it before. It was just that the night was so perfect. Before he could explain, I said, “Yes. You did great.”

“Night, Nikki.”

The next morning, I found a note in my jacket pocket. I unfolded it and read two words, written in Jack’s handwriting.

Ever Yours.

SIX

NOW

My bedroom. Four and a half months left.

I walked into my house after school with a smile on my face. Even the smallest interaction with Jack, and the fact that he noticed my blush, was enough to send me into orbit.

But as I got closer to my bedroom, the mark on my shoulder began to tingle.

Cole was here.

I opened my bedroom door slowly.

“It’s been over a month, Nik.” Cole was sitting on my bed, strumming his guitar. And as usual, I tried to ignore him. There was nothing I could do about his visits, but that didn’t mean I had to make it easy for him. Without looking at him, I took my books out of my bag and placed them on my desk, turned the lamp on, and opened my notebook.

I scratched my mark.

He strummed a little louder, but I still didn’t turn. “You won’t last. You must see that.”

“Find somebody else to entertain you,” I said.

“There is no one else.”

I turned a page in my notebook and started writing again. “There’s always someone else. You’ve been Feeding off Forfeits for hundreds of years. Get a new one.”

“You don’t give my job enough credit. It’s really hard to convince a girl to follow me. The average pickup lines don’t work so well. ‘Hey, wanna get coffee? And then spend an eternity getting the life force sucked out of you?’ They don’t go for it. Think about it, Nik. Would you have come with me if it weren’t for Jack being such a—”

“Don’t blame Jack,” I said, even though I wondered if deep down, a tiny part of me wanted to blame him too.

“You’re still defending him?” His voice bounced off the walls, seeming extra loud. And then he started strumming again. “He left you before you ever left him. He’d never take you back.”

The words stung. “I don’t want him to take me back.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” he said. He knew me too well.

I swiveled around in my chair. “I’m serious. You’re right. He deserves better.”

“You expect me to believe you? You would choose the pain of a Return, and for … what? Just to see him? For a few moments? Not to get with him?”