Dangerous Dream Read Free Page B

whole conversation.” Link exhaled.
Keep it calm. Talk her down. You know how to do this, bro.
    “Ding, ding, ding.” She was furious, and anger brought out her nasty side.
    “You don’t have to be nasty about it. I get it.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yeah. I get it. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.” Link flicked a piece of melting ice across the table.
    “Really?”
    He looked up. “You don’t love me. You don’t love anybody. You’re a Siren. I’ve heard it all before.”
    “Then, why—”
    “The thing is, Rid, that’s not what it feels like when you’re with me.” He had to be honest. He had nothing left to lose.
    “Please,” she snapped.
    Link kept going. “I gotta be honest with you. I kinda feel like you—”
    “Don’t say it.” She held up her finger. A threat.
    “You love me.” He smiled because he knew it was true, whether or not Rid would ever admit she felt that way. He didn’t know why that didn’t seem to cut it anymore.
    “I said not to say it.” Ridley was backing her way out of the booth.
    “You don’t have to be so tough all the time. Not around me, Rid.” He got up after her.
    Her hands were against the glass door of the restaurant. “I
am
tough. It’s everything else that I’m faking.”
    “See that? You’re a liar. A big fat liar.” He leaned against the wall next to her.
    “I’m none of those things. Not big. Not fat. Not a liar.” She was like a cornered polecat, and he’d never seen her so panicked.
    “Yeah? Then what are you?” He raised an eyebrow, waiting. He could wait all night.
    “Out of here. That’s what I am.”
    True to her word, she wasn’t lying. Before Link could say anything, Ridley was gone.

AFTERMATH
Ridley
    There were lots of ways to forget about a guy. Especially a mostly Mortal guy. Especially one who was only part Incubus, and not even the good part. Especially a dumb guy who kept trying to force you to be something you’re not. Something you couldn’t possibly live up to…
    Ridley tried to forget every way she knew how.
    She bounced her way through Europe with a broken heart, country hopping the way some guys go barhopping.
    She met a handsome Italian football player on a train to Otranto and stayed in a castle for the next two weeks.
The Florence of the South
, Marco had said.
    No more dinners with your mother
, Ridley had said. Not even in a castle.
    She had cruised down the Dalmatian coast with Bela, a handsome sailor in an even more handsome yacht, from Split to Brac to Hvar to the walled city of Dubrovnik. The orange-red tiles against the blue-blue sky had seemed romantic at first. Then they just reminded her of Link with his Lake Moultrie sunburn.
    In Paris, she had grown tired of champagne and oysters, and of Etienne, who had come with them. There were only so many baguettes you could break at Ernest Hemingway’s former table or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s afternoon bar. And the café Les Deux Magots probably meant something about two maggots, so what was that about, anyway?
    Berlin was arty; Ridley was not. Moscow liked salty; Ridley liked sweet.
    By the time she finally felt like she had left Gatlin behind, it wasn’t just Gatlin that was over.
    The whole summer was behind her.

    Ridley didn’t know why she’d come back here—to New York or to Suffer. The Dark Caster club didn’t have enough alcohol or enough sugar to keep her mind off all the things she had spent the summer trying to forget.
    The one thing—or the one person.
    Nothing had helped. Ridley was beginning to think that nothing would, which scared her more than she was willing to admit to anyone, including herself.
    The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”—the personal sound track that Rid had adopted after the deliciously disastrous winter formal at Jackson High—blasted from her clutch.
    Ah! She never gives up.
    It was her phone. Her perfect half-Light, half-Dark cousin, Lena, had spent the last two months trying to convince Ridley to put a