Chapter 20
626 Words
Chapter 20
Lyric was sitting on the front porch swing when Cutter arrived back at the house. She had a thoughtful expression on her face, and he almost hated to interrupt whatever she was concentrating on. But as he approached the steps, she asked, “How did that go?”
With a sigh, Cutter sauntered over and dropped down next to her before answering. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Clearly, there’s still a wall between us. I have no idea what to do about it. And this new guy—Kyle….” Cutter couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Yeah, about that,” Lyric began, looking at him sideways. “I’m not sure I trust this guy.”
Cutter raised an eyebrow and narrowed in on her eyes, trying to read where she was coming from. “What do you mean?” Despite what Lyric had already mentioned to him, he had thought he was the only one who was suspicious of Kyle and that it had come from a place of jealousy.
Shrugging, Lyric replied. “It just seems a little… convenient to me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ru’s gorgeous, but like I said the other night, she doesn’t seem to date much. There aren’t a lot of pics of her on social media with guys. None in fact. And her status says she’s single. There’s no mention of her having dated anyone at all. So… why now? Why, all of a sudden, with everything going on, does some guy drop into Reaper’s Hollow of all places and have an interest in her?”
Cutter wasn’t sure how to respond. Ever since Lyric had mentioned it the other night, he’d been thinking about it, but hadn’t come up with an explanation. He’d assumed Ru had met someone now because he always had awful luck with women, so naturally, the first one he’d been interested in for as long as he could remember would immediately find the love of her life the second he let her know how he felt. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “What are you getting at?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. But when something doesn’t seem right, it usually isn’t. I know you said to stay out of her dreams, and I will, but I want to do some reconnaissance. Ru mentioned that Kyle is taking her for a hike tomorrow in the woods. I wanna keep an eye on her. I don’t trust him, and I haven’t even met him. At least… I don’t think I have.”
Cutter was growing more and more alarmed at each of her statements. “So you want to sit outside of her house on your bike and then follow her on her date to the woods. And you don’t think she’ll notice any of this?”
Lyric gave him a sly smile. “No! I wouldn’t take my bike. I don’t think she’s seen Ivy’s car much. I could borrow that. And as far as being in the woods with them is concerned, I have my methods of seeing what’s going on in there without entering.”
He assumed she meant she’d slip into the forest in her spirit form, which is precisely what he’d asked her not to do—spying on Ru without her knowing she was there. But then, sitting outside of her house with a pair of binoculars was just as invasive. “And what exactly is it that you think this Kyle fellow has up his sleeve anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Lyric admitted. “But I think we need to find out. Ru’s too valuable for us to lose her now, whether it’s to Nat or to her definition of normalcy.”
Cutter couldn’t argue with that. “Well, do what you need to do. Just be careful. If she finds out, she’ll be pissed at all of us.”
Lyric’s grin split her face. “She’ll never even know I’m there.”
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