Free Slayers: Friends and Traitors by C. J. Hill Page B

one hand not quite reaching the railing. “Did Jesse tell you to talk to me?”
    Jesse and Dirk had been close friends ever since they came to camp. Jesse might have sent Dirk because he figured she needed her other counterpart’s consolation.
    Dirk let out a scoff. “No.” The way he said the word made it clear that guys didn’t do that sort of thing. He gestured to her door. “I noticed waves of emotion rolling out of your cabin and figured you might want to talk about it.”
    Tori walked down the stairs. “I’ll be fine.”
    Dirk watched her silently, looking right through her. “Come on,” he said, taking hold of her hand. “Let’s go talk.”
    “I don’t want to talk,” she insisted, but she went with him, letting him lead her toward the trail that went to the lake. Her feet thudded against the packed dirt in noisy, graceless steps. She dropped his hand. It didn’t seem right to keep holding it.
    “You don’t have to talk,” Dirk said. “We could make out instead. That’s the perfect way to get back at guys you’re mad at.” He was teasing, trying to joke her out of her bad mood. “At least it would be perfect for me.” He gave her a wicked grin, an encouraging one. “At any rate, you should give it a try.”
    She rolled her eyes and didn’t answer. Even before Tori had realized she was Dirk’s counterpart, she had suspected he was a player—the type of guy who flirted for sport and collected girls’ hearts like they were trading cards. Romance was always a game for those sorts of guys. And not one she wanted to play.
    They kept walking through the forest. Curtains of trees on both sides of the trail held out their branches and shimmered their leaves like peddlers displaying their wares.
    “Tell me what happened,” Dirk prodded.
    What had happened—that was the question, wasn’t it? Yesterday Jesse loved her and today, well, not so much. It was all for the good of the country, of course—because that breakup excuse sounded way more noble than “It’s me, not you.” It was much better than “I just want to be friends.”
    She had probably always been just a summer distraction, a way to kill time until he got back to his real life. She didn’t want to talk about any of it. If she tried, the shards rattling around inside of her would come loose and cut her to ribbons. Dirk would get the information out of Jesse, if she didn’t say something—and that seemed worse, Dirk going up to Jesse and asking him why she was so upset.
    “Jesse said I should date other people over the school year.”
    “Score,” Dirk said. “You can start right now. I’ll be your first date.”
    Tori ignored his suggestion. “That’s the thing that makes me the maddest about this. Jesse is pretending he’s doing this for me, when in reality he just dumped me.”
    She told Dirk everything then. How Jesse said their separation would only be for the school year, and then in the next breath told her they needed to keep the rules so he wasn’t influenced by his feelings for her.
    When Tori finished, they were at the lake. The canoes had already been packed up somewhere. The worn wooden dock sat forlorn and empty in the water. Dirk didn’t go to the water’s edge. Instead he sat down on a large boulder not far from the trail. “That’s the difference between Jesse and me. I don’t feel guilty for rescuing you today.”
    Tori sat down beside him, focusing on the slate-blue lake water in front of her. “But what if it had been a real battle and we all died, and the country fell because of it?”
    Dirk shrugged. “I guess I’d be too dead to feel guilty over it.”
    She tilted her chin down. “You’re not taking the question seriously.” Dirk took very few things seriously. It was part of his rakish personality.
    “What’s your point?” he asked.
    She picked up a rock and tossed it at the lake. Normally her rock wouldn’t have made it to the water’s edge. With her Slayer powers going, the rock