The Boarding School Experiment by Emily Evans

leave. But what about someone who wasn’t supposed to be here? The knot tightened in my stomach and my voice came out a whisper. “Thane, may I talk to you a second?”
    Thane made one of his smirks. “Who’d you hatch? Unlucky bastard.”
    I wet my lips again.
    Kaitlin seemed a little shocked, and slapped Thane on the arm with a light, playful brush. “Behave.”
    Thane didn’t have much patience for correction, at least not when it came to me. He straightened and said, “Later.”
    Kaitlin’s gaze flew from him to the people near them. Pink flooded her face. “You can’t just leave me alone at the ‘get to know your soul mate’ mixer.”
    “I’ll send him right back,” I said, trying to placate her, because Thane wasn’t going to. I hurried after his stomping feet.
    When I caught up to him, Thane said, “There’re about to break out the champagne and the engagement rings. None of them have given Geneva a second thought. Have they contacted her parents? Why can’t we see her? Why did they send us out with an incompetent guide?” He stopped and turned to me. “You were going to run screaming too, weren’t you? The bear could have gotten you. Turned on you.”
    “Shh.” I looked around. Normally I wouldn’t care if one of the coordinators took a shot at Thane, but I needed to admit everything without an audience. I had to confess before he and Kaitlin made some mistake, further screwing with Rhys’s life.
    Thane crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t have time for your petty shit, Elena.”
    “Okay, let’s go back to the clinic. We’ll check on Geneva for ourselves and then you can talk to me. Okay?”
    Thane straightened with purpose, and he strode directly to the elevators.
    I grabbed his wrist and shook my head. “They said no visitors. We won’t get in that way.”
    “Ah, I forgot, I’m standing beside someone who says, Why use the front door if we can crawl in through the ceiling tiles? What’s your plan?”
    My first plan was to maintain my temper and ignore his return to the snarky-butt he’d been these last two years. He saved my life . I repeated it to myself: Thane saved my life . I stuck the side of my thumbnails between my teeth, thinking, not really biting. Piper called this my plot-hatching pose. Geneva had been working with me to stop the habit, because the biting ruined my nails and she thought they would look better if they consisted of more than chewed up nubs. Right now a nice manicure no longer mattered.
    “Wait here.” I raced toward my room. Of course, Thane didn’t wait. He stayed right behind me every step of the way. I went to the corner in the sty I called my third of the room and dug through the dirty clothes pile, grabbing for the hiking shirt. Ignoring the browned, dried stains—Geneva’s blood—I grabbed the badge and lifted it to show him. “When the coordinator fell…”
    “What are you two doing in here?” Nevaeh asked from the doorway. “Practicing some egg-stasy?”
    I shoved the I.D. behind my back and schooled my expression into innocence as Nevaeh stepped in my room. She was holding hands with a guy I’d seen making out with a red-headed diver. I remembered, because he had red hair too and the flaming affection was difficult to miss. Guess he dumped the redhead for his egg soul mate.
    Thane moved behind me, taking the badge from my fingers despite my resistance. “We were saying our goodbyes.” A heavy arm landed across my shoulders. “Weren’t we, love?”
    “Uh.”
    “Don’t be shy now, everyone has a past.” He bent his head toward me, reaching for my mouth.
    I jerked back a step, watching the smirk cover his pursed lips, and slapped him in the arm, hard. There was nothing playful behind my gesture. “Later, lover. We have an audience.”
    “Lover?” A gasp came from the door, and a flushed Kaitlin looked at us with her wide baby-doll eyes. “Lover?” Her voice was soft. I don’t think she’d ever said the word before,