Dark urban fantasy coming soon... Blood Lies (The Iron Series 3)

Here's another sneak peek of Blood Lies...



Stein’s notebook lay front and center, the dissecting materials carelessly pushed to the side.  The blue was faded and creased in places from use and his fidgeting fingers. 
Always a fidgeter.
Demon Stein didn’t fidget. 
I flipped it open, my fingers traveling over his incredibly neat handwriting.  Mine wasn’t terrible, but his made it look like chicken scratch.  Pages and pages of notes he’d taken during class moved beneath my gaze, little doodles of video game nerd crap I didn’t understand filling up the margins.
And then I flipped to a page I’d never seen before with notes on cow eyes, but that wasn’t what caught my attention.  It was the little doodles across the top and bottom that held my heart in a death grip.
He’d written my name a few times, misshapen hearts surrounding it.  My name and his were together in other place, little plus signs between them.
A lump the size of Mik’s fist lodged in my throat, ripping away my ability to breathe.  God, how could I have missed this?  He was sitting right next to me drawing my name in hearts.  How could I have not known he wanted to be more than my friend? 
Why didn’t he tell me?
Because he knew my heart belonged to someone else.  Stein sat there and listened to me bitch and moan about my unrequited and confused feelings for Rex when he was having the same for me, except he had no one to unload them on.
Everyone had known except me.
I was the self-absorbed idiot too cruel to notice when the sweetest kid in the world was head over heels for me.
A deadly combination of guilt and anger flowed through my chest, threatening to break my ribs to reach my heart.  The room blurred and at first I thought it was because I was going to start hallucinating.  Instead something warm flowed down my cheek and a quiet splat hit the white notebook paper, smearing my name inside of a heart.
I was crying.
I was crying in class… in front of people.
I quickly wiped the tears off with my fingertips, my gaze traveling the room to see if anyone had noticed the disaster unfurling around me.  Everyone’s eyes were cast down on their dead fish as they cut into it, every set except for a pair of pretty blue ones, staring wide-eyed in my direction. 
Brett Baustic’s gaze was trained on me from across the room as if he was witnessing a car accident and couldn’t look away. 
This was a hundred times more unlikely than a car accident.
I wanted to be angry at him.  I wanted to flip him off or tell him to go screw himself, but I couldn’t seem to find that hot fury he used to bring out in me.  Maybe it was because I felt guilty for my part in Chanel’s death.  Or maybe it was the way those blue irises glinted with pain instead of the arrogance they used to.
Jason elbowed Brett and began to turn his head to see what had his friend so enraptured.  I glanced away before he too could discover my secret—that I could in fact cry.

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