"How many tubs of ice cream do you think I can feasibly buy without your mother killing me?" Dad said, staring at the Ben and Jerry's tubs lined up temptingly in neat rows.

I shrugged, resting my arms against the trolly. "I say we eat three on the way home, and then she won't even know."

Dad pointed at me. "Good strategy, good strategy. Have the ice cream give me diabetes and kill me, and then your mother won't be able to." He nodded in agreement and threw a stack of tubs into the cart.

I grinned.

"How was the first day back at school, honey?" he asked me.

He had arrived at the school gate to pick me up, grinning, and helped me into the car. He knew that I still felt mild stress at being back inside a vehicle; the way my throat would clog and my hands would shake. At least for the first day, he would pick me up and make sure I didn't have a heart attack on the journey home. The many hard months of rehabilitation would hardly be worth it if I died from stress.

But I didn't like to worry my parents. I was sick of the concerned furrow between their brows, the are you okays? that hardly helped, because even if I wasn't, there was nothing we could do about it. Especially since they didn't believe me when I said I was fine. And I was. Fine.

I shrugged. "It was fine, I guess. Hartley was nice to me though, which is terrifying and weird. Did you neglect to tell me about some sort of apocalypse? Am I at risk of being the host to an alien parasite too?"

"Not to my knowledge. But Jace Hartley?" said Dad, raising an eyebrow. "Nice to you?"

"I know," I said with a frown. "It's so devious, right?"

"Uh, yes?" said Dad, scanning my face for the confirmation he was answering my question correctly. At my nod of agreement, he continued. "Evil stuff. Straight out of nightmares."

"I know."

It was as if I'd summoned him with the sheer force of my hatred. The universe was truly conspiring against me, and I kind of hated whoever was running the big show for it. Was the universe amused by my suffering? Dad and I turned into the next aisle with our shopping trolley, innocently searching for condensed milk, when the sound of Jace Hartley's voice assaulted my eardrums.

It was a voice that made me want to plummet from a medium-sized cliff.

I hadn't been forced to see Hartley for months, and yet somehow, I'd had to suffer through his presence not only at school today, but in the local supermarket too. He didn't even live in the same suburb as me! This is why we hired someone to do our shopping, usually. These were the perils of local supermarkets.

Whoever was in charge of running my life was doing a terrible job. I mean, I'd just recovered from an accident. I deserved some time off bad luck.

"Why do you need that much jelly?" Jace complained. He was such a complainer; so annoying and whiny. I'd complained about that fact to Kaelin often. "Like, are you trying to make Jell-O shots for a whole army?"

Jace was at the end of the aisle, leaning back against a shelf of beans with ease, poking fun at Corine, who was buying out the supermarkets selection of jelly. He looked relaxed; smiling, good-natured, resting languidly against the neat rows with his hands in his pockets.

Corine grinned at him. She was a pretty brunette woman in her early thirties, with bright, wicked eyes and a smile that would remind of Jace's, except it didn't inspire violent thoughts. "I expect you to support me in my campaign to destroy my liver."

"I'm sorry that I care about your health?"

"Are you always this concerned about consequences for your actions?" Corine asked, her head inclined as if she were genuinely curious and extremely concered.

Jace shrugged. "I mean... yes? I have a particular investment in this fun thing called living to my seventies."

Corine shook her head mournfully. She looked genuinely disappointed in him, and for that I related to her on a deep level. "Damn, Jace, I never wouldn't let this happen. Rachel and Camille have failed you, teaching you responsibility and smart choices. I can't believe I didn't raise you." She shook the jelly teasingly at him.

Hartley smiled. "And I thank all the higher powers for that every single day."

Corine, who was Jace's biological mother, had given birth to Jace when she was just fourteen. Instead of keeping him, her older sister Rachel and her girlfriend Camille had adopted Jace. Now, from what I knew of the situation, Corine served as a sort of fun aunt in his life. Clearly, she was an excellent influence on him. Unfortunately for Jace, he was too lame to follow in his cool aunties footsteps. What a stick in the mud.

Corine looked up and her eyes, so similar to Jace's, locked with mine. She nudged Hartley with her elbow and nodded towards me. He glanced over, and when he saw me, he grinned. Grinned. It seemed that his weird behaviour was not simply confined to the school grounds. Gross.

"Oh, no, Satan? In my local supermarket?" Dad said to me, in a poor approximation of sincerity. "I didn't know he was partial to hanging out in the beans aisle. Isn't he supposed to have demons to control, or something?"

"Thanks for the support, Dad," I said drily.

The thing is, I couldn't exactly avoid the encounter. We had been walking straight towards the Hartley's, and while I had no personal issue with blatantly avoiding Hartley, I couldn't be quite so rude to Corine. I mean, I wasn't a bad person. It wasn't her fault she'd given birth to the devil.

"Lena," Corine said, with a kind smile, as we drew closer. "How are you?"

"I'm good, thanks," I replied. I nodded at her cart. "I totally support your campaign. Your time is wasted if you're not."

Corine laughed, and the sound of her laugh made me smile. "See? That's how you should behave, Jacey. Take notes from Lena."

A faint smile ghosted my lips, and Jace looked skyward as if praying to a higher power to save him from his fate. "Yeah, Jace," I said. "You should take notes from me."

My dad looked faintly embarrassed to have me as a daughter.

Corine nodded towards my leg. "I was sorry to hear about your accident," she said. It was a sentence I'd heard countless times since the accident, hundreds of times today as my schoolmates waved hello and gazed down at my leg with sympathetic eyes. "How are you doing with that?"

And as always, I blew off the concern. "I think about cutting it off at least three times a day, but I've refrained thus far."

Corine gave me a sympathetic smile. Yeah, Jace's smile. Corine was just a far better person, because she was a person. Instead of a weird devil thing.

"Hey, Lena," Dad said. He was examining my the shopping list carefully; he hadn't done the grocery shopping since my mother's company had gone gangbusters, but our chef was on her holiday break this week. He was clearly confused. Rich people, honestly. "Can you go grab some grated cheese?"

Dad had clearly forgotten that I wasn't awesome at excursions for the current minute, but I was hardly going to protest. I'd demanded that my parents treat me normally for months. And it was nice for them to do so, even if it was due to a lapse in memory.

"Jace, go with her," said Corine, noting my leg.

Dad opened his mouth to offer his own help—remembering my leg—but Jace looked at Corine wit wide eyes. "Wha—" Jace began, but he was cut off by a deadly look from Corine. "Yeah, alright."

"Thank you, Jace and Corine," Dad said warmly.

"Thanks," I mumbled.

I couldn't exactly refuse Corine's generous offer, even if it did mean suffering in the presence of Jace Hartley for a few minutes. We set off down to the end of the aisles leaving my dad and Corine chattering. I glared obstinately ahead, so that I didn't have to look at Hartley's face.

He just laughed at me. "You're such a good conversationalist," he commented.

"I'm excellent," I retorted. "I just don't like to waste my talents."

Jace shook his head, smirking. "You're such a dick."

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Jace ushered me through a gap between people, helping me through the aisle as I hopped after him. Doing exactly what Cady hadn't earlier that day, spreading the crowds as if he was Moses and the supermarket shoppers were the Red Sea.

He looked back at me. "That's not true. I've said lots of nice things to you today."

I shrugged, as much as I could when my arms were pressed into the crutches. "Yeah, but I'm 95% sure that it's part of a larger plan to get beneath my guard and do something mean, so it doesn't really count as saying something nice." I tapped my forehead. "It's not working, by the way. I'm onto you."

"Are you?" said Jace, amused. He didn't seem particularly threatened by this information. "I guess I'll have to try harder. My espionage has been uncovered."

"Good luck," I said haughtily. "You will never get one over me."

"We'll see," Jace said lightly.

I glared at him. He didn't retaliate, his features remaining relaxed and pleasant. Devilish. "What do you mean by we'll see? Are you going to pee in my sandbox again, like you did back in kindergarten?"

"Firstly, Ryan peed in your sandbox, so you really have to stop blaming me for that. And secondly, I just think I might have a chance," said Jace with an easy shrug. As if he didn't care all that much, but with the smallest amount of effort, he could still pitch a decent stand in this enduring fight of ours. Which wasn't true at all; feuding with me was a full-time commitment, because I didn't rest. "Give me a little credit. You like our feud because I can keep up with you, so there's no need to pretend you have no faith in me to do so."

"I like our feud because you're stupid and irritating and I enjoy letting you eat my dust as you fail to keep up with me," I retorted. "And because you peed in my sandbox, and I need to avenge that, because it was disgusting."

"If I'm eating your dust, I must be close enough."

"Only if I let you."

Jace tilted his head to regard me carefully. "Well, I'll repeat myself. We'll have to see."

I resisted the urge to snarl at him, clamping down on the rage that churned in my gut. I wasn't an angry person. I wasn't even easily irritated. But something about Jace Hartley riled me, and I couldn't help but react.

"You never got me back for the bedroom," I said viciously.

"Maybe not," said Jace. "But aren't you convinced that I'm being nice to you for some grand plan?" Yes. "Maybe you'll never see it coming."

"I always see it coming. I'm one step ahead of you at all times."

Jace looked over at me, struggling on my crutches to match his pace. His grin was derisive, judgemental and set my blood to boil. "I can see that."

"Would you consider jumping off a bridge in the near future, or do I have to push you?"

He smiled gaily. "It's okay that you can't keep up, little Elle. If I'm going over a bridge, you're going to have to arrange it. But don't ask me to do your work for you."

"I can keep up."

"Can you?" he asked. The smile that bloomed across his face at that moment was teasing, and grated on my nerves. "If you need my help to collect some grated cheese, then I would say I'm already winning."

When we found the grated cheese, I threw it at his head.