Sons of Mayhem 2 Chaser (Sons of Mayhem Novels, #2) by Nikki Pink Page A

the course of a few months he shot up in height and his voice deepened. As his shoulders broadened his fat seemed to turn to muscle and his nervous grin turned into an infectious smile.
    The fat didn’t just disappear on its own of course; as his body changed, so did his mind. His interest in video games waned and instead he became interested in fitness. I’ll confess I laughed the first morning we saw him running outside.
    Mom and I were sitting by the window on a Saturday morning when we saw him half-shuffling, half-jogging down the street past Dad’s pickup which was parked in the driveway.
    “Uhoh, zombie invasion” Mom had said, and we’d laughed. But it wasn’t a laughing matter for long. He kept it up. Day after day, week after week, he was out there every morning or evening. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, he’d be pounding the pavement, a look of grim determination on his face.
    Mom’s somewhat unkind comment on the first day later changed to an impressed cry of “Look at him go!”
    He started wrestling too, and he applied the same grim determination to wrestling as he did to running, always first to practice and last to leave, always looking for someone to grapple with one last time before calling it a day, and even asking older students for extra coaching.
    Although the transformation was rapid, it took some time for me to catch on. Even though he developed into a good looking young man before my eyes I didn’t recognize it at first; he was still the chubby, geeky Halo-kid to me.
    We only see what we expect to see, so while he bloomed right in front of my eyes I was blind to it
    I had one real close friend then. Katie. We called ourselves blood-sisters , like blood brothers, only we were girls. My real blood sister was away at the state university by then, and she was much older than me anyway so Katie was much more like a sister to me than my real one .
    It was Katie who pointed him out to me, or at least pointed out what he had become. It was a warm day late in the spring and we were in my bedroom chatting and gossiping.
    I was lying on my bed holding a Seventeen magazine while she was staring out the window. “Yu-mmy”
    I looked up at, a quizzical expression on my face. “What?”
    “Not what dummy, who .”
    I pulled myself up from the bed and went to investigate, peering out of the window. My room was on the second floor at the back of the house, and it commanded a view over not just our yard, but also that of the neighboring two houses as well.
    When I saw what Katie was looking at it was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes.
    I sucked in air in surprise as I realized that my dorky little neighbor had turned into a bona fide hottie. He was shirtless in his backyard, a dumbbell in each hand, doing bicep curls, his skin slick with sweat.
    “I could eat him up,” she announced.
    I hadn’t quite grasped this new reality of the transformed dork next door. “Uh, yeah.” My voice was weak with hesitation.
    Katie turned to look at me, her hazel eyes twinkling with mischief. “What? You don’t think he’s de-lish-ious?” she asked, emphasizing each syllable
    “Well—”
    “You don’t just wanta eat him up? Huh?”
    I laughed and gave her a little push. “Shut up. He’s a dork.”
    Katie raised her eyebrows. “Doesn’t look like a dork to me .”
    “And he looks like a twelve year old.”
    Katie turned and looked pointedly out the window at the boy who most certainly didn’t look like a twelve year old, before turning back to face me. She had a concerned look on her face as she raised a tanned hand to my face and waved it in front of my eyes. “Kaz,” she said, her tone serious, “can you see my hand? Have you gone blind?”
    I laughed and swatted her hand away before turning around and diving back onto my bed.
    I rolled onto my back and spoke again. “I guess he’s changed a bit. I swear last time I looked at him he was a pudgy little pig boy.”
    My friend laughed. “You need