"Fang!" I shouted. "FANG!" The wind took away my voice, but I heard the desperation clearly.

He was sitting on a rock, facing away from me. His dark, annoyingly-short hair looked ruffled, and even that made my heart jump.

I hated having to chase him. Before we didn't chase at all. We were always on the same page. No one was hurt.

Not so much anymore. The thing that upset me the most was the fact that he approved of Maya. He had called her a unique individual. He looked at her the way he used to look at me. My gut felt like a rock every time I even saw her.

Fang turned. His eyes were closed off, discouraging me. Why couldn't this be one of those stories where the guy loves you no matter what? Where the girl the character thinks the guy loves is really just a decoy. When he isn't a jerk.

Instead, I got to have him step all over my heart, probably breaking some pretty vital blood vessels. And he didn't even seem to care anymore.

But Max! A voice said from deep inside me (No, idiot, not the Voice, my voice). Why else would he storm off if he didn't still care?

I landed hard, so I ducked and rolled into a crouched position. I straightened, and strode over to Fang, my eyes blinking to avoid tears.

Tears? I am so pathetic.

"C'mon," I said to his back. "We gotta go back to the flock and your little, um… gang."

He was silent, like typical Fang. I was forced to grab his shoulder, ignoring the tightly coiled muscle tendons in his neck, and spin him around. Well, I attempted to. His neck snapped to face me, and the fire in his eyes was enough to make me let go of him like it burned me.

"Max. Why can't you just leave me alone?"

Those eight words hurt me as much as the entire conversation we had had earlier today. You know, when he praised Maya and said Dylan was a newbie. My mouth dropped open. I swallowed. "Okay. Fine."

I turned and launched myself into the sky, pushing myself so hard I accidentally went into super-speed mode.

I nosedived to the restaurant, and saw the flock and Fang's gang still standing separately. I dropped, and spoke to the flock. "I think he's coming."

"Good," Maya said, loosening her face from the mixture of anger and worry she had on previously. "'Cause we have research to do."

"About what?" I asked blankly, forgetting that a) I had been talking just to the flock, and b) how pissed I was at Maya.

"Um. The Doomsday Group?" Maya replied, the word 'duh' accenting every syllable.

"Right."

I tried not to look at Dylan, but I did. His face was, unlike Fang's, easily read. His eyebrows were set over his clear eyes in a determined way, and the pain was visible in the pools of blue (pools of blue? I need to shut up, quickly). He was staring right at me.

I looked away, into the sky. I saw, to my surprise, Fang, flying like a lithe panther. He landed, the speed making him stumble adorably, but towards Maya.

He turned to me, and said quietly, "Max. I'm sorry."

I stared stiffly at the ground, ignoring him. "Let's go see where we can find the Doomsday Group," I said to the flock. They looked back with varying levels of enthusiasm.

Let's do this.