Page 18

“Huh, I’m not.” Aurora laughs. “I don’t care who you let all over you. As long as you stay out of my way.”

As kids, we’re taught not to play with fire, that we’ll end up burned if we do. I feel like that warning should come attached to Aurora. Because whatever the hell we’re doing, someone is going to get burned or we’ll both blow up together.

My tray hits the table with a thud. “Whose face did your hand meet?” Kenny asks, looking at my bruised knuckles.

“Just be thankful it wasn’t yours again,” I tell him. The day Aurora kissed him right here in this very cafeteria, I made the excuse that I wanted to spar in the ring with him. I went overboard and broke his nose. It’s healed now, but I still get a little joy out of the knowledge that I did it.

“Oh, fuck,” Kenny says, his eyes wide when he looks at Timothy. He makes the sign of the cross. “Tell me that you are not doing what I think you are doing.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know what you’re thinking, asshole?”

“Aurora Valentino?” he says her name like it’s a question.

“Who?”

“The hot psychotic blonde over there.” He points to the table the Valentinos are all sitting at together.

“Never noticed her before,” I lie.

“Yeah, and I’m the fucking Virgin Mary,” Kenny deadpans. “Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing good can come of that, Connor.”

I wouldn’t saynothing good. Because the two times I’ve watched Auroracome, it’s been fucking epic. “Why do you sayshe’s psychotic anyway?” I mean, I get it. The girl is fucking violent. She’s made me bleed twice. I’m also here for it.

Kenny looks at me with a stupid expression. “You know that girl Melissa you were talking to this morning?”

“Yeah, what about her?”

“You didn’t hear what happened?”

“Obviously not. Do I look like the local gossip rag?” I grunt.

“She was taken out of the girls’ bathroom in a stretcher, ambulance and all. Rumor has it her wrist was broken and she was knocked unconscious,” Kenny says.

My gaze falls to Aurora.She didn’t. Did she?“Who did that to her?”

“No one is talking about it, which means one thing. It’s one of them.” Kenny nods his head towards the Valentino table. “And as much as I hate those douchebags, Dante and Orlando wouldn’t hurt a chick, so that leaves one Valentino. The scariest of them all, if you ask me.”

“She doesn’t look that scary,” I say, staring at her while I pull my phone out of my pocket. I open the Instagram app and send Aurora a message.

Me:

Not jealous, huh? Does Melissa know that?

I see her look down at her phone and pick it up. She’s typing out a reply before my own phone vibrates in my hand.

Aurora:

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop messaging me.

Me:

So you don’t care if I get up, walk over to the nearest girl, and drag her into an empty room?

Aurora:

Not at all. Before you go, though… do me a favor and ask your cousin if he’s got five minutes to spare for me?

My hand clenches around my phone.