Page 41 of Soul So Dark

“Hey,” Jordy’s voice feels like a cheese grater on my brain, “can I talk to you?”

“Not if you’re going to make me late for class,” I mutter, dodging people in the hallway until we all clear the doorway.

Hearing our voices, Colson turns and starts walking backward, his eyes locked on her in a loathsome glare. Mason glances back and does a double-take, letting out a groan as he turns back around.

“Well?” I clip impatiently. “What do you want?”

“You to talk to me again,” she tries to ignore Colson, “I just—I need you to know that I’m sorry—” Colson lets out a whoop of laughter and spins back around, earning an irritated look from her.

Near the end of the hallway, Logan, Bryce, Jamie, and Layla stand at the lockers. Colson takes a few strides ahead and sneaks up behind Bryce, grabbing her sides and making her shriek in surprise. Her friends erupt in laughter as she spins around and smacks him in the arm.

“Will you just look at me?” Jordy pleads. “You used to be my best friend…”

I clench my jaw, stopping dead in my tracks. “No,” I slowly turn to face her, “we’renot friends.Theyare my friends,” I nod to Colson and Mason at the lockers, “and they know what you did.”

“Alex—” she hisses in a hushed tone, but I cut her off.

“And if they were gone and we were the only two humans left on this planet, I’d blow my fucking brains out,” I lean into her ear, lowering my voice to a growl, “because I don’t fuck with gutter trash.”

???

I can see Dallas’s shadow moving around her room while she texts me from the second floor. I’m sure she can hear us. That is, if she doesn’t have her headphones on like she usually does.

“I can’t believe they kept you overnight,” Mason says before thinking better of it, “I mean, Ican,but what’d your dad say when he finally got there?”

I have to agree with Mason, it’s pretty impressive that Canaan thought they could come to the Rafferty house, pretend they were arresting him, and let him sit in an interrogation room all night until his father showed up to give them hell.

“The better question is if you weren’t actually under arrest, why didn’t you just leave?” I ask, gazing at Aiden’s photo splashed across the Canaan PD’s social media page. “Why’d you even call your dad?”

“I wanted them to think they were winning,” Aiden smiles, “it’s no fun if they know they’re fucked right from the start. And what better way to do that than tell a few jokes in their tiny cement room until my dad arrives after his schedule is wrecked because his delinquent son is detained for a crime he didn’t commit?” Then he motions to his picture on my phone. “And that’s just another nail in their coffin.”

Whoever put Aiden’s face on the PD’s social media when he wasn’t even under arrest is probably going to have a rude awakening by the time his father gets through with them. There’s nothing the elder Rafferty hates more than people meddling in his personal affairs, especially law enforcement.

It’s obvious where Aiden gets his temper and psychopathic tendencies.

Mason props his sneakers up on the edge of the fire pit. “What we need to do is something that doesn’t result in arrest.” Unlike Aiden, he’s more concerned about jeopardizing his spot on the university’s soccer team.

It wasn’t enough for Colson to smash Bowen’s face in the cemetery. We all know Bowen is responsible for Evie’s death, and waiting on law enforcement to do something about it is a joke. Instead, we’ve decided to come up with our own plan of action.

“Anything good will always carry the risk of arrest,” Colson smirks.

“Except maybe stalking,” Aiden replies, staring up at the stars beginning to emerge in the night sky, “too hard to prove.”

I give a nod. “That could be fun.”

“So could killing him,” Colson deadpans.

Aiden shifts his eyes to Colson with a smile. “You’d probably thrive in prison.”

“I’d rather start with torture, anyway,” I sigh, closing my screen and sliding my phone back into my jeans pocket.

“It’ll be nothing compared to what he did,” Colson mutters, staring at the pile of ashes in the fire pit, “and there’s nothing left to do except make him pay for it.”

I glance up at the second-story window, glowing pink behind the sheer curtain, and then settle my gaze back on Colson. I’ve seen him fight plenty of people, but I can’t imagine him dragging his sister across a room, throwing her to the floor, and their parents having to pry him off of her in some trauma-induced dogpile.

I shouldn’t blame him for losing his mind after what happened to Evie. I know he would never do anything like that to Dallas on purpose and I shouldn’t be angry about it. But I am.

So, I sit around the cold fire pit with my three best friends while the sky gets progressively darker and darker, just like our plans for Bowen Garrison. And at the end of the night, when I follow Aiden and Mason back out to the driveway, I get into my SUV and follow their vehicles down the long driveway to the road. Except, this time, I linger at the end of the driveway until their taillights nearly disappear and then drive a short distance to the same pull-off behind the water tower where I parked the other night.