Page 28

We all looked to see who he was talking about. A girl in a tight red dress stumbled across the lot, laughing way too loudly. Her heels weren’t made for cracked pavement, and her friends looked equally unsteady on their feet.

“She looks familiar,” Nick said.

“She looks like fun,” Rook corrected.

I chuckled, shaking my head. His idea of ‘fun’ wasn’t legal or sane, not that mine was either, but I had never dabbled in the shit Rook did.

Everyone thought he was this quiet, soft-around-the-edges, brooder.

Our girls were fiercely protective of him, as if his ass needed to be coddled.

All the rest were determined to snag the guy who wasted class time writing poetry in the margins of textbooks, and had the whole dark, mysterious thing going on.

Cade tapped the back of my seat to get my attention. “Xander got the scoop on what had Little Sanj mad at Dead-Weight.”

I kept my expression neutral, waiting for him to explain. Any mention of Ashton, even the nickname we graced him with, was a fast track to souring my mood.

“What’d he do?” Nick pressed, stretching out in the passenger seat.

“He’s been talking to Sarah Myers,” Cade revealed, glancing up. “And we all know Sanj would rather set herself on fire than breathe the same air as that girl.”

Rook didn’t even glance over. “That girl is the one who shouldn’t be breathing.”

“Neither should he, for obvious reasons,” I added.

“If you’re tired of the long game, you can always make him have an accident on the field,” Nick joked.

“No. That would tarnish your rep too much from the empathy crowd. Do it in the locker room where there aren’t any cameras, and we can clear out the witnesses,” my brother suggested casually as ever.

“On second thought, let’s just stick with the plan already in motion.

Saves us from needing to worry about damage control. ”

“Sarah needs to go,” Rook reiterated. “D-W isn’t a problem needing solved any longer. She is.”

“She won’t be an issue for much longer,” I assured him.

Her name alone was a damn landmine. I didn’t have too many regrets besides letting my girl slip through my fingers, but allowing that bitch anywhere near me was one of them.

People used to assume I wasn’t picky and went through girls like plays on the field.

I could count the number of times I’d messed around with one hand.

Sarah Myers had unfortunately earned a digit.

She was pretty in the way yearbook superlatives noticed and surface-level enough that she never expected anything deeper at first. She’d pursued me for weeks, and back then, I was worse off.

I was still polishing the version of myself the world saw now, going through the motions.

She caught me outside our high school weight room one afternoon.

It had been a shit day, one of those where I was stretched thin and pretending not to be.

We hooked up a few times after that, but it never meant anything.

I’d told Sass about us before she had to find out through the gossip mill.

No details, just enough to be honest, because I never wanted her blindsided or left in the dark after she’d gone through that once before.

She said some cliché bullshit along the lines of, “ If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

I knew right then she was lying to me, just like she had earlier tonight.

Everything that happened afterward solidified my reasons for staying away from relationships.

She fell into the same pattern she had when I dated Ellie Newton, but worse.

She assumed I needed space and made herself smaller.

She was careful not to come off like a threat to any girl she thought I might be into.

I hated seeing it. I went as far as calling her out on it, and that led to one of our rare arguments.

Looking back, I had been so focused on playing the part of just friends , thinking I was respecting boundaries I longed to torch, I overlooked something crucial about my girl—she was playing the same role I was.

She was holding back just as much as me. Maybe more. We’d both spent so long pretending we didn’t want each other, we almost convinced ourselves it was safer that way.

I was a fucking fool.

Here was this gorgeous girl, inside and out, perfect for me in every way, that I knew better than she knew herself, and I got so caught up trying to protect a friendship I already knew I’d outgrown, that I did more harm than good.

Even my baby sister had pointed out the obvious, and that was fucking embarrassing.

My parents and brother tried to reason it away.

Said I was a young one then, AKA, a dumbass teenage boy, and they weren’t wrong.

But I was dumb in ways other kids our age weren’t.

Looking back, I realized that while this route might’ve aged me another ten years, everything happened for a reason.

I had loved Sanjana so damn long that when we finally got this right, I would make up for all that lost time and ensure she never walked away.

Things with Sarah ended almost immediately after my sobering realization.

Her friend even gave me a helping hand, albeit unknowingly.

We were at an overcrowded weekend party in the hills, someone’s parents were out of town, and half the high school seemed to show up.

I was sitting on the edge of a couch, drink in hand, when her best friend sat down beside me.

I barely noticed at first. Next thing I knew, she was in my lap, hands on my chest. I told her to get off me twice, and she didn’t listen.

Xander stepped in before I had to raise my voice.

Pulled her off and told her to stay the fuck away from me and learn what no sounds like.

She never lived it down.

I ended things with Sarah the next morning in person so there could be no misunderstandings. If I knew she was going to turn around and take it out on Sanj, I would’ve handled it differently. I would have fucking buried her alive.

She didn’t have the spine to come at my girl directly, so it was subtle, underhanded bullshit.

She made side comments, passive digs, and whispered loud enough to get under Sanjana’s skin, but she failed time and time again.

The more Sass ignored her, the bolder she got.

She went for the girl she knew meant everything to me because she needed someone to blame for being cut off.

In her delusional ass mind, I couldn’t possibly be done with her.

Never mind that we had no connection in the first place, and she didn’t know the first thing about loyalty.

When shit finally blew up, Roxxi had her face down in a pissy un-flushed toilet inside the girls’ bathroom.

Nick and I had to pull her off before she did more damage than the knocked-out incisor and broken nose.

To this day, it was an isolated incident.

Sanj never knew it happened. She would’ve hated Roxxi fighting a battle she could win herself.

Cloe knew, though. She had stood at the bathroom door like she was on payroll to bar entry.

I remember the look she gave us when we showed up.

“ You better hurry,” she’d trilled with a smile.

We should have let Roxxi finish.

Sarah was the one who swung first.

Even after we got her off the ground, she talked a big game and made some idle threats. They didn’t hold much weight with piss and blood all over her face.

Our families stepped in quickly.

My father and Roxxi’s made a house call while Sarah was still recovering, reminding her dad of a few debts he owed and some tax records he wouldn’t want brought into the light.

Ever since, Sarah had been playing model student.

I’m sure it didn’t hurt that our families made sure she walked away with a new nose and a shiny smile.

“Fucking dumbass,” Nick fumed.

“You know he’s not all that bright,” Rook pointed out. He finally looked away from the window, eyes darker than usual. “He doesn’t deserve Sanj. Never has. Let him keep digging his own grave. Makes less work for me when I put him in it.”

“You think he’s actually fucking Sarah?” my brother asked, “Xan’s been off recon since all this Hunt shit started and couldn’t dig in fully yet.”

Nick looked up at the truck’s ceiling, resting his head against the seat rest. “He’d be a damn fool if he is. Who trades a throne for a park bench?”

Cade let out a short laugh. “Damn. I need to write that down.” Then he sobered again and met my eyes in the mirror. “His fucking up works in our favor, but Sanj being caught in the fallout? That’s the problem.”

“He can’t break a heart he doesn’t have,” Rook stated. “She’s always been Ryder's. We all know it.”

My brother looked contemplative

“What is it?” I asked.

“He makes a good point. I know she’s not feeling Dead-Weight like that, I’ve seen her look at those muffins you bring her with more adoration than she’s ever given him. That doesn’t mean his actions won’t hurt her on principle.”

Nick’s expression shifted, more concerned now. “She hasn’t said anything to us about this.” He turned to me. “No mention to you?”

I shook my head once. “She hasn’t told me a lot of things lately. I’m working on it. She gave a pep talk in the truck earlier; it said more than she probably realized.”

Cade sighed, arms folded tight. “We’re close.”

“I know.”

I reached for my phone, unlocking it with the same code I’d always used: Sanjana’s birthday, backwards.

The wallpaper came up, a photo of us all from last summer.

We were standing in front of the run-down gas station-turned-motel from Texas Chainsaw Massacre .

Sanjana’s smile was wide and open, mine half-hidden behind a smirk as I threw an arm around her shoulders.

Her long hair was windswept, she wore no makeup, and her skin was sun-flushed.

Each time I looked at this picture, I stopped and stared at how beautiful she was.