Trace also drives me to my therapy sessions in Delridge. I could choose online appointments, but it’s nice to get away from the house and Trace’s watchful eyes. He tracks me like a hawk on a tree, with cunning and all-seeing eyes.
I don’t want Trace’s help. It’s his parents’ fault I’m living with them in the first place. I refuse to be a charity case, but what other choice do I have? I have no living family that I know about, and I cannot afford to move out on my own.
“Why don’t you and Seven go? You don’t need to stay when I’m catching a ride with Trace.”
She angles her head and says close to my ear, “Are you sure? The reason the guys are staying away from you is because of Seven, you know?”
Her boyfriend, Seven, is the star quarterback of Cambridge High’s football team and is well respected and well known. He helped the team win the championship.
It’s not Seven that keeps the guys away. It’s how broken I am. No one knows what to do with me. My quietness doesn’t help. I answer Leigh’s question with a nod.
“Thank you for being a great friend.” I’m grateful to Leigh that I’m here rather than locked inside my house, with my father having the keypad code.
Had Leigh not tried breaking into our place and found me crying in the stairwell that connects the basement door to the backyard, I would still be a prisoner in my own home. But my father would be alive.
A ball of emotion lodges in my throat. My chest aches. Leigh is perceptive and picks up on my sadness. She takes my hand in hers and squeezes. “I’m here for you when you want to talk. Always, okay?”
I would never burden Leigh with what happened to me or with my current desperate attempt to get out from under the Saints’s generosity. I nod. “Go. Spend time together, just the two of you.”
I’m sure that’s what Rue and Malice are doing.
“I’ll be fine. Trace is here.” I squeeze and then let go of Leigh’s hand.
Rue and Leigh are the luckiest girls in the world, having such kind and protective guys who look at them with tenderness and affection.
3
Trace
Seven and Leigh pick up their chairs and belongings off the ground and leave. I give my guy a two-finger salute and blow Leigh a kiss just ’cause I know it will fuck with Seven’s head.
Then in Seven’s truck, they’ll get into a heated argument about my jealousy-inducing gesture, the same truck Leigh stole the battery from during their war of wills when she was the new girl in town. Hopefully, the result will be mind-blowing makeup sex in that ride of his.
As soon as they leave, the air shifts with a different energy. I can’t pin down what it is until a guy steps up to Sorrow. He shuffles from foot to foot before he opens his mouth.
Seven’s left.
Malice too.
This guy sees Sorrow as a challenge, and Seven and Malice leaving the party gives him the opportunity to stoke his curiosity about the quiet, timid girl with two first names.
Fuck that.
Doesn’t the motherfucker realize there’s another king in this kingdom?
Opportunity? I clench my jaw. There’ll be none on my watch.
Curiosity? I curl my hands into fists. Curiosity killed the cat, and I’ll pummel this one to a pulp if he doesn’t leave Sorrow alone.
A challenge? My heartbeat thunders in my ears. No one should see her as one except for me.
D-bag says something to her.
The music fades until there’s deafening silence.
My vision tunnels.
All I see is them.
