“You fell asleep,” Gray exclaimed suddenly. “At break, you ducked Coach, and you sat in the bleachers, remember?” heasked me as he crossed to stand in front of me. “I woke you up. It wouldn’t have been more than ten minutes.” When I started to nod in recollection, Gray looked over at Quinn. “That’s not normal, not on game day.” He turned back to me. “You said it was the hangover, and I said you were lucky we were at home to a shit team.”
“I . . .” Jesus, this was hell. “I think I remember that.”
“And all you did after that was throw and catch, Coach didn’t want you too tired for the game.” Gray was practically vibrating with excitement. “It pisses me off that we didn’t notice.”
“Why would you though?” Quinn said thoughtfully. “You were hungover, you were active, talking, walking, playing. You were normal.”
“He’s nevernormal,” Ash quipped before he scowled when he realized that he had made a joke to Quinn.
An uneasy silence followed, but I knew better than to push it.
“I have the three Elises on it,” I said, breaking the tension. “By the end of the day, I’ll be wellversed.” I sneered at the name of the drug, even with my play on words. “Again.”
Gray snorted in contempt, and Ash was suddenly looking anywhere but at Quinn, who was looking at me with her lip curled in distaste. “You went to Elise?”
“Queeny, you said you weren’t helping.”
“I know but . . .Elise?”
“The more the merrier, isn’t that right, Ash?”
Yes, I went there. Yes, I was a bastard. Yes, it made Quinn’s lips twitch into a smile.
“Still, we didn’t have to go todesperateso soon,” Quinn said regally as she collected her bag from the counter. “Okay, I’ll find out more about this, and if you find out more about who, let me know.”
“What are you going to do when we know who it is?” Ash asked. He stood, his arms extending high over his head as he stretched. “Glare at her?”
“Enough.” I stopped Quinn’s or my cousin’s reply. “I got this now, thanks for finding out what it was.”
“I’m not done with this,” Quinn warned me as she secured her bag on her shoulder. “Not by a long shot.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jett, are you serious?” Quinn looked more pissed off than normal. “I’ll deal with this bitch.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She gave an angry toss of her hair, and I was ready for a lecture, but when she met my gaze, her look was one of concern. “She drugged you, shesleptwith you, because she’s twisted or to make sure you had it in your system for practice?” I realized Quinn was as furious as I was and wanted to cause harm. It pleased me how much I was on board with that. “This bitch is mine. I’ll kill her.”
“She’smine,” I growled as I met Quinn’s fierce look.
“You’re going to hurt a girl?” Quinn mocked me slightly, a perfect eyebrow rising in question. “You would never hurt a woman.”
“Hurt her? No.” I looked around the room at my family. “Annihilate her? Absolutely.”
Chapter 10: Ava
I was sitting in class when I got the first hint that something was happening. The usually dull, stale atmosphere of finance was almost throbbing in intensity. I hated finance, but being an English major, my mom had convinced me that even editors needed to live in the real world, and a few backup courses in practicality weren’t such a bad idea. She was wrong; they were aterribleidea.
Jett was in this class, I knew, but it was so huge I never usually saw him.Because he was probably getting sucked off in the back row, I thought maliciously. The only time I actively looked for him was after a game, checking to see if he took any knocks or dents that would’ve rendered him injured.
He was never injured.
As I doodled on my page, I did need to remind myself that I didn’tactuallywish bodily harm on him. Well, not before Friday. Before the weekend, if he had torn an ACL, I would have felt genuinely sorry for him. Now I wanted to tear every ligament in his body and watch him squirm in pain.
Okay, Ava, that may be too savage, even for you.
The flower I was doodling had now become a little flower garden, and I was shading them happily as I waited for the class to commence when the seat beside me scraped back.
