Nicole flashes a grin, all teeth and venom.“Or should I say… Reece’s winnings?”
Lola tenses up next to me, anger simmering just below the surface.
But it’s Aubrey who really steps up fast.
She marches straight up to Nicole, eyes blazing.“Get the fuck out.You and your crusty-ass lashes and whatever festering STD is leaking out of your mouth today.”
Nicole blinks, showing a flicker of real shock before that smirk slides back onto her face.“Aw.How cute.Trying to intimidate me?”Her voice drips with sugar, but a hint of poison is evident.“Hate to break it to you, bitch, but I’m not Tia.She might piss herself when you raise your voice, but I don’t scare that easy.”
Aubrey’s jaw snaps tight.Her fists curl, knuckles white, her whole body vibrating with the urge to launch Nicole straight through the damn mirror.But I know she won’t touch her.
Aubrey still feels guilty about what she did to Tia.Even if Tia deserved every harsh word, Aubrey hated what it made her become.
Nicole lets out this high-pitched, try-hard laugh, tosses her over-processed straw-blonde hair, and struts out like she didn’t just shit all over the floor and call it perfume.
Her small posse hustles behind her, heels clicking, trying to keep up but stumbling over their own egos.
They follow her like cheap perfume, clutching their phones, their drama, and whatever bits of mean-girl power she allows them to have.
Lola shakes her head, disgust clear on her face.“I swear that bitch is one tampon short of a crime scene.”
A laugh slips out of me.It’s small, shaky, hardly there.More breath than sound.But it’s something.
Aubrey moves closer, her hand touching my arm.
“We should get to class,” she says, eyes searching mine.“Are you okay, Sam?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
She pulls me into a hug, arms tight and firm.“Jace is an asshole for saying what he did,” she murmurs into my hair.“Reece isn’t any better, but at least he knocked Jace on his ass for running his mouth about you.”
That’s all it takes.
The burn climbs up my throat.My eyes sting, heavy with everything I’ve been holding back since the hallway.
I’m really not okay.Not even close.
But I nod anyway because if I stop moving, if I let myself really feel it, I’ll collapse right here and I won’t know how to put myself back together again.
We shove the bathroom door open, and the hallway hits us all at once.The noise, bodies, and the sharp sting of fluorescent lights on raw nerves.
And then I see him.
Reece.
Leaning against the lockers as if he’s been there the whole time, waiting.His eyes catch mine instantly, the way they always fucking do.There’s something there...regret, panic, maybe both, but I don’t care.
My chest clamps down so fucking tight it pushes up into my throat, raw and burning.
He looks like shit.
Good.
“Sam,” he says, voice rough and broken.
I don’t stop.I walk right past him as if he’s nothing more than noise I refuse to listen to anymore.
“Sam, fuck, wait—”
