Chapter 28: Ash
Gray and I walked quickly to the stadium, my cousin deep in thought, and my thoughts centered on a certain redhead in my bedroom. She should never have been involved, and now she was being grabbed by dickheads and watching videos that should never be seen.
“Did we do this?” I asked Gray as we walked.
“Do what?”
“Put them in danger?”
“I want to say no, but . . .”
“But you feel guilty?” I guessed.
“Well, itwasmy baby,” he said quietly, and I heard the catch in his voice. “Sorry,” he added with a quick shake of his head.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I assured him. “Well, not that part.”
“But the everything else?” he asked me with a slight self-mocking sneer. “Yeah, we probably did.”
“She did well.” Red had done well, better than I thought.
“Yeah.” Gray toyed with his zipper on his coat. “She picked up things I didn’t even know to look for.”
“It was a good call, asking her.” We returned to silence as we approached the stadium.
“Whatever you’re doing with her will have consequences,” Gray warned me suddenly. “You’re getting too involved.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know you, Ash. She’s exactly your type. She’ll fall, you’ll get bored, and Ava and Quinn will gut you. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
I wanted to protest. I wanted to say it wasn’t like that, that she knew it was just a bit of fun, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I wasn’t sure who was falling for who. So instead, I avoided his warning as I usually avoided anything Gray was serious about. Itgave him more pleasure saying “I told you so” than preventing it in the first place.
“You think you’ll catch today?”
He held his hand with the straps up. “Not today, but Izzy’s going to look at me after practice,” he told me.
“Good, we may need you if we win Saturday.”
“I’m ready to be recruited back onto the team.” He took the stairs to the stadium quickly.
However, my feet stopped, and I turned to look back over the campus. It made so much sense. Why hadn’t we considered it?
“Recruitment.”
“What is it?” Gray came down the steps and stood beside me. “Ash?”
“The janitor.” I hesitated. “What if he was placed here?”
“You need to give me more,” Gray told me as he waited.
“I don’t know . . . but it feels right.” I paused, and my cousin was going to explode with impatience. “The janitor, heknewher. Quinn. He called herQueen. How many people know we call her that? Really?”
“Not many,” Gray answered me. His brow was knitted in concentration. “What has that to do with recruitment?”
“I think he knew her, fromthem, not us. I think . . .” I swallowed. “I think they use the campus as a recruitment ground.”
“How the fuck do you work that out?”
