Page 32 of Rent a Bad Boy

I make it about halfway across the quad before I start second-guessing everything. Maybe I should turn around. Maybe I should tell him I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Maybe I should just let him come tomorrow and stand in my living room and growl at Christine until she leaves, because honestly, it worked last time, and what’s my plan without him?

I don’t have a plan. That’s the problem. I don’t have a plan, and I just sent away the closest thing I ever had to one.

There’s a buzzing in my pocket. I reach for my phone, expecting Everett, hoping it’s Everett, already composing a text in my head that says something like I’m sorry, I’m being weird, please come tomorrow and just try not to punch anybody.

But it’s not him. It’s Grandma. There’s a photo of Brad Pitt sitting on the kitchen counter, which he’s not supposed to do, with the caption: Your son is misbehaving.

I smile, but it doesn’t hold. Not today.

The sidewalk narrows between the science building and the parking garage. It’s one of those campus dead zones with no windows, no foot traffic, just concrete walls and a dumpster, and the kind of lighting that makes you walk faster without thinking about why. I always cut through here on my way to Bio because it shaves two minutes off the walk, and I’m always running late because I can’t stop talking to my chickens before I leave the house.

I’m not thinking about shortcuts now. I’m thinking about Everett’s face when I said “please don’t follow me.” Did I just ruin the one good thing that’s happened to me since I started college?

I don’t hear the footsteps, in other words.

That’s the part that’ll probably bother me later, when I have time to be bothered. I should’ve heard them. The alley is quiet. There’s no music playing. There’s nothing in my ears but my own thoughts, and the distant hum of campus, and I still don’t hear them until it’s too late.

A hand clamps over my mouth from behind.

My scream dies before it starts, smothered against a palm that tastes like latex. Another arm wraps around my waist and lifts me off the ground like I’m nothing. My backpack slides off my shoulder and hits the concrete, and my feet are kicking but they’re not connecting with anything. The world tilts sideways and then my back slams against something hard.

A trunk. They put me in a trunk.

The realization hits me the same second the lid slams shut, and now there’s nothing but darkness and the smell of motor oil, and the muffled sound of an engine starting. Above it all is the sound of my heartbeat, loud enough that it fills the entire space.

I can’t move. My hands are pinned under me, and my glasses are crooked; there’s something pressing against my hip, and I’m shaking so hard my teeth are clicking together, and I can’t think, I can’t… Only one thought is coming through.

Who’s going to feed the chickens?

12

EVERETT

My head’s not in it tonight. I know it’s not in it, and that’s a problem, since I’m supposed to step into the circle in an hour and let somebody try to take my head off. The only thing I can think about, though, is the girl who told me not to follow her.

So I didn’t follow her. I let her go.

I stood there with my coffee and watched her walk away, and it felt like swallowing glass the whole time. Every step she took, something in me was screaming to go after her. I saw myself grabbing her arm and telling her she’s wrong. Telling her I’m not the thing she’s afraid I am. That I would never hurt anybody who actually matters. Football is one thing. Fighting for money is another thing. Other than that? I would never hurt anyone she cares about. Not ever.

But she didn’t ask me what I would or wouldn’t do, did she? She looked at my hands and made up her mind, and it’s not like I can argue with the evidence. My knuckles are still bruised. There’s still a scar on the third one from that last guy’s teeth. She saw what she saw in the warehouse, and now she sees it every time she looks at me.

I get it. I hate it, but I get it.

The tape goes around my left hand first. I’m sitting on the tailgate of my truck in the parking lot behind the warehouse, doing this the way I always do: methodical, automatic. My hands know what to do even when the rest of me is somewhere else.

And the rest of me is definitely somewhere else tonight.

Should I cancel? The thought crosses my mind for maybe the tenth time in the last hour. My head’s not right, and fighting when your head is somewhere else is how you get hurt for real. Not bruised-knuckles hurt. Broken-jaw hurt. Concussion hurt. The kind of hurt that ends a football career real fast.

But I need the money. This month might be okay, next month might be okay, but what about after that? Is there ever going to be a time when I can just fucking relax? And it doesn’t help that I bought a pair of new glasses for a girl who is probably trying to forget I exist.

So I keep wrapping and try my best to get my head where I need it to be, or else it’s going to get knocked off my neck.

My phone is sitting next to me, and I glance down at it when it buzzes. Probably Reece with the lineup, or maybe one of the guys asking what time I’m showing up.

It’s Isla. She’s on a video call.

I hate the way my heart lurches when I see her name. I was never supposed to get this attached. I still can’t believe I did.