Page 27

“You being weird?” Quentin’s attention is half on me as Ava drives away.

“Weird?” I ask.

“Yeah, about her,” he says, nodding toward Ava’s taillights. “I saw you drive by slow the other night. Or is it my sister you’re creeping on?”

“You didn’t see shit,” I say.

Quentin gives me a dry smile. “Leave her alone.”

A hot flash of temper erupts inside me, and my lip lifts in a snarl. “Which one?”

Hailey’s brother lets his gaze drift over me, unimpressed. If Hailey is a genetic miracle, Quentin is a black swan event in the Wagner family. She got the looks to make everyone forget her last name. He didn’t ask anybody to forget it—he just overcame their reservations. I firmly believe that the reason there aren’t more Bigfoot sightings in Ohio is because he’s hiding from Quentin Wagner. From his square jaw to his unironic Save the Whales T-shirt, Quentin Wagner was a living, breathing advertisement for American Eagle and Earth Day at the same time. Which, apparently, is a real panty-dropper.

“He’s the whole package, and it can be delivered right to my front door,” Jade Partlow had said on our first day of high school, pointing at her crotch.

I can still hear the police scanner on our kitchen table, the one I glanced at every time there was a female dispatcher, wondering if it was Dad’s girlfriend, watching Mom’s face to see if she knew. But that night it was just me listening when the flat tones of the dispatcher called out a 10-50—car accident—that escalated into a 10-51, which meant dispatch wrecker. The numbers climbed along with my heart rate, the worst-case scenario unfolding without any assistance from my overactive brain.

10-52—Dispatch ambulance

10-53—Road blocked

10-54—Hit-and-run accident

“You’re a piece of shit, Harding. You know that?” Quentin says now.

“Yeah, actually,” I say. “I do.”

There’s enough honesty in my tone to set him back a bit, eyes narrowing as he tries to determine if I’m trying to be clever. But I’m not.

Quentin leans in, hooded eyes dark. “I know what you did, Harding.”

Time stops. My throat closes. My lungs deflate. My tongue shrivels in my mouth. Blood rushes to my face, and Quentin smiles when he sees it. He knows he’s got me, and I know I’m fucked.

“Quentin,” I say quietly. “What—”

He punches the side of Ethan’s truck hard enough that the whole body shakes.

“Keep my sister out of it,” Quentin snarls, and my thoughts become a million pinballs, the levers of my brain trying to keep everything moving.

He’s not talking about—

Oh . . .

Fuck.

“She’s not involved,” I lie. “Ethan wouldn’t let her.”

“Sure,” Quentin sneers. “That other piece of shit. The two of you are like twin turds floating in the punch bowl, but nobody says a damn thing because it’s your dads’ party.”

Quentin leans closer, and I can feel rage radiating off him. I resist the urge to roll up the window, scoot to the middle of the seat. Part of me is running the math in my head, wondering if I could take him. The truth is—I don’t know. And it’s not only because Quentin Wagner is still two hundred pounds of pure muscle, all of it upper body. It’s because if he pulls me out of this truck and beats my face in, I’ll let him. That’s what I deserve, for a million different reasons. Including the one he knows about—and the one he doesn’t.

There’s a cry from the house, a high echo that wanders down to the end of the driveway, finding us here. Quentin looks away from me, brow creasing.

“Your grandpa,” I tell him. “Hailey called Ethan, and we—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Quentin says, eyes snapping back to me. “And get off my property.”

“Dude,” I say. “Ethan took his keys. I can’t—”