Page 28

The truck door is torn open, and I’m on the ground within three seconds. Quentin’s got me pinned next to his chair, arm bent backward, face in the gravel. I can feel my fingers between my shoulder blades. Quentin gives my arm a jerk, and my fingers brush against the back of my neck.

“Fuck, all right!” I yell. “Jesus Christ, I’ll go.”

His grip relaxes, and I get to my knees, only to have him shove me over again. This time I’m on my back, wind knocked out of me. Quentin wheels over, looks down at me, face impassive.

“Not my sister,” he says. “Tell me you understand.”

I try to answer, but speech needs air to exist, and I have none. I nod, and it must be enough, because Quentin disappears. I hear his wheels in the driveway, receding into the distance. There’s a pause, and his voice cuts across the night.

“If you’re not walking within ten seconds—”

I don’t need to hear the rest, I’m on my feet and stumbling into the road. I wait until the sound of gravel crunching has dissipated, then go back and knock over a refrigerator. Because Quentin Wagner isn’t wrong—I am a piece of shit. Ethan finds me twenty minutes later at the crossroads, flashing his brights as he approaches.

“Quentin’s such a fucking asshole,” he says before I even get the door shut.

“Ethan,” I say. “Did you—”

“If I’d known he was going to throw you out, I would have never left you sitting out there. I know we got into it, but that’s between us and—”

“Okay, but—”

“It usually doesn’t take that long, promise. Most of the time they just need me to get the old guy settled, but tonight it was more serious—”

“Ethan!” I yell it this time, cutting across his chatter.

He goes quiet, glances over at me.

There aren’t any good words for this. Sure, the possibility has run through my head, but this wasn’t one I could write down, finding solutions as ink flowed. Because there are some things you don’t write down, and some things don’t have answers.

“Quentin knows about the nudes,” I say.

Ethan hits the brakes, but not hard. There’s no abrupt jolt, no straining against the seat belt. We just coast to a stop, surrounded by corn stubble and black sky.

“You’re sure?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s why he threw me out of the truck. He caught me watching Ava leave work and—”

Ethan punches the steering wheel, one loud blast from the horn cutting across the night. He bangs his head against it twice, then lets his forehead rest on the top, hands squeezing so hard I can hear it creaking. I wait, familiar enough with his rage to know it’s the only thing to do. He finally sits up, pushes his hat back, sighs.

“What are we going to do?” I ask him.

“What did Quentin say, exactly?”

“He said Hailey better not be involved or—”

Ethan giggles hysterically. “Yeah, that ship has sailed. And fucking sank.”

“This won’t be like Hayden,” I say. Mentioning the sophomore who sniffed us out over the summer—and was amenable to an agreement—only makes Ethan laugh harder.

“No,” Ethan says, wiping tears from his eyes. “Pretty hard to bribe a guy by cutting him into a nudes-sharing circle when he’s dead from the waist down.”

“Ethan, if this gets out—”

“Oh, bro,” Ethan says, a wide, dark smile breaking out on his face. “If this gets out, we’re all fucked.”

Eighteen

Hailey