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“You, too, Freckles. Stay out of trouble...or try, at least.” He shot me one last grin before flipping down his visor and starting his bike.
I watched him ride away, enjoying the sight.
Yep, that was the good stuff.
I headed inside the diner, thinking how ironic his last words were. Before he’d come to town, I’d never had the slightest bit of trouble with anything. Not with my friends, not with boys or schoolwork or my parents. Now I had him, and no one had ever personified trouble like Cayden West. I couldn’t even be mad about it.
Like they said, sometimes trouble wants you. In this case, I wanted it right back.
Cayden
On Sunday,I headed to an extra practice and pushed my body to the limit. We had a game coming up with real competitors, for the first time. The locker room at the school rink had me hard within moments of stepping inside. I couldn’t get the time I’d spent with Lily out of my head. Everything in there reminded me of her. Considering that was worn benches, cracked tiles, and the smell of old jockstraps, I planned to make sure that next time was more comfortable.
Maybe I’d simply crawl into her bed when she was sleeping and wake her by sliding inside her tight cunt, just like in her dream. I could cover her mouth, so when she woke, no one would hear her cry out.
“Hey, man, what’s going on? You’re a million miles away.”
I stared at Asher for a long moment before my brain was able to refocus. The image in my head of recreating one of Lily’s illicit fantasies was enough to short-circuit it.
“Just thinking about the Leopards. This Thursday’s game is going to be our first real challenge,” I muttered.
Asher nodded and sank down on the bench. “Yeah, good thing we’ve had time to play together.” He yawned widely.
“Late night?” My mind went instantly to the fact that Lily had stayed over at his house last night.
He nodded. “Eve and Bug came home late and then played music and talked until God knows when.”
Had Lily told her friend what had happened between us? I couldn’t imagine it, but then, it had been a long time since I’d had what anyone would consider a real friend.
“Is Lily that noisy at home?” Asher asked.
I shrugged. “I haven’t really noticed.”
Just then, the door to the changing room banged open and Marcus charged in. The sudden sound sent all eyes to him. He gripped his phone like it was an undetonated bomb. He looked right at me and jerked his head to the side. Tension gathered in the pit of my stomach as I stood and followed him.
“What’s up?”
“Have you been on the student community board this morning?” he asked immediately, dispensing with a greeting.
I folded my arms over my chest, leaning on the wall. “I never go on that damn thing.”
The student community board wasn’t a thing in Midnight Falls, but it was huge in Hade Harbor. A place where important notices, party invites, and salacious gossip was posted about HHH students, by HHH students. It was practically a lawsuit waiting to happen.
“Well, this isn’t the best time to start, but I think you need to see this.” Marcus put his phone in my hand and gripped me comfortingly on the shoulder before leaving me alone in the hallway.
I looked down at the phone, everything in me clenched against what I was about to see. Did someone I used to intimidate for Uncle Jack come forward? Someone who wanted to slander me and make up stories?
It was photographs of a news headline and an article from theMidnight Falls Chronicle. The poster was anonymous. The headline slapped me in the face.
FOSTER SON ONLY SURVIVOR OF HOUSE FIRE THAT SEES BOTH PARENTS DEAD. POLICE SUSPECT FOUL PLAY.
Underneath, the post began with:
How well does everyone really know Hade Harbor’s new hotshot? The real face of Cayden West.
I tightened my hand on the phone hard enough to crack the screen. It was my whole sordid past–at least the incident that happened when I was eight and had landed me at Uncle Jack’s–and all the speculation about the fire. At the end of the article there was a passage about suspected physical abuse in the home, and some allusion to evidence of such being found on the body of the foster kid.Me.
The world tilted. My breath felt short. In that moment, I wanted to run away from Hade Harbor and never look back. I wanted to disappear, but I couldn’t. Not unless I was willing to forget my one shot to make a better life for myself.
