Page 69 of Always: A Legacy Novel

“What about it?”

“Don’t date girls that make a spectacle of you.”

Yeah, that was a good rule.

He didn’t mind following it.

“Okay, somebody needs to tell me what happened yesterday,” Catherine said.

She was getting really sick of being stared at as though she was diseased.

Liliana barely looked up from her phone. “You haven’t heard yet?”

“How can I hear anything? I’m the new school pariah, for Christ’s sake.”

That meant she wasn’t being talked to, but talked about. Her friends were keeping a distance—except her cousin—and everybody else kept staring and whispering while her back was turned.

“I guess Cross and Derik traded punches in the locker room at the pre-game practice yesterday,” Liliana said, offering the information as though it meant nothing.

“Maybe that’s why Derik wouldn’t answer my text last night.”

“Oh, and then after, Dina made a scene with Cross in front of the office while the team and her friends waited.”

“Why were they waiting there?”

Yes, Catherine, that is the most important thing in what she just told you.

Catherine ignored her inner voice.

“Probably to see if they were going to lose Cross as their quarterback—they did, by the way, and the game.”

Catherine didn’t care about the game, or the school’s loss. “That explains why she and her little band of merry bitches have been particularly awful to me today. What do you mean she made a scene with him?”

Liliana shrugged, still typing out messages on her phone. “I heard she yelled a lot, tried to hit him a few times, and that your name was mentioned. Someone said she called you a whore—Cross told her to shut up, or something like that.”

Well, the staring, whispering, and lack of friends was starting to make a lot more damn sense. Catherine didn’t understand why she had been the topic of conversation for anybody, though, but especially Dina and Cross.

“What was the fight between the guys about?” Catherine asked.

Liliana side-eyed Catherine. “Seriously?”

“I don’t know!”

“You, Catherine. They were fighting about you.”

“But … that doesn’t make any sense.”

They had no reason to fight about her.

Liliana shrugged. “Ask Derik or Cross, then. All I know from what was spread by some of the guys in the locker room was that Derik told Cross to back off, said something about you, and Cross kicked the shit out of him.”

Catherine cringed. “Yikes.”

“I don’t know. Derik should have known better, to be honest. Cross goes for the jugular in a fight. He’s out to win, and he’ll break his hands on somebody’s face as long as that means they’ll be staying down. Derik is an idiot.”

“What did he say about me—Derik, I mean?”

“That, I don’t know,” Liliana said. “But hey, maybe you could find out.”