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“Please, Graham.”
But he keeps kicking Shawn, so I pull his arm in both my hands and whisper to him, “He’s the district attorney’s son. Let him go.”
I guess “district attorney” is some kind of a magic word, because it makes Graham listen, and he finally spins around to face me, examining my face closely. I try to smile, even though I know that in all probability he’s seeing my face smeared with Shawn’s blood, and my ripped dress.
“Hey, I’m okay. He didn’t get to…” I trail off because I can’t say the words, but I know he understand when his nostrils flare and gives me a clipped nod. I link my fingers together behind his back, hugging him. I don’t even care that Shawn is in the room. I’m pretty sure he is out of it, and when he comes to, the last thing he’d do is rat me out. He’s just been kicked real good. I’m not going to be surprised if he broke a few ribs in the process.
“I’m going to make sure he never does that again to anyone else, district attorney’s son or not.” Graham sounds so resolute; I don’t want to argue with him. I should probably warn my friends and girls at school from Shawn. This is outrageous. I’ve never seen him like this, and that makes me wonder whether he’s tried doing it to somebody else…or worse, if he’d succeeded.
“I don’t care about Shawn. I’m okay,” I state again, and Graham rubs his thumb over my lower lip, inspecting my face.
“It’s not my blood,” I assure quickly, trying to put him at ease. “I smacked my head but I’m fine, I promise.”
Graham nods, rubbing my lip with the pad of his thumb. He takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself down.
“You got him good, Dolly. If you hadn’t bought yourself those few extra seconds…” I don’t even want to think about that.
“How did you know?” I ask softly.
“The cameras. I see videos of everything in my room. I’ve been following your whereabouts all night, wanted to make sure that you’re okay. I made one phone call. That’s all it took….”
I try to bite my grin, but there’s no point. My face shines like the moon even after taking a beating.
“You’ve been watching me?”
Graham reaches for my chee
k, pulling my face into his and kissing my forehead with his eyes shut. “I’m very protective of you, Dolly. I’m protective of you as a lover and as a pseudo guardian. Not because I feel like I’m your father, but because you’ve never had someone who took care of you, and that sucks.”
“I have you now,” I declare, tracing my finger along the scar on his temple. God, it makes him even more beautiful. He groans when my hand disappears inside his black mane.
“Everyone needs to get the fuck out of this house. It’s time to play and I am not a team player.”
I raise one eyebrow, a playful smile tugging at my lips. “Then it’s a good thing my scary step-daddy happens to be home to shut this shit down, isn’t it?”
I’m not sure what Graham said to have two hundred rich kids scrambling for the exit, but they cleared out in two seconds flat…except for Jade, of course. At five feet and five inches of fury, I feel like she can even give Graham a run for his money. She isn’t afraid of anyone, and wasn’t buying whatever Graham was selling. She refused to leave without seeing that I was okay, and of course I don’t exactly look okay, so here I am, sitting on my bed, being interrogated by my cock-blocking BFF.
“He fucking what?!” She’s burning a hole through my carpet from all of her pacing. It’s obviously going well. I let out a long sigh, resigned to the fact that she probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“I don’t know where it came from. He’d been pushier lately, but I never thought he was capable of something like this. I mean, we know Shawn. We hang out with him all the time. It just came out of nowhere.”
Jade pauses her assault on my floor, and I see a light bulb go off behind her eyes.
“What is it? Do I even want to know?”
She shifts nervously on her feet and mumbles something incoherently. I cup my hand to my ear dramatically and raise my eyebrows.
“What was that? I’m gonna need you to speak the fuck up, J.”
“I heard Shawn was snorting some blow in the car with Britney and Dillon before the party. But they weren’t doing it in your house, I swear!” She quickly tacks on the last part.
“That’s no excuse,” she continues, “but maybe that’s why he was extra aggressive? I’m going to kick his fucking ass.” And the pacing commences.
“Dude, give a bitch a head’s up next time,” I groan, throwing myself deeper into the mattress, my head hits my pink, girly pillow with a soft thud.
Guilt flashes across Jade’s face, and I instantly feel like a turd for putting that on her.
“It’s not your fault. I should’ve known the snow bunnies would be hitting the slopes. I just didn’t expect it from Shawn.” I sigh, waving my hand in her general direction. Though, really, she was the one who invited half of Jersey into my house.
