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“Well, that was interesting,” a familiar voice says from behind us.
I turn around to find Nate looking down at me. He holds a hand out and helps both me and Brooke to our feet before dusting off the dirt stuck to my ass, though, I’m pretty sure he was just trying to cop a feel. “He deserved it,” I defend.
Nate nods and turns his attention on Brooke, but something tells me he’s not so thrilled about the whole thing. “Is it all out of your system now?”
A small smile plays on her lips. “Yeah, I think so,” she tells me, straightening up as she recognizes the challenge from Nate. “It felt pretty damn good.”
“Good,” he says. “I’ll let you have that. He wronged you. But pull shit like that on one of my guys in front of a crowd like this, and you’ll be dealing with me,” he says, reminding me of the old Nate.
I narrow my eyes on him, but he refuses to look at me.
How dare he? I mean, yes, he is Nate Ryder, the school bad boy who has built a whole reputation on the fact that if he or his boys are messed with, they’ll mess with you right back, and we just challenged that. But this is Brooke. This is me. What’s he going to do? Set her car on fire?
“Back off,” I tell him, stealing his attention before Brooke decides to say anything that will ignite a fire.
Nate slowly turns towards me and I see the hesitation behind his eyes. He doesn’t want to put me in my place, but with all these people watching, he’ll do it. “Don’t,” he warns me, quietly.
I raise my chin. Right now, I don’t care that he’s the guy I’m madly in love with. I don’t care that he’s my rock. Right now, he’s the douchebag that just threatened my best friend. “Don’t what, Nate?”
“Trouble in paradise?” shrill laughter is heard from the people surrounding us. I recognize the voice as Phoenix Reilly’s and watch as Nate’s jaw clenches, but I don’t dare give her the attention she’s looking for.
This is not a good position to be in. We need to deal with this without the eyes of the whole senior year on us. “What are you doing?” he demands quietly.
I narrow my eyes. There are so many things I want to say right now, but nothing that needs to be said with the eyes of the world on us, besides, with Nate’s need to be on top and my need to never have him treat me like the bully he used to, we’ll never get anywhere. So, I turn and stalk away, knowing without a doubt, he’ll follow right behind me.
Chapter 9
I storm into the boat shed at Broken Hill Lake and look at the couple about to get naked against the wall. They gasp at my sudden appearance but look on in fear as Nate storms in behind me. “Get out,” he roars.
They blanch and hurriedly collect their things and straighten their clothes before high-tailing it out of there.
Nate slams the door behind them and turns his fury on me. “What the hell was that?” he demands.
“Are you kidding me right now?” I shriek. “What about you? Why the hell did you do that?”
He shakes his head and looks at me as though I’m some sort of stranger, one who doesn’t know the rules around here. “You guys fucked with Max in front of hundreds of people. What did you expect me to do?”
“He cheated on Brooke,” I yell as obviously he’s forgotten about all that. “He made her fall in love with him and then he crushed her.”
“I know,” he yells right back at me. “I told you, I dealt with it already. You should have left it alone.”
“He showed up with another girl,” I say outraged.
“So?” he grunts. “She ended it. What’s he supposed to do? Pine over her for the rest of his life?”
“No,” I growl. “It’s called having common courtesy, which clearly none of you assholes are capable of.”
“Don’t start that shit,” he tells me. “If you weren’t so drunk maybe you would have realized it was a stupid idea.”
“I’m not fucking drunk,” I seethe. “I had one drink.”
“So, why the hell did you do it? You know how things are. I couldn’t just stand back and let him get humiliated like that.”
“Brooke needed to deal with it herself. She’ll never be able to move on if she didn’t stick it to him.”
“And you thought doing it in front of the whole fucking party was the right way to go?” he questions, shaking his head. “Surely, you couldn’t have thought there’d be no consequences for that?”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask, wide-eyed.
“He’s my boy. Did you forget that?” he says. “Fuck, I would have thought with all the bullshit going on with Jackson, you’d understand that. Nobody messes with my boys and gets away with it.”
