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“You are. Don’t you ever lie to me again,” I hissed. “Because you do too know exactly what I’m talking about. I already got Fox to spill everything. You instigated not only tonight’s little episode but all the others too. Every freaking date I’ve ever been on. How could you do that to me? I liked Ridgely, you idiot. Now he’ll never talk to me again.”
“Good,” he snorted. “Because Ridgely’s a douche.”
“He’s one of your best friends!”
“Not anymore,” Beau growled.
I blinked, wondering what had happened between them to make Beau this pissed. Because I could tell he meant it when he claimed that.
But then I decided I didn’t care
.
“Just...” I held up a hand in his direction, blocking him from my view. “Stay away from me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. In fact, from this point on, you’re dead to me. Got it?”
He only snorted as if I was being ridiculous and overly dramatic. “Yeah, good luck avoiding me in this family.”
I lifted my eyebrows at the challenge. “Oh? You think I can’t avoid you for the rest of my life? Well, game on, buddy. This is the last time I will ever talk to you again. Because I hate your vile, slimy freaking guts!”
I spun away to march from the room, only to remember. “And another thing,” I ordered, spinning right back to him as I shook a finger in the air. “Stay away from my brother, too.”
He only smirked. “Wow, that didn’t last long. I thought you were done talking to me forever.”
Screaming out my frustration through gritted teeth, I grabbed his wallet I saw nearby, sitting on his dresser top, and I threw that at him, finally beaning him in the face.
“Oww!” Glaring at me, he clutched his left cheek with one hand and pointed at me with the other. “I swear to God, if you do that again—”
“You’ll what?”
When he didn’t have a ready threat to back up his warning, I rolled my eyes.
“Stay away from my brother,” I repeated. “He doesn’t need your kind of bad influence in his life. Why are you suddenly hanging out with him so much this year, anyway? He’s a freaking freshman. You’re a senior. That just makes you look so much lamer than you already are, you know.”
“Hey, I’m taking him under my wing,” he snapped, still dabbing at his cheek and poking his tongue at the spot from the inside, testing its soreness.
Hoping I hadn’t permanently damaged his pretty features, I winced, then sniffed at myself for worrying even a second, and I countered with, “Well, you didn’t take Trick under your wing last year when he was a freshman.”
He scowled at me. “Trick didn’t need any guiding.”
“Neither does Fox.” With a snort, I added, “He’d be better off guided by a blind, forty-year-old virgin who’d never even been to high school.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded. “Are you insinuating that I have no game with girls?”
That seemed like the holy grail of insults to him, so I was going to run with it as fast as I could. Except I noticed his wallet on the floor where it had landed, fallen open, and was exposing one of the pictures he had in the plastic sleeves.
Blinking, I tilted my head and stepped closer, not quite able to see it clearly from here. But it kind of looked like my senior picture. The color of hair seemed right as did the clothing and one of the stances I had posed in.
“Is that—?” I took another step forward.
Noticing the direction of my attention, Beau looked down. His eyes widened in horror.
“Shit.” Diving forward into my path, he held up a hand to block my view and shouted, “Get out!” Then he bent down, snagged up the wallet, and flipped it shut, where he pressed it against his stomach to keep it from me. When I just blinked at him, he exploded.
“Are you deaf? I said go!”
Confused and rattled, I tripped a step backward. When I bumped into his dresser, I spun away and darted from his room, slamming the door behind me.
My breaths came in strange puffs and my chest felt tight and confined. My steps were rushed, but I didn't outright run.
