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“No,” she whispers angrily. “Not him. I mean, he’s here too. But him. He’s here.”
“Okay, well,” I raise my eyebrows, “did you hear yourself? That bunch of sentences did not make anything clear to me.”
She sighs in irritation. “His best friend. Lucas’s best friend. He’s here too.”
“Oh, and we don’t like him.”
Lucas’s best friend is somehow the reason why Echo is at St. Mary’s.
At this point, Jupiter arrives and answers for me. “Nope, not at all. We hate him.”
Followed by Wyn. “We hate who?”
Followed in turn by Callie. “Who are we hating on?”
And Tempest. “Because I’m always down for hating.”
Echo shakes her head. “Oh God, this is a disaster. I have to go back. I have to get out of here. He goes everywhere Lucas goes. I should’ve remembered that. I should’ve freaking remembered. I got so caught up in seeing Lucas again that I forgot about him. And now I’m wearing a dress that I don’t normally wear and it’s pretty and if he sees it, he’s going to say something derogatory about it. I just know it.”
Callie is the one to get her under control. “You’re not going anywhere. You look pretty and no one is going to say anything to you. Because we won’t let them.” She looks at all of us one by one. “Right, girls?”
We all nod our heads in affirmation before I speak. “Okay, so now who’s he and why’s he going to make a derogatory comment about someone as stunning as you?”
Echo bites her lip and then proceeds to point with her chin. “Him. Reign.”
We all look in the direction she points and there he is.
The very definition of a bad boy.
Tall and bronzed, with dark hair and a smirk that makes him look all kinds of sexy. But something more too. You know the kind, where you know he’s going to break your heart — you just know it; there is no question about it — but it’s a price you’re willing to pay because you know that he’s going to show you a good time before he does it.
“Rain. As in R-A-I-N?” I ask, watching him talk to someone while he stands in a group of guys.
“Oh, I was thinking the same thing,” Wyn says. “What an interesting, dreamy name. For someone we hate, I mean.”
“That guy is not dreamy,” Jupiter says. “I mean, he is but only on the surface.”
“Yup, I know him,” Tempest adds, nodding. “He’s Reed’s buddy.”
“Reign. As in, R-E-I-G-N,” Echo finally corrects.
“Oh,” Callie says. “That makes so much more sense now. With that whole bad boy thing he’s got going.” She shakes her head. “And he’s Reed’s buddy? Figures. Although, he looks worse than my Roman in the bad boy department.”
We all agree to that and then suddenly, the group he’s standing in becomes bigger.
Because a bunch of guys join in.
Guys we know.
Namely, Ledger, Shepard and Reed.
As it turns out, our guys know his guys — pretty well actually — and then our guys invite his guys to come over to our nook. So of course, Echo starts freaking out again. But after a lot of cajoling and talk of girl power, we manage to convince her.
And now here we are.
We’re all sitting in a cozy nook with leather couches and lounge chairs. Girls are sitting on this big couch by the wall and we’ve made it so that Echo is tucked in the middle and is protected from both sides. And the guys are spread out in the other lounge chairs opposite to us.
They’re all busy talking and catching up with each other. Apparently, they’re all soccer buddies. Lucas and Reign’s school — that also happened to be Echo’s school before she got sent to St. Mary’s — has played against Ledger and Reed’s team. And since Conrad used to be their coach, he knows Reign and Lucas pretty well too.
And so far, there have been no derogatory comments at all.
Which is great, because that has made Echo relax a little bit. And she’s doing what we’d talked about back at the mansion in the event of Lucas spotting her in the bar. She’s busy talking to the girls and generally ignoring Lucas. You know, to show how okay she is with their break-up and to throw him a little off-kilter because according to her, she did not handle their break-up well.
I’m super proud of her for handling this so well.
And it seems to be working, because Lucas — who’s this handsome blond-haired surfer type of guy — can’t take his eyes off our Echo. The only problem— and I know she isn’t aware of it — is that the dark twin of Lucas, Reign Davidson, is also checking out our Echo, because apparently where Lucas goes, Reign goes too.
Oh, he isn’t doing it as blatantly as Lucas but he is.
