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Their conversation is drowned out by the blood roaring in my ears.
Sunday morning.
My heart drops as my fingers curl around the bench. “Where’d they find him?” I ask, earning me a glower from Lylah.
“None of your fucking—”
“You know those apartments on the edge of the coastal road?” Daria says, and I nod.
I know it all right.
It’s a stone's throw away from where I found Cole.
"Hadley? Are you okay?"
"Huh, what?" Everyone is staring at me like I've lost my freaking mind. And maybe I have. Because Cole Jagger is a lot of things... but a murderer?
Not even Cole is capable of that.
Chapter Two
Cole
“We’re going to school tomorrow,” Ace announces, interrupting whatever Conner was chatting about.
I’d tuned them all out a long time ago, but that one statement has me looking up.
“Nah, just one more day,” Conner says, lifting his bottle of beer to his lips and draining the contents. “We’ve already had too much.”
I look at Ace, who takes a drag of his joint before blowing the smoke into Remi’s mouth, and roll my eyes at them.
It’s easy for them, they can just walk into school almost like nothing happened. I mean, yeah, Remi was attacked by that cunt Bexley, followed by the man we’d all grown up believing was our father, but it’s different for me.
My fists curl as I think about it, all the rage threatening to explode that I mostly manage to keep concealed. I need that fucking joint. But if what Ace is saying is true, then there’s no doubt that Coach Miller will have me drug tested the second I step foot on Sterling Prep soil.
I can’t risk it. Football is the only thing I have. It’s my only way to break away from our fucked-up lives and even more fucked-up past. I’ve been told I could make it all the way. I’m not all that interested in going there; I just want to get away.
I want to be somewhere else. Be someone else.
Neither Ace nor Conner have asked me anything about that night. Why would they? After we’d all rushed to Remi’s house after Charlie, our estranged uncle, broke in and threatened her, we’d come back to James’ house. My home. Not that it feels like that. I’d swiped a bottle of liquor off the counter and taken off to go to my room, and then resurfaced the next morning for breakfast. Neither of them has any reason to think anything else. Exactly as it should be.
Getting caught is one thing but dragging them down with me is another.
I may care about little in my life, but those two motherfuckers are my weakness. It might not be obvious to anyone on the outskirts of our lives, but I’d take a fucking bullet for them any day of the week if it meant saving them.
“We’re going back tomorrow. All of us,” Ace states in the fatherly tone that he uses when something isn’t up for discussion.
He might only be a year older than us, but he’s never let us forget that he’s the one in charge. He was the one who put food on the table when our mother was unable to do so and our so-called father was meant to be dead. He was the one who washed our clothes and made sure we turned up to school while he was off doing fuck knows what for Donny Lopez, the Heights’ local crime boss.
The thought of him has my cell burning in my pocket. He’s been relentless since the night he called me with a heads-up about the whereabouts of Ace. He and Remi had fallen out and Ace took off to the Heights to drown his sorrows. But Donny isn’t the kind of guy to hand out favors for nothing. I knew what I was getting into the second I accepted his help.
And now I’m paying the price.
Ace is free of Donny, and I’m his replacement. My brother thinks he got let off lightly. If he knew the truth… I shudder at the thought. He’ll kill me with his bare hands if he ever finds out I’m tied up with a cunt like Donny. He warned us time and time again to stay away from that life. But how was I meant to when his life was on the line?
It’s my own fault. I danced with the devil, and now I need to hold up my end of the deal. And I will. One day soon I’ll answer the phone and do his dirty work because that’s what I agreed. I didn’t need to grow up in the Heights to know how this shit works.
I’m either good for my word or I’ll be the next one found dead with no reasonable explanation other than being a scumbag Heighter. People probably say that it’s a miracle the three of us have lasted this long after all the shit we’ve gotten into over the years.
