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I wave him off and go to the door nonetheless. He might not have finished talking, but I sure have.
“Cole?” he barks before I disappear from his sight. “Don’t be a hero. You’re no good to any of us dead. Especially Hadley.”
“Motherfucker,” I mutter, my fists clenching, my nails digging into my palms as I walk away.
My cell continues to ring long after I’ve locked myself back in my bedroom.
I don’t give a fuck about Donny’s warning. I’m no one’s bitch.
I do things my way, not his.
“Someone suck you off last period or what?” I ask, dropping down into the passenger seat of our car and finding Conner with a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Nah, although I could have done with the entertainment. It was boring as fuck.”
“So, what’s with the face?”
“I just realized something.”
“Go on,” I mutter, already dreading what’s going to come out of his mouth.
“We’re already over halfway through the week, and as far as I know, you’ve barely spoken to Hadley, let alone asked her out on a date.” He rubs his hands together. “Time’s running out, bro, before I show her who the real man of the two of us is.”
“Shut the fuck up and drive.”
“So you’ve got a plan?”
“You think I’d tell you if I did?”
“No, ‘cos I’ll probably tell you it’s a fucking terrible idea and give you a better one.”
“Whatever.”
I stare out the windscreen as he backs us out of the space and then leaves Sterling Prep behind us.
He’s not wrong, Hadley and I have barely said five words to each other since she left Sunday after breakfast. It wasn’t my intention, but the second I saw her Monday morning standing beside my locker like she was waiting for me, I kinda freaked.
That feeling I’d felt when I woke up Sunday morning, that I’d given her a piece of me, returned full force, and instead of stepping up to her and being the decent guy she deserves, I barked at her to get out of my fucking way, traded up my books and stormed off toward my first class.
It was fucked up, I knew that as I was doing it. But I refuse to acknowledge that she affects me in any way. She’s a means to an end. It’s as simple as that. I need to buy her silence. Hadley knows too many of my secrets, while I’m here vulnerable and waiting for her to make the call that could end my future before it ever gets started.
She acts like she doesn’t care about what she discovered that night, but how can she not? I know she’s broken, haunted by what she holds close to her chest from her past, but she can’t be that screwed up that she can see past my… misdemeanor. Can she?
The fact that I don’t have the answers to those questions irritates the shit out of me, and as Conner drives us home, a plan forms in my head.
He wants me to date Hadley, he’s got it. Maybe a change of tack will get me the results I need.
Thankfully, Ellen is nowhere to be seen when I step into the kitchen once we’re back. So I wait for Conner to grab an armful of food and disappear up to his room, and then I set to work.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hadley
I’m lying on my bed, contemplating whether to eat a handful of Swedish Fish or a Twizzler, when my door flies open.
“Cole?” I scramble off the bed, my heart in my throat. “What the hell?”
“Come on,” he jerks his head, “we’re going out.”
