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“Here’s the thing,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “I can’thelpyou if I don’t understand what it is youwantfrom me.” His eyes were blazing, heated, beautiful. “So spit it out.”
The sudden venom in his tone made something in me crack.
“First of all, fuck you,” I blurted.
I slapped a hand over my own mouth. Elliot only smiled.
“Continue,” he said, his eyes suddenly alive, as if he’d been dying of boredom up until this moment. “I like what I’m hearing.”
Even though he tempted me with his smirk, I was too angry to give him any credit. On a normal day, he could melt my insides with that one turn of phrase, that bit of eye contact. Not now.
I was too far gone. Too fucking mad.
“Second,” I continued, “it’s like this. You’re a bully. She’s a bully. I’m fed up.” Now it was my turn to lean toward him. “Tell me how to get rid of her.”
His smirk only turned into a wide, bright beam. Instead of pressing the subject further, or even acknowledging what I’d said, Elliot pushed open the car door and jumped out. Letting out a frazzled breath, I stepped out after him.
“Follow me,” Elliot called over his shoulder, already walking toward the garage exit.
The car beeped as it locked up, and with that, I trailed after him toward the staircase up to the ground level.
“Where are we going?” I asked, checking over my shoulder back at the stairwell landings to make sure we weren’t being followed by a mob of kids bearing cameras pointed in my direction.
“My room,” Elliot replied casually. “There’s food there. Haven’t eaten yet.”
A smile flashed across my lips. I was right. He’d woken up to a text from me, and seeing me was the first thing he’d done today. I’d bask in that thought for as long as was grossly possible.
He flipped his Aviators back over his eyes as we came outside andbeelinedthrough a crowd of students toward the dormitory as if he’d done this a hundred times before. As if he already owned this campus, already had half the freshman class kissing his ass just so they wouldn’t become the next Kathleen Silver.
We breezed past the front desk of the dorm building and made our way into a free elevator car without company. It didn’t even occur to me until after we’d risen to the third floor that I hadn’t been asked to show student identification. It was as if just by being in Elliot’s presence, I was automatically enveloped in his aura, masked by the scent of his cologne and protected by the shield of his cutting gaze.
What a celebrity.
I felt my stomach drop as the elevator lifted us two, three, four floors high, though I couldn’t tell if the elevator was all to blame for the sudden rush to my belly. The sensation continued even after we stepped out into the hallway, and only grew as Elliot led me down a fluorescent-lit hall, high-fiving some boys as we passed, nodding at a few of the girls, before we made it to the end.
This was his place, his world, and I was about to become fully part of it.
The door was already cracked open. Rock music belted from within. Elliot kicked the door aside with his foot and stepped aside.
“Ladies first?” he said, holding the door open for me.
Gulping, I stepped inside to find two other pairs of eyes staring at me. Felix and Leo. Elliot’s henchman, bred from the same socioeconomic bubble, preened like prom kings, still the same.
Felix, Elliot’s right-hand man, was his striking polar-opposite—toned brown skin complete with a splash of freckles across his cheeks, eyes almost as dark as Elliot’s ink. His brown hair was faded around his ears and sculpted into a wavy masterpiece at the top of his head. Gold chains dripped from his neck and down the center of his chest.
Leo, prankster of the group, screamed pretty boy with shoulder-length blond hair swept back from his forehead like he was born soaking up sun on a surfboard, aquamarine eyes rimmed with eyelashes so dark you’d swear he was wearing mascara. Always smirking. But if you’re like me, the words you hear coming from those pretty pink lips might as well qualify as death threats.
When they saw me, their eyes lit up. Not because they were happy to see me, at least, not in the way most boys’ eyes light up when they see a girl with a half-decent face. They saw me as a game, a game they knew how to play.
“Surprise,” I said lamely.
Leo hit his phone, and the music turned off, breaking the awkward moment. He sat back in his desk chair, folding his hands behind his head.
“Well, well,” he said, and the rasp in his voice brought back so many,toomany, memories. “Couldn’t get enough of us, huh?”
His smile was so big and bright that it could’ve been flirty if it wasn’t coming from the kid who’d set my hair on fire and snuck weed into my soup.
He raised his eyebrows at Felix, who lay stone-cold on the bottom bunk, staring up at me. He was more confused than anything. Obviously, Elliot had spared them of a warning of my arrival, but I doubted he’d kept our impromptu one-night stand a secret.
