AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, he won’t,” I said, my jaw tight. He couldn’t even let me finish what I was going to tell him earlier in the bedroom. “Can you, please?”
Landon sighed, then nodded to the door. “I’ll text them on the way over.”
Once we made it back home, Mom pulled the door open and wrapped her arms around me, sighing softly. I pulled myself out of her grip and walked upstairs with Landon, surprisingly without much backlash from her.
Landon shut my bedroom door, then lay back on the bed. I crawled up the bed beside him, forgoing my skin care routine, and curled my body into his, tears welling up in my eyes from everything that had happened tonight.
“I knew that you shouldn’t have come, Imani,” Landon said, gently massaging my hip, guilt heavy in his eyes. “I fucking fought with João all morning to tell you to stay home, but he wanted you there. He wanted to show you what the fuck happened to people who fucked with Poison, who hurt one of their own.”
But that wasn’t true because Vaughn hadn’t hurt any members of Poison. All João had wanted was for me to watch what he could do.
“Which one of you did Vaughn hurt?” I asked through gritted teeth and through the tears.
“You.”
I parted my lips but then pressed them back together, my heart fucking aching. And for some reason, all I could do was cry even harder.
João had known that Vaughn had hurt my best friend, which in turn hurt me.
And he had wanted to show me was what Poison would do for me, what he would do for me.
“Don’t cry, Imani,” Landon whispered, taking me into his arms and pulling me to his chest. “I’ll make sure you don’t ever see any shit like that again.”
Landon might’ve thought that these tears were for Principal Vaughn, but he wasn’t even close. These tears streaming down my face, the emptiness and hurt I held in my heart, the pain spreading through every part of my body were for João.
