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After I found my way back to school, it was lunchtime. I texted Mom that I was okay, even when my morning teachers had reported me as missing, and then I stared at the cafeteria doors and took a deep breath. My stomach turned.
Kai walked into the building through the doors to my right, taking one long look at me. I gulped and hurried into the cafeteria, heading straight for Landon, who stood in the cafeteria line for food from the lunch ladies.
“Hey,” I said, gently knocking my shoulder against his. “You’re staying with Kai?”
“Who told you that?” Landon asked, grabbing some milk.
“Kai did,” I said, rocking back on my heels. “Why didn’t you want to stay with me?”
He placed a tattooed hand against the side of my head and pulled me closer, placing a kiss on my forehead. “Because your mom wouldn’t like it. I stay out late with the guys, have a gun, and come home with blood on my knuckles. She’s warming up to me, and I don’t want to ruin that.”
While I wanted to protest, I knew that he was right. My mom was warming up to him. And Landon never really had a good family life. My mom was the only person to really care about him, so he couldn’t stay at our house. Because Landon Caddell was bad news. Landon Caddell was a part of Poison. And Landon Caddell killed.
“Why don’t you come over and sit with us?” Landon asked.
I glanced over at Kai and João, sitting at Poison’s infamous lunch table. But I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Memories of what had happened earlier at Kai’s house flooded through my mind. If I sat next to him, I didn’t know what I would do. I’d be a hot mess.
And João … we hadn’t spoken a word to each other since the mall. Since our kiss.
“I’m going to sit with Allie today. I think she needs it. And … I feel like I haven’t talked to her in so long, like really had a good girl talk with her.”
“João said you should come sit with us, but …” Landon looked over at the guys, then down at me, a smirk on his face. “When he gets angry, don’t complain to me about it. He’s a fucking asshole.”
“João told you to tell me to sit with you guys?” I asked, completely and utterly shocked.
“Yep.”
After that kiss, I’d been worried all night. Worried that I had done something wrong. Worried that I would lose them. Worried that I cared too much about them, more than they cared about me. João never showed his feelings like that and really didn’t invite me to sit at the lunch table with them.
I didn’t want to get hurt. Neither did João. But that was all he seemed to do was hurt people.
“Well … that’s a first,” I said.
“I’m gonna go eat. See ya,” Landon said, walking off to Poison’s table.
I turned on my heel and walked toward Allie’s table, but before I could get there, Maddie Weber from Mr. Barnes’s Biology class cut me off and smiled sweetly at me.
“Hey,” Maddie said, pushing some red hair over her shoulder. “Where’d you go during Mr. Barnes’s class?”
“Oh,” I said, taken off guard. My cheeks flushed as I thought back to earlier at Kai’s house. “Nowhere really. I just got some sudden cramps.” In my vagina, from Kai. “But I’m feeling better now.”
“Good. We got partnered up for a Bio project,” she said. With her hands clasped against her backpack straps, she flicked her finger over a couple gaming and anime pins nervously. “I’m pretty busy for the rest of this week, and I was wondering if you wanted to get a head start on it tonight. If not, I can make time but—”
“That’s fine,” I said, glancing over at the Poison boys watching me intently from their designated table. “As long as you don’t mind, uh, working over at Landon’s place tonight. I promise that they’re not going to hurt you.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt so freaking stupid. It had all come out wrong. I didn’t want to scare her away, but I needed to be over Landon’s tonight. João might’ve been an ass this weekend, but I refused to let them make any more bad decisions without me.
They wanted me to be a part of Poison. I wanted to be a part of Poison. And Poison made decisions together. João had told me that they wouldn’t get in trouble for anything that they had done and recorded, but I needed to make sure myself.
If I lost them—any one of them, even João—I would hate myself because I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know what it was, but thinking about being without them all … I couldn’t do it. After the mall the other day and after João kissed me, he had left without saying even a couple more words and with so many … fears.
What would Mom do when she found out that I wasn’t only dating Landon? That I had feelings for João and Kai too? What would she think when she found out that all the Poison boys were mine?
Maddie teetered back and forth for a couple moments, chewing on the inside of her lip and looking over at Poison.
