AllFreeNovel
Share Us
IMANI
“He made me walk home in the pouring rain yesterday!” Allie said, shaking her head and angrily writing—well, more like ripping through the pages with her pen—in her notebook. She plastered it against the locker to write something. “I swear to God, I’m going to get him fucking back. He’s the rudest, cruelest, annoyingest person in the world!”
I glanced over my shoulder to check for anyone. “You know, annoyingest isn’t a word.”
“Thanks for the vocab lesson, Imani,” Allie said, playfully shoving my shoulder. “But you know what I mean. A day can’t go by without him looking for a way to annoy me. And then you know what else?” She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “He had the damn audacity to say, ‘I thought you liked being wet.’ Like, who does that?”
After letting out a sigh, I turned to her and grabbed her hands. “Your ex-boyfriend turned stepbrother, who you really shouldn’t be obsessing over anymore, does that. Don’t worry about him. It’s not like you actually have feelings for him still, right?”
Allie stayed quiet.
“Right?”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re right.” She pulled a textbook out of her locker, refusing to maintain eye contact, and shuffled her feet. “Anyway, why’re you so … alert today? You haven’t stopped looking over your shoulder.”
“Um …” I laughed nervously. “No reason.”
She arched a brow and crossed her arms. “No reason, huh?”
“Nope! None.”
I’m definitely not being blackmailed by a man who I masturbate with online.
Giving her my best, most innocent smile, I prayed that she would drop it because that would be a damn awkward conversation with her. We were best friends, and she told me everything, but … she didn’t know too much about this horny, desperate side of me. Some things were private, you know?
When my phone buzzed in my hand, I jumped up and placed a hand against my heart. Jesus Christ, if my death wasn’t going to be from embarrassment, then I was surely going to have a damn heart attack before the day ended.
Chris: You’re angsty today, Imani.
My face paled, heart pounding in my chest. I slammed my locker closed and held my books tighter to my chest, looking down both sides of the hallway for anyone looking a little suspicious because …
He had seen me. He’d fucking seen me already. It hadn’t even been twenty minutes since I’d stepped into Redwood.
I gulped and clicked off my phone, deciding to ignore him until I wasn’t with Allie. I loved Allie with all my heart, but I didn’t want her to find out. She didn’t know how freaky I was, and I wanted to so badly keep it that way. She wouldn’t tell anyone, but someone in Redwood might overhear us.
Before I slipped the phone into my pocket, it buzzed again.
Chris: You have some audacity not to text me back when I hold the key to ruining your perfect good-girl reputation.
My heart pounded, and I scrambled to text him back, my books falling onto the ground. I cursed yet again that this day was going far from how I’d hoped it would and crouched to pick up the books. Akio grabbed one for me and handed it over, a tissue stuffed up his nose to hold back the blood Landon had caused.
“What happened to you?” Allie asked with wide eyes, staring at his already-swelling eye.
Akio shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“But you’re like … us? Who would want to mess with a nerd?”
I looked over my shoulder and gnawed on my cheek. “It’s Poison,” I whispered, hoping that they wouldn’t hear me say their name. It wasn’t against their Redwood rules to speak it, but … that was how drama started. When I realized that the coast was clear, I turned back to him and shook my head. “What’d you do to them, Akio?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Akio said.
But Poison didn’t mess with people over nothing. They had too much other business to deal with, other people to beat up and sell drugs to, than to deal with a nerd. Akio had to know something about the Poison boys to get them that angry.
My mind wandered to them, and my breath caught in my throat at the memory of the way each of those boys had looked at me earlier, like hungry freaking wolves … and I hoped to God that they’d forget about me for the rest of eternity. I didn’t want to be on their radar.
I couldn’t.
Not now.
“Nothing happened. Don’t worry.” Akio shrugged again, lingering for longer than he should’ve. Then, he smiled, turned around toward History class, and called over his shoulder, “Thanks again, Imani. You saved me.”
Allie raised a brow at me, gaze quickly flickering to Jace Harbor—her stepbrother—as he walked past us. She gritted her teeth, lip curling up in an ugly snarl, and slammed her locker door closed. “I’ll see you in Mr. Barnes’s class. I have to go deal with something.”
Once she scurried after Jace—looking as if she was going to give him a couple pieces of her mind—I glanced back down at my phone and gripped it tightly in my hand, letting it vibrate.
Chris: Parking lot. 3 p.m.
Me: I’ll be there.
