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João pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and blew out a puff of smoke. “So what? She didn’t show for school today. Not unusual of her,” he started, taking another long drag of the cigarette. “Don’t worry about it and don’t ask.”
While I’d wanted her to pay forintentionallyhurting me—because if Blaise had been serious, then that was exactly what she had done—I didn’t know if I wanted to push the subject with João and Poison. They did some pretty fucked up things.
Shit that I didn’t even want to say aloud.
“Here,” João said, slapping a few hundred-dollar bills in my hand.
My eyes widened. “This is way more than usual.”
“Shut up and don’t complain about it,” João said, nodding to the door, where Landon and Kai stood tensely, like something had just happened. “Thanks for watching my sister. Get out of my fucking house.”
Not wanting to spend another minute here anddefinitelynot wanting him to take back the money he had given me, I zipped my mouth closed, grabbed my backpack, and hurried out the door to walk back home.
For a fall night in New England, it wasn’tthatcold, surprisingly. Usually, the weather here was either snowing and below freezing orpulling off my clothestype of heat because it was so freaking hot. But tonight … it was comfy.
When I crossed the street, I spotted Blaise’s car parked on the side of the road. I picked up the pace and walked a bit faster, hurrying toward the house to kick him out before Mom got home. While he hadn’t been disrespectful to Mom last night, his parents were the ones had fired her. Mom might’ve sacrificed her personal life to keep a roof over our heads, but I wanted to protect her from her past.
Which included Blaise … even though it was kinda a shitty thought.
I hurried up the sidewalk and yanked open the front door. Blaise sat on the couch with Mateo, playing another game of Raid of Durnbone with him. After spotting three large pizza boxes on the small coffee table, I raised a brow.
We never ordered out. And if we happened to, then it definitely wasn’t from an overpriced place like Vancello’s Pizza. It was, like, twenty bucks for one small pizza that probably wasn’t even that good.
“Did you bring those over?” I asked.
Blaise glanced over his shoulder at me, eyes widening when he saw me. “Finally.”
Mom stepped out of the bathroom in a pair of sweatpants—she must’ve gotten home early from work—and grabbed a plate, already filled with pizza, from the kitchen counter. I stared between her and Blaise and Mateo, not sure of what was going on.
“He did, sweetheart,” Mom said, giving Blaise a small smile.
I narrowed my eyes at him, not sure where this nice guy persona had come from, and dumped my backpack beside the couch. After taking a cautious seat in a chair opposite of Blaise, I chewed on the inside of my lips and glanced over at Mom.
“Did you get off early tonight?” I asked.
“Only one shift today,” she said, biting into the pizza.
“You’re not going to have any?” Blaise asked me, his fingers moving along the controller, but his eyes flickering from the monitor to me. “I didn’t know what kind you liked, but there’s cheese and pepperoni.”
After Mom handed me a plastic plate that must’ve been five years old now, I grabbed a piece and realized that Blaise—the rich, arrogant kid—was eating off a plate that must’ve been even older. A rich kid like him eating in the slums with a bunch of nobodies? It stunned me.
“Shouldn’t you be eating steak on a golden platter or something?” I asked, my voice snippy because I still didn’t get what he was up to tonight. Sure, we might’ve shared a moment—a kiss—at Redwood today, but …
He hadn’t said anything all day after lunch. And I had begun to think that it was all the heat of the moment again, but …
God, what am I doing? Why am I acting this way, pushing him away from me again?
I bit into my pizza and glanced over at the small TV screen. Maybe it was because if he did like me—and that was a bigif—we wouldn’t work out. He would get tired of me and move on to someone prettier, like Skylar.
What could I possibly offer him that he didn’t have already? He could score any girl in Redwood without even trying, he could buy whatever he wanted, and he would have a job without having to work endlessly for it as soon as he left high school.
Tears built in my eyes, but I held them back and took another bite of the pizza.
“What’s wrong?” Blaise asked, his gaze on me now instead of the screen.
“No!” Mateo shouted, sitting back on the couch and blowing out a breath. “We almost had him, but he killed me!”
“Sorry, kid,” Blaise said, setting the controller down on the coffee table next to the pizza boxes and barely paying him much attention now. He furrowed his brows and leaned his elbows onto his thighs. “V?”
