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I should’ve known better.
If I had been thinking more clearly, I would’ve known better.
I can’t let my best friend end up in trouble because of me.
That’s the last thought I have before I hurriedly put my sneakers back on and race out of the door, to catch a car back to my campus. If Diego’s gone after Slater—and I know he has—that’s where he would go first.
While I hate Slater, I pray he still isn’t on campus. Maybe my open palm fist to his groin was hard enough that he had to go to the hospital.
I think of anything to give me hope that he’s nowhere to be found when Diego arrives at my school.
The ride over feels like the longest drive of my life. Even after I promise my driver a large tip if he gets us there faster. We make the hour drive in just under forty-five minutes. I barely spare him a ‘thank you’ before I’m off and running out of the door, in the direction of where the party was.
By now, it’s close to four in the morning but there are still partygoers hanging around the frat house and music is still blaring.
“Monique, oh my god!” a girl shrieks.
I turn to find Gabriella, a girl from one of my art history classes, running toward me. As she takes me by the arm, her eyes are wide with fright.
“Did you go to the hospital? Is he okay?”
My heart sinks.
“Wh-Who went to the hospital?” I hate the way my voice quivers.
She looks at me with wide eyes. “Slater. Some guy attacked him. Wait.” She pauses. “He looked kind of familiar. Some other guys said that he knows you.” She blinks and then looks at me with suspicion. “Were you cheating on Slater?”
I pull away from her and look around for someone else that I might know. Diego hasn’t answered his cell phone the half a dozen times I called him. Now it’s going straight to voicemail.
“Robin?” I call another girl, who was at the party earlier. She’s also the girlfriend of one of Slater’s friends.
She gasps. “Monique! We’ve been looking for you. What happened?”
I swallow as the events of tonight replay in my head. “Um, I just got back to campus. Where’s Slater?” I ask because I hope what Gabriella just said is wrong. If Slater is at the hospital, something terrible happened and I need to find my best friend. Fast.
“Diego attacked him,” Robin says, bringing my fears to light. “We were all just hanging out on the back porch. All of a sudden, we hear this screaming from upstairs. Then wham!” She throws her arms around wildly, indicating the chaos that ensued.
“It was totally crazy! Three guys were trying to pull him off of Slater at once, and he was still hitting him. Luckily, the police showed up. He got arrested.”
As soon as that sentence leaves her mouth, I take off running. I don’t even have a specific intent in mind, but I know I need to find Diego. He can’t go to jail because of me.
“The hospital’s the other way,” Robin yells behind me.
I ignore her.
The only thing that matters is getting to my best friend. He can’t get into trouble because of me. He just can’t.
* * *
Diego
I push down the guilt I feel for leaving Monique sleeping in my bed. Alone. I know she’ll be pissed over what I’m about to do but I can focus on that. All I can see is red.
During the entire hour-long drive to her campus, all I can think about are the ways in which I’m going to torture the life out of this motherfucker. There’s nothing else that matters more to me in this moment than ensuring he knows that he fucked up the moment he even thought about putting his hands on her.
I’ve been to her campus enough over the past three years that I know my way around it well enough. The first place I stop is the off-campus frat house where Slater and a few of his bitch ass friends stay.
“Where is he?” I demand to know as I pound on the door.
