AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Clint.”
“No, Rams. No. I’m telling him. If Scout doesn’t, I will.”
I was quiet, thinking, then I said, “I needed to feel good. I’m sorry, but I did and I do. I don’t like him. I’m not going to fall for him. There’s absolutely nothing romantic going on, but I felt good for a little bit. He and I know how it is between us. You guys are the ones making it complicated. This isn’t about you or Alex.”
He growled, starting the engine. “Doubt Alex will see it that way.”
I pressed my lips together. “If he doesn’t, then I’ll explain it to him.”
He grunted, but he pulled out to the street and I knew my cousin. He said what he needed to say, letting me know where he stood, and now the topic was dropped because that restlessness was still in him. Onto to the next stupid shit we were about to do.
“Where are we going?”
We went through Pine River.
Went over the river.
Went into Pine Valley, which I knew about, but Alred was the first person I knew from there. I’d not been on this side. It was a whole different town, and as we kept driving, I was realizing how much bigger it was. It wasn’t a town like Pine River. It was bigger, way bigger, enough whereas Clint hit the blinker and we turned, I saw that it had its own university.
Pine Valley University.
“Clint.”
He kept quiet, turning down one road after another before he hit the light and we were down a side alley.
I liked getting into trouble but fun trouble. Clint was different. He liked pushing the boundaries, and I was also now realizing I was troubled-out. I was good. I didn’t need this sort of trouble, whatever kind Clint was about to get us into.
“Clint,” I dropped my voice. “I can’t handle—” We went across another road and into another alley, but it was the glimpse I got from the road that had me speechless for a moment.
Pine Valley University had its own fraternity row. Every single house looked like they were partying, and the house we drove up to was Rho Mu Epsilon, the fraternity where Max was already a legacy, or would be once he joined. His great, great, great-grandfather was the first member. All the men in Max’s family were brothers, his real brother was a current member.
Clint pulled over so his car was hidden behind a dumpster, and I could only whisper, “Clint.”
He looked my way. We were completely blanketed by darkness. The side windows on both houses were narrow and closed off with curtains. The front and the back was where the lights were flashing. There’d been people on the front deck, and shadows were moving farther down so there were some people in the backyard, but that was sectioned off by a giant sized fence.
His voice started low and rough. “It’s my job to take care of you. It’s our job. My and my brothers’. It was your dad’s. It was supposed to be your boyfriend’s, but he’s the one who twisted shit. He broke the vow that all men take when they become men. You got hurt, and you really got hurt.”
Pain sliced through me.
“Oh, Clint.” They came the very next day after my dad died. They were there, and they stayed forever until Aunt Ailes forced them to go back. Clint made the trip out as often as he was allowed.
His voice turned fierce. “I told my mom that if you stayed there, I was moving and going to your school. Trenton was going to come when football season was done. We had it all worked out. Alex was going to stay, but he’d come every holiday, then he’d stay and I’d come back for baseball.”
I couldn’t talk. A tennis ball of emotion was smack dab in the middle of my throat.
“We fought so much with Mom and Dad, but I was going. We had that figured out too, how I’d be gone for a while before Mom and Dad would figure it out. Then Mom came to my door, and I had enough time to throw a blanket over my bag on the bed because I was literally in the middle of packing, and she told me you guys were moving here.”
I grabbed his arm.
“First time in a year that I’d felt relief. We can protect you here, but he never got his comeuppance.” He glanced to the house, the one where Max will join one of its brother houses in another state. “I came here the other time, scouted it out.”
My hand squeezed his arm. “That’s where you went the other night?”
“They keep their alcohol stock in a room that has two doors. One from the alley, easy unloading, and the other leading into the house. The door to the alley is locked, but the one going to the house is guarded by one guy. Inside the house.” His eyes found mine, shining bright. “We break the lock, we can take all of their alcohol and they won’t know it until we’re gone.”
