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“Why?” I ask, not wanting to know if I sentenced my sister to worse than foster care by bringing her into his family, but unable to bury my head in the sand like Mom does.
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” she says. “I mean, it never happened to me, but I hear things.”
I frown at her. “He’s my stepbrother. My sister lives in that house. What did he do?”
“There’s a rumor that he takes advantage of girls when they’re drunk. And maybe worse.”
I swallow hard, thinking about the tears in Gloria’s eyes when I fucked her the first time. “What’s worse?” I croak.
“Off the record?” Dixie asks, licking her lips and glancing around before lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’ve heard the twins jokingly refer to him as the Roofie King.”
Fuck.
My heart starts hammering, and I try to remember what Cotton orders in my pickup every week. I’ve only been dealing for a few weeks, though, and I can’t remember what I gave him. I know he bought something off me. Was it pills?
I can’t deal with that shit right now though. It’s enough to know that Amber is safe at home with Mom, and Cotton is here at the party, probably going to date rape some stranger. Better than my sister. I met the guy last summer when they came to Savannah. He helped me set up the whole thing with our parents. He seemed like a normal guy, if not exactly someone I’d hang out with at school. He’s a regular dumb jock, a privileged prick who will get into an Ivy League school not because he’s special but because Daddy buys his way in.
Surely he’s smart enough not to fuck around with a girl under his own roof. The risk of being caught is too high, and shit would get messy real fast when he was.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts. That’s a distraction from the real issue at hand, the reason I started talking to this chick to begin with.
“What about Lo?” I ask. “She said she dated Royal last year.”
“Oh—I wouldn’t call it that,” Dixie says. “Royal didn’t date at all. I mean, sure, they did the whole king-and-queen act, but he would never let one girl tie him down. He liked having options.”
“Options,” I say, biting down on my lip ring as the sick feeling rushes back up inside me. I tug to the point of pain, needing something to hold onto so I don’t go berserk and freak this girl out before I’m done getting the information I need.
“They weren’t serious,” she says. “Definitely not dating. They were more like friends with benefits. Not a lot of guys in your group would give her the kind of commitment you have. I can see why she made an exception for you.”
“They slept together?” I ask flatly, my belly full of lead.
“Well, yeah,” Dixie says, giving me a funny look. “You didn’t know?”
I shake my head.
“Shit,” she mutters. “Everyone knows. I just assumed… I’m sorry.” She offers me a cringing smile.
“I gotta go,” I say, standing and adjusting the checkered suspenders hanging around my hips. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Of course,” Dixie says, giving me a wink. “Us goths gotta stick together.”
I make my way downstairs and past a group of girls who scream my name like I’m on stage with a guitar. Popularity is fucking weird.
Ignoring them, I walk straight across the room to Gloria, grab her by the throat, and back her off the dancefloor.
“Rylan,” she cries. “What are you doing?”
“What areyoudoing?” I snarl, slamming her back against the wall. “Or should I say who?”
“What?” she asks, her eyes widening in shock as I wrap my other hand around the first one, squeezing tighter.
Her eyes roll back and forth, probably searching the room for that human steroid she was fucking last year.
“That’s right,” I growl. “I know you fucked Royal Dolce. You really thought I wouldn’t find out? You’re not that clever, Gloria.”
“Let go,” she chokes out, trying to pry my fingers loose. “I’ll scream.”
“You can’t scream,” I say, squeezing harder. “I won’t let you. And even if you did, no one will help you. No one likes you. They’re a bunch of pathetic sycophants, but they don’t care about you. Not as much as they care about avoiding awkwardness for themselves.”
