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ALLIE
The next morning, Jace drove us to school and parked near the rear of the lot.
“Do you want to get out before me?” Jace asked me, glancing over at me from the driver’s seat. “Like you did Monday?”
I parted my lips, glanced at the school, and shook my head. “No. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
My entire body warmed at the thought of holding Jace’s hand yesterday. It was so stupid and such a small gesture, but it was a huge step for me to do that out in public. Nobody had seen us, but it was something. And walking into school together—without holding hands—would be something too.
Small steps for Allie.
When Jace turned off the car, I stepped out and glanced around at the students in cars around us, giving us weird stares. I brushed off their looks, pulled on my backpack, and watched Poison pull up next to us. Landon, Kai, and João got out of the car.
Kai nodded to Jace. “Carter is taken care of.”
I arched a brow and eyed Jace. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing,” Jace said, nodding back to Kai in some sort of agreement.
Kai inched closer to me. “I have to talk to you later about that shit in your locker.”
Landon smacked João. “Look who it is …” he said, staring into the parking lot.
With snow getting caught in her curly black hair, Imani sprinted toward us and grabbed my hands. “You should go home,” she said to me, glancing back at the school and all the passersby who looked over at the two nerdiest girls at Redwood hanging out with Poison. “Don’t step foot in the hallways, Allie. I mean it.”
I furrowed my brows together. “What’re you talking about?”
The first bell rang, and I stepped beside Imani to walk toward school. I had already skipped one of my classes the other week because I needed to talk to Kai. I couldn’t afford to miss another class or day. My attendance had been close to perfect during all of high school.
Imani moved in front of me again. “Allie, please, just leave.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, continuing to the building. “I can’t miss class.”
Jace and Poison walked behind us, talking about something I doubtedI wanted to know about or take any part in. As long as Jace wasn’t getting himself into more trouble with his father and could get back on the football field next week, I was content.
“I’ll skip with you,” Imani said.
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her with wide eyes. Imani never skipped school, never a day in her entire life. She had had perfect attendance since preschool, never got sick, and was proud to be almost at the top of our class. If she volunteered to skip with me, that meant that this was serious.
“What is it?” I asked, heart pounding. “What don’t you want me to see in there?”
Imani frowned, tears piling up in her eyes, and glanced over my shoulder at Jace. She parted her lips to say something, then pressed them back together three times in a row. When she finally got something out, she shook her head. “There are pictures …”
My heart dropped. Before I could stop myself and despite my best friend telling me to walk away, I found myself storming up the stairs to Redwood’s entrance and shoving the door open to see this for myself.
Pictures? What kind of fucking pictures are up in the halls?
Colored flyers of Jace and me at the pharmacy yesterday—holding hands, kissing, and picking up Plan B—were posted on almost every damn locker, where everyone could see them, accompanied by the words whore, slut, incest, and things I couldn’t even read through the tears.
I plucked the flyers off the lockers as quickly as I could, my cheeks flushed as people stared and whispered in my direction until I reached my locker and found people crowded around it and staring at something. I pushed my way through the crowd and collapsed when I saw the pictures of Jace and me in the locker room two weeks ago.
They weren’t just any pictures either. They were of Jace eating me out, of him fucking me, of his fingers in my mouth and my brows furrowed together in a lustful stare.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, body heaving on Redwood’s dirty hallway floor.
My chest tightened to the point where I had to physically force myself to breathe the same way that nurse had taught me to breathe when I found out Dad had died. Yet even with that stupid fucking way, I felt like my chest was being crushed by a hundred thousand pounds.
