Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
There was a moment there when I asked her to decide his fate, and the sweet, innocent freshman faded and a coldness bit her soul. Rainey’s eyes changed. Her voice deepened, and surety squared her shoulders. She became someone harder, fiercer, and a mirror to me in every delicious way.
Now I knew who that someone was. Why in the fuck would I reject her? Ivy’s the girl who put her pool cue through my heart.
IVY
“Rainey, you okay?”
I started as I always did when I heard that name. I looked around before I could stop myself, half expecting to see my sister walking up behind me, beaming away as she came to join us for breakfast.
The vision vanished, taking hope with it.
“What? Sorry, Elise, I’m out of it.”
“I’ll say. You lost half your breakfast again.”
I looked down. Half of my breakfast bagel was gone, and from the unrepentant smile on Amy’s face, I knew where it went. She liked to say losing my food was my fault. I should stop ordering better than her.
“What’s up?” Paris asked.
I shifted back to the sight that caught my eye. “That’s what’s up. Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been here before? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not interested in round two.”
Amy, Paris, Elise, Zara, and Presley followed my line of sight. Five pairs of eyes hardened at once.
Adriel, Nathan, and Ethan kicked back on the deck. It was the first day of the new semester, and Paris wanted us to spend it doing our morning ritual of Bagel Glory and sunshine. I wasn’t expecting to come out onto the deck and find it haunted by Crows.
“—wasn’t us,” Adriel said. “The whole thing makes me sick, man. I saw that video of them kicking that red-haired guy’s ass. Brutal. That’s not what the Crows are about.”
“Then, what are they about?” asked a shaggy guy in glasses. The three of them were gathering a listening crowd. Against my will, I was one of them. “I heard you guys are a gang. Steven Ellis wants to split the town and bring back Crystal Canyon. Jeremy and Micah decided to back up Daddy’s construction plans by rolling through with his gang to fuck with our people.”
Adriel, Ethan, and Nathan burst out laughing. “A gang? Us? Nah, man, you’ve got that all wrong. We’re a fraternity,” Adriel said. “One of the underground ones at Hunter’s Crest College. We all got in it freshman year. The day you become a brother, you get a crow tattoo. It was just fun and games at first, but you know how it is with the rich boys.” Adriel tossed him a wry grin like they had an inside joke. “Jeremy started throwing his money around. Why should the older brothers treat him like a scab when he could buy their whole lives and burn it down for fun?
“Him, Micah, Gael, Jonah, and the rest of them got a little too hardcore. They got off on acting like the kings of campus. With that fucking tattoo on their necks, they gave the whole fraternity a bad name. Now they got people thinking we’re some kind of gang?” He tossed his head, feigning actual disappointment. “I’m glad you ran those jokers out of here. They got everything they had coming to them.”
My jaw clenched seeing students exchanging glances, dislike bleeding away. They were buying this.
“If you’ve got nothing to do with Jeremy or his father’s company, why are you here?” I called. “Because I’m counting the minutes until you bring up smoke shops and nightclubs, and how Bedlam would be so much better if we modernized.”
Adriel slid to me. “You know I’ve got nothing to do with that because I couldn’t give two shits about this Crystal Canyon crap. What’s it got to do with me? After I graduate from here, I’m looking at grad schools on the East Coast. What you all do with your town is your business. Change it or keep it the same. You won’t hear my opinion about it, because, once again, I don’t care,” he said, all smiles.
Couldn’t put it past him, it was a nice smile. Bronze kissed his skin. Steel hardened his jaw. Sunlight bleached blond streaks in his brown waves. If he wasn’t going full-time as the duplicitous, sweet-talking banger I knew he was, Adriel would kill as a model.
I gave him a smile to match. “East Coast? Very cool. Which schools were you thinking?”
His grin twitched for a moment, as if he wasn’t expecting such a pleasant response. “Top choices are Columbia and Yale.”
“Ooooh, definitely Columbia. That’s where my father went. He swore there was nothing like living, studying, and partying in New York.”
He laughed. “Not gonna lie, New York is pretty tempting after living the small-town life. I might go your dad’s way too.”