I look across our driveway as I dump my school bag into my backseat. She’s standing over there, waiting for Emory at his truck. The thing about Vandy is that she’s just so fucking cute. Always was, honestly. Really sweet-looking. Pretty. V looks like the type of girl you take out on a date only after impressing her parents. She is no Kaylee Killian. She looks like the kind of girl who doesn’t put out until she finds ‘the one’.
She doesn’t look like the kind of girl who can pick a furniture lock in four minutes flat, either.
That’s the real stain on my sheets.
At the time, I was just thinking that thirty minutes in that gym was probably going to be boring. I was not thinking of her crouched down in the dark, diligently following my instruction, and deftly breaking a lock. I wasn’t thinking of the way she looked, with her lip between her teeth, nibbling. I definitely wasn’t thinking that the way she looked at my mouth, eyes all hooded, cheeks blooming red, would make my dick rock hard.
Suddenly, that moment in the gym, corrupting cute Baby V and knowing for a fact that she was down for it—ready to get messy and anything but sweet—had overtaken Kaylee’s spread legs by a landslide. Isn’t even close.
Vandy meets my eyes then, over the distance. Her smile is a slow, knowing thing, and it’s doing nothing to help the issue currently coming up in my pants. The thing is, I could have taken it. She wanted me to kiss her. No experiment this time, just two people in the same place, high off adrenaline, falling into place like a clicked pin. I can see it so clearly, the way I would have taken it—mine now—grabbed her by the back of her head and thrust my tongue into her willing mouth. It would have been scorching fucking hot, so much better than the first one.
I give her a nod and wrench my door open, because that’s the real problem here. It was just the heat of the moment, and it’d be too easy to push something on her that she’d regret. I’ve never been on a date in my life, I’ll certainly never impress her parents, and I’m not ‘the one’.
To V, I’m nothing more than the bright allure of danger.
Rebellion might be hot, but I know better than anyone how badly it can burn.
The photo from Thistle Cove was just the first. Next came Sparrowood, then Northridge, and then every other school we hit. The timing was tightly coordinated, no one was caught, and after a few days, the delighted chatter dies down into a sort of collective awe. We’d pulled off something epic.
If I were some normal fucker who was doing this for normal reasons, then I would have felt an acute sense of pride as I walked down the halls, knowing that some of that collective awe was meant for me. Instead, I feel it for Vandy. None of these idiots even realize. Their wincing eyes watch as she limps across campus. Their gossip, little more than a long string of pedestrian clichés, follows in her wake. They all part when she passes. They see some poor, pretty, innocent girl who they’d never suspect.
If I feel any pride at all, it’s that I’m possibly the only one in this school who knows the true Vandy Hall.
I stop at my locker between second and third period, shoving my math book inside and searching for my bio lab notes. A shadow crosses over me and leans against the next locker.
“Did you hear about the assembly?” Sebastian says, looking forward.
“What assembly?”
“After lunch. I was in the nurse's office earlier. Apparently, the admin is pissed about the pranks.” Sebastian smiles wolfishly. “Collins is prepping a stern lecture.”
A coil of tension winds in my stomach. “Do they know anything?”
He sniffs. “Nah, it feels pretty CYA. After the Devils went down for making fun of that middle-schooler last year, they want to present a united front. Too bad they’ve got jack shit for suspects.”
I find the notes, but when I shut the door, Sebastian is already gone, sucked into a crowd of passing students. At lunch, the rumor is confirmed when Dean Dewey’s voice crackles over the intercom. “All students report to the auditorium immediately following lunch for an assembly about recent events that involve the Preston Pep community.”
I look across the table at Emory, who’s sitting next to Aubrey, their