was cool.”
Overall, the day had been a blast. My only regret was Trina hadn’t come with us. I’d like her to be friends with Becca and Blake. The idea that Coop and I were leaving her behind when we went off to college had begun to nag at me, especially after that last conversation.
Maybe next time.
The whole drive back, we turned up Torched, and I was thrilled that they liked the music almost as much as I did. When I admitted we’d gone to a concert while in Colorado, I winced at their yowls of disbelief.
Oh, I was gonna owe Jake an apology. I had a feeling his sisters would be blowing up his phone. His SUV wasn’t at their place when I dropped the girls off, so I fired off a text to the guys to let them know I was done and heading home. I was beat, and I still had a crap ton of homework to do before the week started.
Ugh and we needed to grocery shop this week. I probably should have made a list before I went out, but I’d do it tonight and maybe bribe one of the guys into going with me after school on Monday. That triggered thoughts about actual homework and what projects I needed to get ahead on, followed by the fact that Bryan and I had been given actual homework for our assignments this next week.
We were going to be working in finance. I wasn’t sure whether the prospect excited or terrified me. Probably both. It was a lot to absorb, particularly because the prospectus they’d given me had to be eight hundred pages.
Archie had flipped through it and then grinned almost crookedly before offering to bring over the latest stockholder’s projections from their last meeting.
And here I thought he loved me. He’d laughed so hard at me.
Ass.
Speaking of asses, I needed to call Rach. She’d been ducking my calls the last three days. That, or she hadn’t come up for air from her latest conquest. I probably shouldn’t think of them that way, but I was still bummed about her and Skylar.
Not that I was the one who needed to be made happy in that situation.
Still, I was worried about her.
Coop’s car was in the lot, and so was Ian’s bike, but Jake’s SUV and Archie’s Ferrari were both absent. I grabbed my phone after I parked, but Trina was standing out in the cold, arms tucked around herself without a jacket, and I frowned.
Worse, her eyes were red-rimmed like she’d been crying, and her face was all kinds of splotchy.
I shoved out of the car in a hurry. “What’s wrong?” Worry threaded through me. “What happened?” I would have given her a hug, but she backed off and glared at me, nostrils flaring even as she sniffed. It was like she couldn’t make up her mind whether she was angry or sad.
“Is it true?” she demanded.
So we were playing the vague game. I closed the door to the car and nodded toward the apartment. “Is what true? And it’s freezing out here, do you want to come over?”
“No,” she snapped and stomped forward, more angry tears gathering in her eyes even, as she sniffled. “I want to know if it’s true.”
“Okay,” I said, blowing out a breath. “You’re going to have to be more—”
“Are you fucking cheating on my brother?”
The accusation hit me like a brick. All the air in my lungs squeezed out. “Trina…”
“Are you?” Her voice pitched higher. “Noah told Jenny and Mandy that you’re a whore. Everyone at the high school knows it… How could you do that to him?”
“I’m not—”
She swung before I could even finish the sentence and I barely got my arm up in time, but too many years of taking Maddy’s slaps made me wary of another one. Trina flailed with her other hand, and I dropped my keys to catch her arm.
“Trina…stop it.”
Then she shoved me back to the car, and while Trina and I were closer in height, she had a lot of anger behind her.
“You’re as bad as your mother!” she screamed this time, and the tears fell in earnest. “She screwed my dad, and now you’re screwing up my brother.”
Shock slapped me harder than she could have, and my stomach cramped. “Sis,” I tried again, because tears ripped through her words like a record screech.
“Don’t. Call. Me. That.” The flailing turned to half slaps against my arms as I fought to keep her from actually landing