Devil Incarnate (Boys of Preston Prep #4) - Angel Lawson Page 0,175

going to cost, and then that’ll be everything I’ve got. But when I went to the meeting this afternoon and ended up vomiting up blood in the parking lot, Warren wouldn’t take no for an answer. He drove me straight to the clinic.

It’s odd, but I just stopped noticing the pain after so long. For the last week, it’s become a part of me, like the color of my hair or my double-jointed fingers. I’m blonde, and good at fingerbangs, and suffering from agonizing stomach pain every second of the day.

On the way out of the clinic, Warren holds the door open for me and I toss him a glare. “What the fuck am I, a terminal cancer patient?” I stubbornly barrel past. “It’s a stomach ulcer, not a tumor.”

He’s been weird as fuck all day, throwing me pensive looks and acting like I’m about to keel over. “Looked pretty serious from where I was standing.”

“I already apologized for your shoes,” I mutter. It wasn’t the first time I’ve thrown up blood this week, it was just the first time I had someone around to notice it and mention that maybe that’s not fucking normal.

It’s not all about Georgia. A lot of it is. Like how I see her around campus but can’t get her to look at me. Or how she always has her head down, shoulders pulled tight around her ears. Or how, when she does look up, her eyes are somehow both distant and too alert, watching everyone suspiciously. Try as I might, I can’t remember if she was like this when the first video leaked. I really hadn’t cared then—certainly not enough to watch her cross the courtyard or dining hall.

Yeah, a lot of it is about the way I have to see her every day and act like it’s not ripping apart something inside of me to know that I blew it.

But more of it is about the fire.

Underworld is nothing but a pile of charred rubble now. I’ll say this for me: I can really burn a building down to ground. I’ve spent the last week waiting for that knock on my door. The ring of my phone. The drop of the axe. Georgia had been right. Arson isn’t just sharing some sex video when you were sixteen and stupid. Just because I’m willing to go to prison to make sure that flash drive never sees the light of day doesn’t mean I want to. I did my best to cover my tracks. I have hundreds of witnesses to attest to the fact that Underworld’s electrical issues have been obvious and pressing. Still, I couldn’t give a believable alibi if my life depended on it.

I got the call this morning, though, just past seven.

The fire has officially been ruled accidental.

It’s good news, but far from being the end of the tunnel. There’s still Gene to deal with. Now that I’m not spending every night at the club, and I’ve been avoiding the scene for months, he has less access to me. Nevertheless, I know it’s coming.

I’ll be ready when it does.

We’ve just pulled onto the highway when Warren says, “Georgia called me yesterday.”

The prescription crinkles when I curl my fingers into a fist. I force my hand open and smooth the paper out over my knee. “Okay.”

I’m not stupid. Georgia has needs. But she’s not mine, and now that she’s not mine, she’ll get those needs met elsewhere. I can’t even hold it against her. I know how it gets for her when she doesn’t have it. She’ll find someone to fuck because she has to, just to stay sane. It’s been almost two weeks since we were last together, and even I’m about to lose my mind. I’m sure she’s about to crawl out of her skin.

“We met for coffee,” he adds, sounding deceptively uninterested. “She seemed kind of down.”

“Hm.” I turn to the window, also able to act disinterested. “I wouldn’t know.”

He lets out this long sigh that makes me want to jump out of the car, moving or not. “What happened?”

Shaking my head, I reach up to scratch my jaw, fingernails rasping on the stubble. “It was just like you said. I fucked it up. Whatever.” Frustrated, I repeat, “It’s whatever.”

There’s a beat of silence before he replies, “I wish you’d told me something was wrong. Maybe then, I could have been there for—”

“Jesus Christ. You’re mad because you had to wait ten days for her to cry on your shoulder