Devil Incarnate (Boys of Preston Prep #4) - Angel Lawson Page 0,71

cat. Another cat follows its lead, both of them heading straight toward the stack of recycling bins.

A moment later, I hear a sneeze.

Then another.

The cats loudly meow and a voice whispers, “Go away. Achoo!”

I walk around the recycling bins and see Georgia squatting against the building, cats circling anxiously nearby. When she looks up at me, her nose is glowing red, eyes watery and irritated. I can’t tell if it’s from the sneezing or what she just heard.

I raise an eyebrow. “Hiding again?”

“No,” she says, rubbing her nose. “Well, not from you. Your brother did too good of a job taming these stupid cats. They won’t leave me alone.”

I realize then that I’m still holding the burrito. I toss it a few feet away and the two cats, plus another that’s still hiding in the woods, rush over and start picking away at it.

When they’re occupied, she slumps down the wall, knees tucked to her chest. “Apparently, neither will you.”

Scratching the back of my neck, I start, “Listen, I don’t know what you just heard, but—”

“I heard enough.”

Of course she did. “I wasn’t trying to—”

She shoots me a dark look. “Don’t, Heston. Nothing you say will make this any better. If anything, you’ll just make it worse.” She’s all red faced and worrying that bottom lip of hers, and for some reason, I find I can’t leave.

It’s really pissing me off. “How is any of this my fault?” I wonder, tossing a hand toward the dining hall. “You made your own choices. It’s not like anyone’s spreading lies about you. Own your shit, Haynes!”

She explodes, “You think I don’t know that?!” Despite this, a tear falls, tracking down her cheek. She angrily swats it away. “You think I have a fun time looking at myself in the mirror every day? Because it’d be really easy, you know. It’d be so fucking easy to blame it on you and that goddamn video. But I do own my shit, Heston. I know it started before that night happened.” Sniffing wetly, she looks away, eyes hard. “I know it was the reason that night happened. You knew. You even brought it up.”

She’s right. I knew. Word was all over Preston about Georgia being the girl who would do anything, and that’s exactly what I needed. A girl who could take it fast and hard. A girl who wouldn’t care if I didn’t want to look her in the eye while I was doing it. A girl who wouldn’t ask a lot of questions afterward, or make demands, or have any deluded expectations.

I needed a dirty little slut.

And that’s exactly what I got.

She rests her forearms on her knees, brows knitted together. “It’s not like I ever wanted to be the school slut. I just wanted to have sex.” After a pause, she laughs, the sound abrasive and without humor. “That’s a lie. I needed it. I needed to have sex. Some days, it’s all I can think about, like—” Her mouth clicks shut, eyes lurching to mine, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You’ll probably have it on blast before dinner.”

“Believe it or not, I actually have better things to do than contribute to the Preston gossip mill. Plus,” I move to lean against the wall beside her, staring unseeingly into the woods, “it’s not anything I didn’t already suspect. You’re like a nympho or something, right?” She’d probably have to be to keep coming back to me for dick.

I hear a sniffle, feet shifting against the pavement. “Does it really matter?” she mutters, voice low. “A slut by any other name...”

Rolling my eyes, I look down at her and say, “Oh, so fucking what?” When her green eyes jump up to mine, flashing, I add, “Be the slut. Be a legendary slut. Be the best fucking slut this school has ever seen—the kind of slut people are still talking about ten years later. I don’t see the big deal, Little Red. Girls want to be you, guys want to fuck you. So they talk shit sometimes. Who cares?”

She shakes her head. “You wouldn’t get it. You’re a guy.”

“Yeah,” I say, snorting. “What the hell do I know about people talking behind my back, calling me names, acting like I’m beneath them. You know the difference between you and me?”

Belligerently, she offers, “You’re an evil piece of shit who enjoys hurting people, and I’m not?”

Shrugging, I don’t deny it. “Yeah, sometimes I get off on hurting people. But I’ve never gotten