Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,59

but he's still smirking at me. We haven't transitioned into beating the fuck out of each other. Yet.

“If it were up to Calix or Barron, you'd still be down in that hole. They wanted to leave you in there overnight.” Raz sounds like he's testing me, an action I don't fully understand. Looking at him now, with those red contacts over his blue eyes, his dirty blonde hair disheveled and sexy, his face painted with derisive antagonism … I decide to make him my first project.

If I'm stuck on today, then I may as well use it to my advantage, learn what makes my enemies tick.

“And that makes you a good guy? Because you let me out of the hole you trapped me in?” I clarify, turning back around. Raz doesn't drop my wrist, and I think about his face yesterday, when he caught me and Calix together. He was pissed. He was frustrated. He was hurt.

But why?

“Listen, Trailer Park. A deal's a deal. You told Pearl off, so you deserve something in return. Come with me to the party tonight. I'll make it worth your while.” He releases my wrist and tucks his fingers into the front pockets of his slacks, lifting his chin and smirking down at me like he owns the world. His father is a prominent senator, a deep red asshole with a family that favors nepotism over hard work. Raz might be the black sheep of the family, but he's set to inherit a billion-dollar company regardless. Maybe, in his eyes, he really does own the world? Or at least a substantial portion of it.

“Yeah?” I ask as he pulls his red mask from his pocket and slips it on. “How so?”

“You like weed and booze?” he replies, cocking a brow. “Because we've got top-shelf shit set up tonight. That, and a live band. How do you like the sound of that?”

“Daddy sent you a little stipend to keep you happy out here in the middle of the woods?” I quip, and Raz's smirk turns into a grin.

“You want to see what else he sent me? If you're lucky, maybe I'll let you drive it, too.”

Raz takes me through the nearly empty halls of Crescent Prep, rolling his eyes dramatically as I stop at my locker for my bag, and then leads me down the front steps. There are only a few cars left in the parking lot, but it isn't hard to figure out which one must be his.

A black convertible waits at the edge of the lot, a bow stuck to the hood that Raz tears off with little appreciation, tossing it aside with a bit of a scowl. There's something in his expression that says this gift from Daddy Dearest is a double-edged sword.

Frankly, I'd rather have loving parents with no money than loaded parents with no love.

I don't consider Raz to be a very lucky person in that moment. In fact, he looks as lonely as Calix did that first morning, when I drove by the gas station and noticed the empty, melancholic expression coloring his face, like a dark watercolor painting with bleeding ink.

“I'm not much of a car person,” I begin, touching my palm to the white stripes on the hood. “Explain this to me.”

Never one to miss a good quip, Raz lifts his head up to smirk at me, pulling a joint from his back pocket at the same time. He lights up, tainting the air with the bitter stink of weed before handing the joint over to me.

“That's right. You act so high and mighty that I forget how fucking poor you are sometimes.” He smacks the side of the car like it's one of his groupie's asses and smirks at me, blowing out a cloud of smoke as he tosses me the keys. “This is a '65 Shelby Cobra. And it's worth more than you'll make in your entire life.”

I purse my lips as I take a drag on the joint, closing my eyes as the THC sweeps over me. It happens quick, when you smoke, blurs the edges a little. I pass the joint back to Raz and open the driver's side door, climbing into the sumptuous leather seat and fastening my belt. Maybe I should be surprised that he's letting me drive it, but I'm not. The car—and me—mean so little to him that we're both fair game to be used for his amusement. He thinks it's funny, letting me drive. He might not