Fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you. I’m done. You hear me? I’m fucking done!”
They all look at one another with a recognizable look. They’ve done something, again.
Miles is the first one to look at me and speak up. “You’re done? Then step down and hand over the reins. Your shit’s getting weak.”
Harrison chuckles, and I glare at him.
“I’m not in any hurry, man.”
Fucker has no clue he’s not even a distant blip on the radar now.
They continue looking at each other, and I get a sick feeling in my stomach.
“You better start talking now, because this was the four of us right up until last weekend.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You pulled away right after they moved here,” Miles states.
Kai sits down now. “When you started skipping lunch with us and hitting the gym, we chalked it up to a natural need to get bigger, stronger, to protect what was yours.”
“Protect what was mine?” I huff.
Harrison shakes his head. “Don’t act like you don’t see eight strong and want to ruin it. We all do. Until Katherine’s dirty little secret came to light, I was gonna make that mine.”
Dirty little secret meaning she’s pregnant and having a child with a man she actually married a few months ago. She’s eighteen, not fifteen like my mother was when she had me.
“Truth? I’ll have to endure for longer, and she’ll be a bit more difficult to tame, but with Gabby and her butting heads, I don’t even have to try to get in that. She’ll come willingly.” Harrison smirks, and I want to wipe that fucking smug look off his face.
“You think, with the shit you pulled today, that’s gonna happen? Goats on videos bashing with pictures of her, and texts accusing her of fucking her crew? Really doesn’t shout I want to have a relationship with you.”
“Says the guy fucking Downward Dee, knowing she’s an onto-the-next kind of woman in about—”
“You don’t think that’s why I’m fucking her?”
“Where’s the hunt in that?” Harrison sighs, and I’m ready to snap when he says, “The video was unfortunate; possibly forced my progression from this weekend two steps back. But I’m telling you, it wasn’t us.”
“Then who the fuck was it?”
“More pressing matters to attend to,” Harrison states. “Justice Steel agreed to a fight this weekend.”
“What the fuck do you mean agreed to?” I snap.
“While you’ve been fucking the yoga instructor and stepping away from us, we’ve been looking toward the future,” Miles says.
“I’m not fighting again. We get busted, and I lose everything. You better find someone else to match up with JT.”
Kai glares at me. “You don’t fight him, you lose everything.”
I force a smile. “Don’t threaten me. And don’t you forget what I have on you.”
As he narrows his eyes, I look at Miles. “You, too, motherfucker.”
“Come on now, we’re all—”
I shove my finger in his face. “You, too, Reeves.”
He stands up. “I’m bored with this bullshit.”
What he really means is I don’t give a shit, I have no conscience, no soul, no allegiance, and no worry that my purse strings will get snipped. Unlike the other two, he’s not merely a seed that rooted itself and has grown from a money tree. His parents aren’t out in the orchard, waiting for the low-hanging fruit to drop. His father has money, and as much as it pains me to say it, the fucker has talent. He’s already sought after as a choreographer as soon as he graduates high school because of his family name. And if he wasn’t, his father owns enough Broadway houses that he’ll never be out of work.
Kai and Miles don’t move. They expect that I’m just going to roll over and let them chill here instead of going back to the off-campus student housing, which isn’t happening.
“You two need to get the fuck out of here, too.”
They look shocked. Honestly, it’s a stupid fucking move on my part, but I’m sick of playing the damn game that I’ve been playing since some judge gave custody of me, a then fourteen-year-old boy who was orphaned, to his mother’s on-again, off-again lover.
They leave when they realize I’m not caving, and then I clean up the mess I made.
Picking up the shards of glass, I realize it is one from a bar that my mother worked at until I was about five—Sorority Sisters.
Up until she passed away, I didn’t know that the glass wasn’t from an actual sorority. How would I have? My earliest memories were of her dropping me