I wanted to snort in disgust, or at least disdain. I didn’t.
“Yeah?”
She nodded, finishing up drying her hands, and stepped back from the sink. “Where are your guys? Usually they’d be out in the hall if you’re in here.”
There was the whole gut tightening again. Right there.
I jerked a shoulder up. “They’re out doing their thing. I’ll catch up with them later.”
“Are you dating one of them? Monica mentioned that one time.”
“Monica doesn’t know anything.”
She was referring to one of her friends, who truly didn’t know shit.
“Oh.”
Those eyes of hers. Tawny and hazel, and there’s a reason she and her brother were some of the most ridiculously good-looking people in our school. It wasn’t fair. But the kindness and concern were what was really setting my teeth on edge.
I didn’t need her pity.
“Anyways,” I blasted her with a bright, but dismissive smile, “I gotta go to the bathroom. So…” Enough said. I moved inside my stall, shut the door, and sat. Then I waited.
That was rude.
I was feeling like an asshole, but a moment later she was edging for the door. She was going slow, and that tugged at me because Taz Shaw wasn’t known for moving at a slow pace. She bounced. She hurried. She darted. She didn’t move slow, and she wasn’t my friend.
The door swished open and closed, and I cursed under my breath.
But, what? Go and attend a rich asshole’s party tonight as a tagalong? I wasn’t a tagalong. I’d never been a tagalong, and fuck if I was going to become one.
But because my day was still in the toilet (lame humor), that didn’t mean I couldn’t mess someone else’s day up, too.
I found the drugs, but I didn’t hide them. I flushed them.
Then I went to my last detention of my high school career, and that sucked too.
I wished I hadn’t flushed the drugs.
TWO
Kess
I WAS WALKING to the parking lot when I heard the bike’s engine roar. A moment later, he parked on the clear opposite end of the lot, right next to my own motorbike. He did that on purpose. His head turned, his helmet still on, but I already knew the cockiest smirk of all smirks was on his face as he was watching me come toward him.
Christopher.
How I knew this guy was beyond me.
He transferred in the beginning of the year, and he was barely around. In fact, people really didn’t know he was even at our school and I could get why. He showed up for first period, ducked out, and who knew where he disappeared to until seventh period.
I didn’t know his story. I didn’t know why he was only around for those two classes, how he got exempt from class projects, speeches, anything that might’ve drawn attention to him. But somehow it worked. The teachers never called his name for roll call. They literally skipped over him as if he wasn’t in the classroom, and after a month of whispering from the girls and weird looks from the guys, they all accepted it.
It helped that he didn’t say anything.
It also helped that he didn’t linger after class. I’d never seen him talk to anyone. He showed up in the morning, went to class, left, and repeated the process at the end of the day. Did he have a locker? I hadn’t a clue.
But I did know he was gorgeous.
Dark hair that he liked to run a hand through and pull on so the ends were a sexy mess. Then there was the square jawline. It always looked as if he’d done just a quick buzz over his jaw for the whiskers, and he let it go until the night again. And his face, nice and hella smoldering.
Seriously. It wasn’t fair.
But he had the clearest blue eyes, and that’s what gave him away. He didn’t know I knew where he got those blue eyes, and that little fact kept my mouth shut. I didn’t say one word about the secret I did know about Christopher Raith, besides his name and how him just waiting on his motorcycle gave off this intense pulse in the air.
He was sizzling.
He was also Red Demons royalty.
Red Demons. The fast-growing motorcycle club that was starting to take over not just California, but Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and all the way north from Montana to the south where rumors were circulating they were going to start moving into Texas.
Yes. This gossip I did listen to, mostly because my