He helped me up, and I leaned against the lockers, trying to stay upright. The initial shock had passed, but I was still in bad shape.

That sucked, and I never wanted to feel that again.

“The video?” I grunted, wanting to sound tough but my voice cracked like I was almost in tears.

“Your brother.” He nodded. “I saw him catch the show on his phone last night when you weren’t paying attention, but I had no idea what he was doing with it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Until this morning when he emailed it to me.”

“Goddamn, you two,” I cursed. “And you thought it would be a good idea to send that to everyone?” “Yeah.” He nodded resolutely, his eyes lighting up. “I thought it was a perfect idea to send it to

everyone. Let them see that piece of shit whimpering. Give him a taste of his own medicine.” “Well, Tate’s blaming me now.”

“Well…” he started laughing, “I didn’t know she’d react like that, but you knew you had that coming, right?”

He was laughing? Yeah, this was real fuckin’ funny.

“She overreacted.” I stood up straight, trying to nonchalantly massage my dick back to life in a hallway full of people. “I took the high road last night. Besides, after what that dickhead did, did she really think I was going to do nothing? And why did it bother her anyway?”

The questions just kept coming. Tate shouldn’t have been that angry.

Sweat covered my neck and back, and I felt like chasing her down and throwing her over my shoulder. “Tate’s got baggage, thanks to us. Trust issues,” Madoc continued and walked around in front of me. “Look.” He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “Normally, I couldn’t care less about who you screwed or what kind of trouble you got yourself into. I’ve sat back and let you self-destruct. But Tate? She’s our

shortie. Now, go fix your shit.”

I watched him walk away, more and more baffled by how my friend continued to surprise me. Was he right?

Yeah.

Tate needed to trust me. We were still working on that, and I could’ve gotten into trouble last night.

She would’ve been worried and pissed if anything had happened to me, or I’d done something stupid.

I’m sure she was also still insecure about anything that she imagined went down between K.C. and I. Me being in the same place as her friend, without her, would piss her off.

I barreled down the hallway, ready to yank her out of Calculus, but I slowed when I got caught by the masses in the school all headed the same direction.

The crowd was a mess of people walking, yelling, and whispering. I saw some still looking at their phones—the video, no doubt—and some people were calling my name, but I ignored them.

Where the fuck was everyone going?

And that’s when I remembered. The auditorium.

We were having that assembly this morning. On bullying.

I ran my fingers through my hair, hard enough to massage my scalp, and let out a long, tired breath. Great. I think I’d enjoy cutting off my arm and rubbing salt in it more.

Dammit.

I charged and weaved as quickly as I could through the long line of students trying to make their way through the two sets of double doors to the auditorium.

“Jared,” someone called out, but I waved them off without looking.

Tate was in here somewhere, so I scanned the rows as I walked down the aisles. We boasted about two thousand students at our school, but the freshmen were at a separate assembly in the gym, so this crowd wasn’t as thick as it usually was.

Looking for blonde hair was a nightmare. I’d really never noticed how many blondes we had until now.

But I knew Tate.

And I’d know her when I saw her, so I surveyed quickly before we were ordered to sit down.

Walking down the center aisle and back up, I felt my heart race when I saw her purple Chuck poking into the center aisle. Her legs were crossed, and one foot darted out of the row.

Quickly, I walked up the violet colored carpet path and placed my hands on her arm rest, leaning down.

“We need to talk.” I spoke low. “Now.”

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 804