Touched By The Devil (Boys of Preston Prep 3)

Awkwardly, I reply, “Okay, cool. Well, I think the photo looks great—whoever took it.” Neither of them look at me, and I think maybe for the first time in my life, I’ve been rejected by a freshman. That didn’t even happen to me when I was a freshman.

Ouch.

“Well, good luck with the exhibit. I know you guys worked hard on it.”

“Mmhmm,” Michaela says, using her thumb to adjust the picture again.

Clearly not getting anything out of those two, I start to walk off.

But then Micha calls, “Hey!”

I turn. “Yeah?”

“I thought you were different from your brother,” he says, lips pressed into a tight line, “but I guess I was wrong.”

Double ouch.

I continue on my way, letting the insult settle around my shoulders. I never thought I was like Heston. The idea was laughable. But the school, the Devils, even the twins all think I’m a manipulative asshole who’ll do anything to get in a girl’s pants and then break her heart.

Maybe I’m a better actor than I thought.

Resigned to another night of getting shitfaced alone in my room, I enter the dining hall and grab a tray. I pretend I don’t feel the laser beams on my back as I carry it across the room and sit with the other guys on the lacrosse team. I keep acting like the food I’m shoveling in my mouth doesn’t taste like ash, and the wise-cracking jokes I share with the guys aren’t a cover-up for the fact I feel like shit.

And I know Sugar’s not feeling great. Every time I manage a passing glance in the hallways, in Dr. Ross’s class, I can clearly see she looks like hell. It’s not just the purple smudges under her eyes or the fact I haven’t seen her smile in days. It’s in her hunched, defeated shoulders, and the way she sits with an empty chair between her and the others. It’s how she wraps her arms around her body and keeps her hair loose, using it to shield her face.

It’s in the way that, when she sits in front of me in Dr. Ross’s class, she tries to make herself disappear. That wall I broke down is firmly back in place, but this time even more fragile than before. I thought when I punched her that night, when I heard her scream, it was the worst thing I’d ever seen or heard.

I was wrong.

This? The silence?

It’s so much fucking worse.

I want her to fight back. Kick me in the balls. Shove that knife in my heart and end me.

“Fuck,” Michael Watts says, looking at his phone. “Coach added an extra scrimmage tonight.”

Peter Norton groans. “My arms are still sore from yesterday.”

The guys start bitching, but the screech of a chair dragging on the cafeteria floor, and then a figure dropping into the empty seat next to Sugar, draws my attention to the Devils' lunch table. Carlton eases himself in the chair and gives Sugar a small grin.

My first response is what the fuck? My second is to sit back and watch Sugar pull out her blade and castrate him in front of the room. He leans into her and says something way too low to hear. I wait for her to tell him to fuck off.

She doesn’t.

She ducks her head for a moment but then grins at him. She fucking grins. And then she nods her head in approval of whatever it is that asshat is saying. Since when does Carlton say anything worth smiling over?

For the first time in days, something penetrates this shell of gnarled numbness I’ve become, and I barely even think about what I’m doing. I push back my chair, plotting the ways I’m going to make him pay for even looking at my—

“Bass.” A body steps in my path. I peer around them. “Bass!”

I blink and see that it’s Emory standing in front of me. “What?”

“Hey,” he says, giving me a weird look. “We need to talk.”

Impatiently, I try once again to peer past him. “About what?”

“Tonight,” is all he says. “Seven. You know where.”