Cuz I’m the whipping boy. If the gang are pissed with him, they turn to me. I’m the responsible brother, even if I’m younger. I’m the sensible, unemotional, handy muscle, a watch-out for the gang’s dealings and for keeping my brother in line.
I’m my brother’s—and my mother’s—keeper.
&nb
sp; And I’m lucky to have that, to have them. I just have to remember it in times like this when my patience runs thin and I’m in danger of decking Seb and leaving.
Leaving has always been my default state. It’s an urge I struggle with every morning. I could just walk out, walk away and not look back.
So damn tempting.
“There you are.” Angel throws Seb a hard look. “Let’s go.”
We step out of the club and hurry toward Angel’s car, an old silver Jaguar. Maverick lights up and sucks hungrily on his cigarette as Angel unlocks the car with a beep, and we climb inside, not speaking a word.
It’s midnight, according to the glowing numbers on my phone, and weariness is a weight around my neck. Weariness and tension, never releasing its claws, always coiling my muscles tighter until my head pounds and my vision blurs.
This fucking shit I’m forced to do, day in and day out, every goddamn night of the week. Of my life.
It’ll never end, will it? I’ve always known, and yet I kept hoping, until I realized there is no fucking way out.
No way out alive.
Chapter Three
Gigi
When I started school here, in this town almost three years ago, it was horrible, as things often were those days. Leaving all my friends back in Destiny still stung. Plus, back there I knew the bullies. There was Ross and his buddies, and I knew how to avoid them.
Not that he picked so much on me as on my sister, but still. I know about bullies. I know them well. Calling you names, tripping you in hallways, stalking you on social media and posting insults, tearing your locker open and filling it with used condoms, ripping your backpack to shreds, cornering you and lifting your skirt, just short of raping you right in front of everyone.
But here they weren’t any better.
Sydney, my bestie, suffered from them as much as I did, or so she says. But she had three boys protecting her, and she said I should do the same.
Easier said than done.
The first time I talked to Jarett, I’d just been following him from a distance all the way from the school bus stop. I’d started doing that at the beginning of the school year. The strategy was simple: choose a tall, muscular, mean-looking boy walking in the direction of my house and stick close to him. Pretend you know him, that you’re walking home together.
Keep the bullies at bay.
If the boy is alone, bonus points. It means he won’t show off to his buddies by picking on you, won’t gang up on you.
This boy seemed perfect. Though not new to the school, he was a loner, and living in my neighborhood. We took the same bus, got off at the same stop.
He wasn’t bad looking, either.
Okay, so he was frigging hot. Which made it all the weirder that he never had any following as he hoofed it home from the bus.
Well, except for me. I was his most loyal follower.
I took notice of everything about him—how he limped sometimes, how his eyes tracked everything, how his lip curled when someone stood in his way.
Just… hot.
And now he flicked the cigarette he’d been smoking—well, the joint, I can smell weed as well as the next person—and turned to look at me.
I froze and did my best not to show it, barely slowing down. I smiled instead.