Ruthless Love (Ash and Innocence 1)

I stole one last look behind me before I left and nearly laughed at how red Kennedy’s face was. Suddenly, she didn’t look so sure of herself anymore.19KennedyThanks to Tristan’s surprise visit, mom had made me stay home Monday and Tuesday, despite the fact that I wasn’t showing the slightest hint of a fever.

The few days away only made me appreciate being back more. Tristan and his friends added an element of fear to my school day, but even they couldn’t stop it from feeling like heaven. I’d spent my whole life cooped up.

Cooped up in a chair.

In my house.

With my mom.

It always felt like we were running or hiding, even though the only hint I’d heard of my dad looking for us was what my mom decided to tell me. At times, I wasn’t even sure I believed it anymore. Worse, the only memories I had of him were from when I was a little girl, and they’d all been good ones. According to her, he was a bastard when I wasn’t looking. In the end, I always decided he was really gone. If he was the good guy I remembered, he wouldn’t be gone, right?

Being at school let me pretend I was mostly normal.

I headed out to the practice fields after study hall, which was my final “class” of the day. A little bit of the heat of summer was starting to ebb away, and the shady spot I found at the edge of the football field felt nice.

Most of the players were stretching already. I spotted Tristan near the center of the field. He noticed me, then gave me a knowing nod.

Bastard. He was probably still patting himself on the back for whatever that had been Friday night. I wasn’t sure how he could’ve known the one thing he could say to get my mom to let him in was something about symptoms of an illness.

Logan came toward me on a pair of crutches. “Woah,” I said. “What happened?”

“Last play of the game on Friday. Just rolled up on it.” Logan looked down at the cast around his foot. “Shouldn’t be more than a week or two and I’ll be good to go.”

“I guess we can be cripple buddies.”

Logan grinned, but seemed to notice when Tristan looked our way again. This time, Tristan didn’t look nearly as pleased with himself.

“What’s the deal with you two, anyway?” Logan asked.

“Our deal is that he’s the asshole I got assigned to for this project.” I held up the camera, showing Logan. “So I’m stuck with him until I finish this video. But he’s also not exactly being Mr. Cooperative. Part of our assignment is to get an interview and a sort of day in the life scene. Every time I bring those up, he blows it off.”

“If you want my advice, stop trying so hard.”

“The project is half my grade. If I don’t—”

“No. Not the project. I mean with Tristan. You’ve been trying to fix him. But you don’t fix guys like Tristan. You stay out of their way, or you get behind them.”

“What about you? If he’s such a problem, why are you two friends?”

“I can handle myself.” Logan hopped back on his crutches and left me sitting there, more confused than I was before he came.

Logan could seem really nice at times, but if I ever tried to get him to talk about Tristan, it seemed like he suddenly wanted out of the conversation.

I waited through the whole practice, grabbing some token footage of Tristan in action, even though I had more than enough of that kind of film by now. An hour and a half later, I caught up with him when the players were leaving the field.

“Hey,” I said. “Can we get this interview out of the way?”

Tristan stopped, staring down at me. “How much footage do you need, Wheels? Jesus. You’ve been out here every single time we have practice. The other dweebs have all but disappeared by now. Keep this up, and I’m going to start thinking you’re just collecting footage for your spank bank.”

“My spank bank?”

“Forget it.” He started walking away with the rest of the team.

“Tristan,” I said. “I need the interview. It’s part of my grade.”

“Interview this,” he said, holding a middle finger up over his shoulder.

I watched him go, seething. Why was he acting like I had done something wrong? It was infuriating. But I decided I had two choices, and the correct one was obvious. Don’t give him the satisfaction of getting mad about it. He wanted something from me—anger, annoyance, rage. I didn’t know what, but I knew if I didn’t give it to him, he wouldn’t win. So, I just let him leave, trying my best to pretend I wasn’t boiling inside.20TristanI headed into the cafeteria a few minutes later than usual. I expected to see Cassian, Logan, and Gage holding a seat for me. It was an unspoken thing between us. We could butt heads all we wanted, but we still stuck together. It was just what we did.