Chaos at Westbrook High (The Kingston Brothers #3)

Chapter 6

She’s here.The coffee girl I’ve been obsessing over for weeks is here, pushing her way through the double doors at the end of the hall with that bratty little attitude that makes me want to kiss the shit out of her.

Hailey, I think to myself, imagining the way I’ll say it in her ear when I finally get the chance to pin her down and wrap her legs around my waist, to tease her and fuck her and make her moan for me. The thought makes my dick hard—everything about her makes my dick hard—and fuck me, I’m gonna be hard all day, every day for the rest of my school life with her this close, right here for me to play with and chase around as much as I please.

Callie laughs at the look on my face. She’s the only one of my family members who’s not still frowning at the doors Hailey just walked through.

“Kai,” Callie says.

“Hm?”

“Dude, you need to stop grinning. You look a little psychotic.”

I try to relax my face and force my features even, which makes her laugh harder.

“This is gonna be fun.”

She’s damn right it is.

I grab my boy Ryan and kiss his head, making him laugh while I open my locker, which just so happens to be two lockers up from Hailey’s. I grab the shit I need while shamelessly adjusting my cock through my jeans. I don’t care if anyone sees what she does to me. I want them to see. I want them to know the new girl is mine and she’s not to be fucked with.

“Kai.”

“What, Damon?” I ask, not missing the look on his face.

Wren and Callie don’t look all that concerned, but Damon and Levi look a little nervous, both protective of all of us and paranoid as fuck.

Still frowning, Damon steps closer to ensure no one outside of our family can hear us. “What is she doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Senior year’s almost over, brother. How the fuck did she get in so late?”

I shrug because I don’t know that either, but I’m going to find out, and I’m gonna have a lot of fucking fun while I do it.

“Maybe her parents have money,” Wren says, lifting his Valerie’s to-go cup to take a sip.

“What’s her last name?” Damon asks, his temper rising when I shrug again.

“I don’t know.”

“And why would she work seven shifts a week in a coffee shop if her parents are loaded?”

“I don’t know.”

“Kai.”

“What, Damon?” I ask again, laughing to myself when he looks like he’s about to bang my head against the wall to knock some sense into me.

“Will you grow up and stop thinking with your dick for five minutes?”

“What’s wrong with my dick?”

“He’s an idiot.”

I snort. Putting him out of his misery, I look at Wren to check he’s up for what I have planned. He nods, already knowing what I’m thinking without me having to say a word. This won’t be the first time we’ve broken into the office to get a look at a student’s file—we did it when we learned Callie was moving in with us before we’d even laid eyes on her—and it probably won’t be the last. Not when our older brother has this compulsive need to know everything about everyone.

“There.” I turn to Damon. “Happy?”

He grunts, and I take that as an enthusiastic yes. Problem solved, I close my locker and fall in line beside them.

Hailey’sin every single one of our classes, and even though she hasn’t said a word since this morning, I can tell she’s furious about it. Damon’s even more paranoid than he was earlier, even after we found nothing out of the ordinary in her file.

Me? I’m fucking thrilled.

She’s talking to the teacher when we walk into fourth period, nervously nodding along to whatever Mrs. Tanner’s saying from behind her desk. It looks like Hailey’s getting chewed out, even though it’s her first day and she’s barely been in here thirty seconds, but I’m not surprised. Mrs. Tanner’s a hardass, especially with the pretty ones.

I’ve never seen Hailey nervous. It’s turning me on, my own nerves buzzing with excitement as I stare at her ass in those tight jeans she’s wearing.

I can’t help but touch her as I stop behind her, just a tiny brush of my finger over the soft fabric of her shirt at her waist. She doesn’t look back as she boldly shoves my hand away from her side. She doesn’t need to check who it is. She already knows it’s me.

Taking a small step forward, I stop just before my chest hits her back, resisting the urge to bury my nose in her hair. “Go sit down, Hailey.”

She finally looks at me over her shoulder in outrage, then back to Mrs. Tanner, who only rolls her eyes and waves her away. After a beat of stunned silence, I hear Hailey’s quiet scoff and force myself to walk away, side-eyeing her as my family and I make our way to the two back rows. Damon and Callie take the two seats by the window, Wren and Levi take theirs in front of them, next to Ryan and Rachel, and I take the seat next to Callie, slowly shaking my head at Madison, the head cheerleader, when she takes a step toward me.

“No.”

“But—”

I cock my head, and she stops talking, her nostrils flaring as she drops down into the chair in front of Rachel. “Unbelievable,” she mutters under her breath.

I ignore it, only interested in the girl who’s glaring at the only seat left in the room. She waited for everyone else to take their usual seats first, just as she’s been doing all morning, not wanting to step on anyone’s toes. But now her only option is to sit next to me. I don’t miss the instant regret on her face.

Mrs. Tanner stands and begins writing on the board, but I don’t take my eyes off Hailey, eagerly waiting to see what she’ll do next. Her lips part as she glances at Mrs. Tanner, but nothing comes out. Instead of arguing like I expected her to—like I wanted her to—she walks over, drops her bag on the floor, and slides her ass into the seat.

She knows I wanted to play with her a little, that I wanted a reason to argue back and forth with her, a reason to hear her voice. Any reason.

“Clever girl,” I say quietly.

She grabs her notebook, slapping it down on the desk before flipping it open to the first page. Instead of taking my own notes, I lean back and watch her take hers, my long legs widening as I picture her straddling my lap, resting back on her elbows, her chest rising and falling rapidly while she lets me roam my hands all over her body.

Fuck. I can’t get her out of my head. I’m used to it. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since I met her, but it’s even worse when she’s this close.

So fucking close.

“Hailey,” I whisper, but she doesn’t even look at me. “Damn it, baby, don’t ignore me again.”

She does. The little brat goes right back to pretending I don’t exist, and fuck if that doesn’t make me want her even more.

“You’re playing with fire, you know?”

But she doesn’t give a shit.

Her eyes bounce between her notebook and the board at the front of the room, her focus solely on whatever the teacher’s talking about. My focus is lost somewhere between her mouth and her throat, my knee jerking up and down as I press the heel of my hand into my crotch.

God fucking damn her.

The restof the school day goes pretty much the same way, with me plotting to get her to sit next to me in every class and her trying her hardest to pretend it doesn’t piss her off.

It’s fun pissing her off.

The last bell rings, and she looks at the clock, her eyebrows pinching as she closes her English Lit notebook. She looks disappointed for some reason, almost as if this class wasn’t long enough for her. She’s smart as hell—I know because I’ve barely taken my eyes off her for the last eight hours—so it’s not because she can’t keep up. She likes English. Aside from having to spend time with me, she likes school in general as far as I can tell. Probably enjoys learning just as much as I enjoy getting my dick sucked. The thought makes me wonder what it would feel like to have hermouth around my dick, and shit, now I’m hard again.

“Hailey, wait,” I holler, jumping up to follow her when I realize I’m just sitting here like a dumbass.

She doesn’t wait, her pace quick but not rushed as she makes her way out into the hall. She keeps her gaze forward as she walks, the lighter ends of her long hair brushing the middle of her back with every step she takes. She stops at her locker, and I do the same, shamelessly staring at her ass and thighs while I shove my shit inside.

“You walked today, didn’t you?”

Nothing.

“You wanna ride home with me?”

She rolls her eyes at that, carefully putting her books away before she closes the locker and turns to leave. Unable to help myself, I click my tongue and hook my finger through the belt loop of her jeans, gently pulling her back as I close my own locker. She bites back a gasp, her shoulders going rigid when I dip my head to put my mouth next to her ear.

“Baby, you know I’ll make a scene if you don’t give me attention,” I taunt, sliding my finger out of the loop to tease the skin at the base of her spine. My other hand moves to her hip, and I feel her body tense against the front of mine, her breathing picking up with fear and something else as she looks around at all the eyes on us.

“Kai.”

“Hailey,” I say back, ghosting my lower lip over the soft shell of her ear, grinning when she snatches her head away to stop me.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious. “Why do you act like this?”

“Because I can,” I say simply, refusing to admit the real reason—that I’m stupidly obsessed with a girl I barely know. “Maybe I’m just a little more forward than the pussies you’re used to.” Like Wyatt, the frat boy looking-douchebag who works with her at the coffee shop, I think to myself, but I don’t add that part.

“Or maybe your daddy never taught you the word no and now you think you can do and say whatever the hell you want.”

She hasn’t told me no—yet—but I’m more focused on the other thing she said.

“What do you know about my daddy, Hailey?”

“Nothing,” she says quickly—too quickly—swallowing when she realizes I notice. “I know he has more money and power than most people would know what to do with. I know about the hotels and the private jets and the bodyguards he has on you. I know people shit themselves when he walks into a room. And I know they do the same with you.”

“But not you,” I point out. “Why?”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“I like that,” I whisper in her ear, moving my fingers around to the warm skin beneath her navel. “That even though you are a little bit, you’re still brave enough to act like I don’t scare the shit out of you.”

“Kai, let me go.”

I remove my hands from her body and take a full step back, catching the flash of surprise on her face before she masks it. I can tell she didn’t expect me to obey, which both amuses me and makes me feel like shit at the same time. I don’t like her thinking of me like that, like there”s a chance I’d keep going if she told me to stop.

“It’s okay,” I say when she doesn’t move, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans, slowly walking backward to ensure she knows I’m serious. “See you later, beautiful.”

She walks away, anxiously adjusting the ball cap on her head as she heads toward the exit. She does that a lot, the hat thing, and I think I know why. I saw the look in her eyes just now when everyone was staring at her, saw her panic over being the center of attention.

She doesn’t like to be seen.

I don’t know the reason for that, but I’m adding it to my list of things to find out about the only girl who’s ever managed to fuck me up this way.

“Kai.”

“What?” I turn my head to find Levi and the rest of my family standing beside me.

“You ready to go or you just gonna keep staring after her like an abandoned puppy?”

“How many years did you spend pining for Wren?” I fire back. “You can’t say shit, asshole.”

He shakes his head at me with a smile, sharing a look with Wren and the others as the five of us make our way down the hall. I’m acting a fool and we all know it, but they don’t call me out. Good thing too, because I couldn’t explain what’s going on with me if I wanted to. I can’t explain what she’s done to me or why I’m this hung up on her. I just…am.

When we round the corner, Madison’s snickering with her friends, and Hailey’s crouched near the main doors leading outside, helping the librarian’s assistant pick up a bunch of books that I’m assuming Madison knocked out of her hands. She looks a little flustered, but my girl makes it all better, helping her stack them up neatly on her arms. The assistant thanks her repeatedly, and Hailey hits her with that sweet as fuck smile she’s never given me, waiting for her to enter the library safely before she walks out through the doors. Madison raises a brow at me as if to say, Really? You want her? I pay her no attention, going after Hailey without thinking too much into it. Everything she does and everything I learn about her make me want her even more, drawing me in even closer. It feels like there’s an invisible collar around my neck, and she keeps yanking on the leash.

I’m just about to call her name, but I don’t get the chance before she suddenly stops right in front of me. I run into her back and grab her sides, stopping her from falling down the wide set of steps in front of us.

“Hailey, what?—”

“Kai.”

I stop talking at the sound of Damon’s voice, looking left to find him glaring at something straight ahead. Grabbing Callie’s waist, he yanks her back to his chest just as Wren and Levi step up beside him on his left. I frown at the solid line they’ve formed next to us, confused as to what their problem is, but then I follow their gazes.

Derek.

It’s fucking Derek.

He’s leaning against the hood of the Aston Martin he loves so much, lifting a lit cigarette to his mouth to take a drag. He looks the same but thinner, paler, his dark hair longer and a little messier than it used to be, his eyes lined with dark circles, a few scars on his nose and the left side of his jaw. Those weren’t there before, meaning they’re probably the aftermath of Damon’s temper, left there the night Derek kidnapped Callie and almost raped her.

My hands flex at the memory, and it’s only now I realize I’m still holding Hailey’s waist, my fingers digging into her flesh through the fabric of her shirt. She startles at my touch, but I don’t let go. I don’t take my eyes off my cousin, almost laughing at the sleazy little grin on his face as he takes another drag.

This motherfucker can’t be serious.

He tips his head at me as if to say, Come here, and I do laugh this time—maniacally—ignoring Damon when he inches a little closer to me.

“Kai…” It sounds like a warning, but I don’t stop.

Just as I’m about to walk down there and shove my fist into Derek’s face for daring to show it, for daring to taunt me, Hailey manages to stop me with a single, deadly look over her shoulder. She looks furious and…defensive? Protective? I don’t understand it, and I’m even more confused when she yanks herself out of my grip.

“Hailey, wait?—”

“Let her go,” Damon orders darkly, and I swallow.

She descends the steps, and I pull my brows in, unsure what the fuck I’m seeing, stuck where I stand as she makes her way toward the enemy.

He wasn’t beckoning me just now. He was beckoning her.

Deafening silence fills my ears. My heart feels like it’s about to explode. I must take a step, because Damon grabs my forearm and squeezes to keep me still. I don’t want to stay still. What I want is to go grab Hailey and drag her ass back up here, but I’m too stunned to fight him right now, so I do nothing but stare, unblinking as I follow her every move.

When she gets to him, Derek wraps his arm around her shoulders and takes her to the passenger side of his car, looking at us over her head as he kisses the top of her hat. She plants her feet and looks up at him, her lips moving as she says something I can’t hear. His response seems to placate her a little, and she gets into the car.

She’s getting in the fucking car.

Derek closes the door for her and casually flicks the butt of his cigarette, smirking up at us as he makes his way around to the driver’s side. Damon’s grip tightens on me and Callie, and I can’t tell whether he’s holding us back, or holding himself back from ripping his damn head off. Probably both.

Derek doesn’t dare look at Callie, which is the only reason he’s still upright right now.

Enjoying the crowd gathered around us to watch the show, Derek gets into his car and starts the engine, revving it a little for good measure. With his hand on the back of Hailey’s seat, he reverses out of the spot, switches gears, then hits the gas, stealing her from my sight as he drives toward the open gates.

My blood runs cold through my veins, and all I can think about is the way he touched her just now. The way she let him touch her and kiss her as if he’s done it a thousand times before.

As soon as they’re gone, four pairs of eyes cut my way, and I quickly force my features even, not wanting them to see whatever this awful feeling is clawing at the inside of my chest.

Too late. They already saw it.

Callie fails to hide a wince, and I lock my jaw, letting out a quiet, disbelieving laugh as I reach up and lock my hands at the back of my neck.

“That bitch.”