Chapter 4 Ronan #2
“Yep. You need to fuck someone else and get over it.”
I was going to stay out of his business like he’d stayed out of mine, but I remembered all the times my mother was ready to take me and get the hell away from Dad and never did. And then one day, it was too late.
“Nah, that’s bullshit,” I said. “You need to tell her.”
Miller frowned. “She’s hell-bent on us being friends. She thinks it’d ruin us if we tried to be more.”
“So? Tell her anyway.”
“I can’t. She’d shoot me down, and things would never be the same. Though I guess they’re pretty fucked already.”
“So don’t talk to her,” I said. “Just…I don’t know. Kiss her.”
Shiloh’s perfect lips rose in my mind. I took a sip of beer to wash the imagined taste of her out of my mouth.
“No way,” Miller said.
“Why the hell not?”
He made a sour face. “Uh, fucking boundaries, for one thing. She’s told me how she feels explicitly. Friends. I have to honor that.”
I snorted and finished off my beer.
“What can I do?” Miller asked miserably. “I told you, we swore a blood oath.”
“When you were kids. Does she suspect you like her?”
“Not exactly.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.” Miller kicked at the sand at his feet. “There’s a party tonight. She’ll be there.”
“So go to the party and tell her.”
“I just said—”
“You gotta fight, man,” I said. Practically shouted. “You fight, because if you don’t, it’ll be too late. And too late is fucking death.”
Miller stared, shocked. I looked away and forced my hands to unclench, waiting for him to tell me to take my crazy shit and get the fuck out.
But he didn’t.
“She needs me to be her friend,” he said after a minute. “She needs…me.”
“So you’re her pack mule. You carry all her shit and try to make life easier on her because you care about her. But what about you?”
Miller started to answer but then grew quiet. Thinking. Finally, he put his guitar back in its case and stood up.
“You want to come?” he asked. “I mean, it’s probably going to be a bunch of drunk jocks playing beer pong to shitty house music.”
“I’m coming,” I said, kicking sand over the fire. “I told you. I got your back.”
“Why?”
I stared. After everything he knew about me, he wanted to know why I bothered to hang out with him.
“You don’t annoy the living shit out of me,” I said gruffly. “Good enough?”
He grinned. “Good enough.”
I turned to grab my jacket so he couldn’t see my face.
***
The party was just what Miller had said it would be.
Chance Blaylock, the center for the football team, invited half the school to his place at the start of every year.
His team was wasted and playing beer pong in the kitchen while a sound system blasted popular music all over the huge house.
We pushed through a crowd of dancers, Miller searching for Violet among the faces in the dark.
I realized I was searching the crowds for a face too.
Leave her alone.
We made it to the patio outside where lights were strung up. The crowd was thinner; people were talking and drinking in smaller groups by the pool.
“I don’t see her,” Miller said, taking a seat on a lounger. “This was a stupid idea.”
I caught a flash of a red dress in the kitchen and nodded my head. “There.”
Miller looked, and the way his entire face softened to see Violet made me lower my gaze. Like I shouldn’t be seeing something so private. Or unfamiliar.
He heaved a sigh. “Here goes nothing. Watch my guitar?”
“Yep.”
Miller made for the kitchen, and I glanced around in search of beer. A cooler was set up by the pool, green necks poking up from hunks of white ice. I grabbed Miller’s case and headed over, but a guy drunkenly stumbled there first. He grabbed a beer, then blinked up at me stupidly.
“Holy shit, are you the bouncer?” He cackled in my face. “Hey, look! Blaylock hired a bouncer.”
“Fuck off.”
“But for real,” the guy slurred. “Did you escape from jail or what? I heard—”
I took the beer bottle out of his hand and gave him a shove. His arms pinwheeled, and then he fell backward…straight into the pool. Everyone on the patio laughed as the guy sputtered to the surface.
“Dude… What the fuck?”
I tipped the beer his way in salute and headed back to the lounger, ignoring his curses. A few minutes later, a cheer went up from inside, and then Miller returned, looking like someone had pissed in his Cheerios.
“Well?”
“I acted like a possessive asshole, insulted her, and now she’s going to play that stupid closet game where River fucking Whitmore is going to kiss her. Maybe…more.”
“So it went well.”
He scowled at me.
“The night’s not over yet. Play the game too.”
Miller snorted. “Hell no.”
“You won’t play, but you’ll torture yourself by watching.” I tipped my beer. “Solid plan.”
“Fuck off. I have to stay and make sure she’s okay.”
That, I understood.
Miller grabbed his case and headed back inside.
He took a seat in a corner of the living room in a circle of weed smokers, his guitar in his lap.
I stood over him like a sentinel in case that prick Frankie showed up.
Against my will, I scanned the crowd, my gaze snagging on a slim girl with bracelets sliding down her arms as she danced.
My heart thudded dully, but the girl moved into a slant of light, showing pale skin and light-brown hair.
“Dumbass,” I muttered.
“Hi!” A skinny blond with long hair and a long dress plopped down beside Miller. “I’m Amber.”
“Miller,” he muttered.
“Are you going to play something for us?”
He ignored her, his eyes on the center of the living room to where some chick named Evelyn announced a seven minutes in heaven game.
I followed Miller’s hopeless expression right to his Violet.
Pretty girl. Sweet face. My chest ached for him as she went into the closet with the king of the jocks, River Whitmore.
“So that’s that,” Miller muttered.
I squatted on my heels beside him. “It’s just a game. Tell her when she comes out.”
“She’ll kiss him in there,” Miller said miserably. “Her first kiss.”
“Then kiss her better. But don’t let her go.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You have a girlfriend? Someone in Wisconsin?”
“I don’t do girlfriends.”
He frowned, and I knew what he was thinking—I was being awfully fucking chatty with the relationship advice. But just because I couldn’t have something real and good didn’t mean he shouldn’t.
Violet came out of the closet with a strange smile on her face. She shot a pained glance at Miller, and he immediately pretended to give a shit about the skinny blond beside him.
“Well?” Amber put her hand on his arm. “Do you know how to play that guitar, or is it just for decoration?”
I wanted to hear him too. I had a feeling whatever Miller had in him was better than the bullshit playing over the sound system.
Miller glanced around the living room. Violet wasn’t there anymore. The closet game had broken up, and everyone had followed their football king into the kitchen.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, a pained look on his face. “Yeah, I’ll play. Why the fuck not.”
Amber clapped her hands. “Yay!”
The small group around us went quiet as Miller sang Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Not my jam, but holy fuck, the guy could sing. He turned the song into something else, made it his own. Every damn lyric told the story of him and Violet.
A smashing of glass cut through the noise of the party. A guy with silver hair and fancy clothes stood on the dining room table, a broken bottle at his feet. I’d heard some people talking about him earlier by the pool—his name was Holden, and he was new to the school, like me.
“Everyone shut the fuck up!” Holden bellowed. His drunk, watery gaze was focused on Miller. The rest of the house followed his lead.
Miller didn’t miss a note as the entire house went quiet, listening. Violet came tearing in from the back and stopped short, recognition on her face.
Because this is their song.
Miller’s eyes met hers, and he sang straight to her.
“For you, I’d bleed myself dry.”
That could’ve been my motto. To bleed myself dry for those I cared about.
It was too late to save my mother, and all that was left was the grief and anger.
Anger that was the same as my father’s, coursing through my veins like it had in his.
It flared and burned, and I wished it would flame out altogether, but it never did.
The only thing I could do was use it to protect those who needed protecting.
Like Miller. He poured his love out of his guitar, straight to his girl.
Violet, crying now, ran for the exit. Miller stopped the song with a twang and got up to follow her. Someone stopped him at the door.
“Well, lookit who crashed this party. Where you running off to, Stratton?”
Frankie Dowd.
My anger flared like fire when gasoline hits it. I shook out of my jacket and cracked my neck left and right.
Let’s go.
“Back off, asshole,” Miller snarled at Frankie.
“Or what? You going to have your convict bodyguard coldcock me again?”
I snorted. The dumbass hadn’t seen me. I moved in front of Miller and crossed my arms, cold and stony, while inside, the fire raged.
Frankie wore a bandage over his nose, and his eyes were rimmed with bruises. They widened in fear. “You’re fucking dead, dude. You have no idea who I am.”
“I know who you are,” I said. “I know exactly who you are.”
The cowardly, punk-ass bitch who tried to keep my friend from his medicine.
A handful of seconds passed, the air tightening with every breath, until a bellow sounded from the adjacent dining room.
“Dude! What the fuck are you doing?”
All eyes went to Holden, who was tap-dancing on the mahogany dining table, grinding shattered glass into the wood and drunkenly crooning “Singin’ in the Rain” while Chance Blaylock stared wide-eyed at the damage.
“My parents are going to fucking kill me,” Chance seethed. “Someone get over here and help me get this prick off the table.”