Chapter 19 Blowing Off Steam
Blowing Off Steam
Luke
Hearing what Harper went through in that locker room wound me up until I was anxious and needing to do something about it. That asshole stood there last night and talked to us like nothing happened. He intimidated Harper just by his presence.
He wanted her to know it was him.
When everyone left to get changed for dinner tonight, I had to do something. I couldn’t show up to Harper’s with all this raging inside me. I buried it while we hung out this afternoon. But when I told Caden I’d meet them there, he knew.
First stop is home, but now that I know the old man is there, it’s easy to avoid him. I’m not sure I want to avoid him though. Part of me wants to confront him. Tell him to fuck off about working for his company and wanting Harper to have dinner with him.
But another part of me wants to hide like I always have. Whenever I stood up to him in the past, he put me back into my place, painfully. I’m stronger now, but that just means he won’t have to pull his punches. Which could mean not being able to play football.
I can’t risk it.
I take the backstairs to my room. When I glance at the roll of boxing tape on my dresser, I consider working out on the bag in my gym for a while. It would cool me off enough to be chill for Harper’s mother. It’s probably the least destructive thing I can do.
As I reach for the tape, my phone goes off.
Sidney:
Done with the whore yet?
Rolling my neck, I plan on ignoring her text. I’ll go work out for a half hour and then shower and be there for Harper.
But last night Sidney seemed surprised by what Harper said about Zach attacking her. My problem is, how did Zach gain access to my girl in the first place?
The way things unfolded is just too coincidental.
Eli won’t play with Ashley to get the truth, and I doubt anyone else will get information out of her. Sidney wants to be the top. She wants me. Her cost is too high because I’ll never betray Harper.
But what if I can get Sidney to talk?
Fuck it.
Me:
Does Zach have a little dick?
Nothing wrong with communicating. Besides, maybe the little dick is reading over her shoulder, and he’ll finally come out with whatever his plan is.
Sidney:
Does your whore have a little dick?
That explains so much.
I roll my eyes, but fuck it. She usually plays it straight with me. Let’s start with something easy.
Me:
The perfume wasn’t an accident.
Sidney:
Okay
Me:
Did you know she’d go to the girls’ locker room?
I sit in my desk chair and stare at my monitor. Harper could be changing in her room right now. I could open the connection and watch her. It might be enough to calm me down, seeing her happy and whole, knowing she’s getting ready for dinner with me and the guys.
Me:
It’s not a difficult question
Sidney:
It was a possibility, but I don’t control your girl
That’s not no. Maybe it’s time to hunt down the sophomores Harper talked to in the bathroom. I made sure Harper gave me a detailed description. Matching that up with the cheerleading yearbook photo for this year, it wasn’t difficult to find exactly which one she talked to.
Zoey Turner. She’s new to the squad this year, so may not be loyal to Sidney. Harper suspects she isn’t.
What else do I need from Sidney?
Me:
Why are you contacting me when you have Zach?
Is he not enough for you?
I hope he’s reading over her shoulder. Honestly, I don’t know Zach well. We don’t hang out. We see each other at parties and in school, but that’s it. He has his crew and I have mine.
Sidney:
He’s definitely enough
Me:
That doesn’t explain why you’re hitting me up then
Sidney:
You know why
She’s always been the most popular girl in our class, but after we had sex, it pushed her higher than other girls. It didn’t matter if I fucked other girls. As long as I came back to her, she kept her power.
But this year shouldn’t matter. She’s on top. She obviously doesn’t need me to fuck her, so what’s her game now? What does she think I know?
Fuck, I hate when girls play games. I’ll have better luck going to the sophomore and figuring out if she’s just a Sidney wanna-be.
I open up my social media to find out where the parties are tonight. I’m not looking for the party I know we’ll end up at. The one I’m looking for is where a JV cheerleader will be. It’s time to see if she has answers and figure out what power she’s helping bring up.
The party is small and the crowd is mostly underclassmen. I walk into the space and ignore the whispers as I pass through. This isn’t my territory, but all the school is mine. I’m not worried about being alone. No one here can touch me.
The music isn’t loud. Most people are sitting around and talking. A freshman hurries over to me.
“Uh, they said to lead you to them.” He’s a nervous little creature who hasn’t hit his growth spurt yet.
When I nod, he looks so relieved I’m worried he’ll wet himself. Fortunately, he has control over his bladder. He leads me through the living room, past a kitchen, and out to the backyard.
There are a bunch of high schoolers in bathing suits in and around the pool. It’s definitely not as wild as Jason’s will be later. This party probably won’t get broken up until after midnight.
The freshman stops and gestures toward the pool house. When I walk in, the music is low and there are voices talking that stop as the door closes behind me.
When I round the corner, sitting around a table are three guys and a girl. The guys I know are on the JV football team. Logan is the quarterback. Carter is the receiver, while Reeves is Logan’s Caden.
The girl sits back in her chair. She’s blond with dark eyes. Her hair is parted in the middle with two ponytails on either side of her head, tendrils falling on either side of her face. She doesn’t cower before me or preen to get my attention, just stares at me.
“Luke.” Logan leans back from the table. “How can we help you?”
Carter pulls over another chair across from Logan and gestures to it for me.
I sit down and take in these four. From what Harper was told, these are the rising horsemen. They probably go by a different name, but they’re the next power for the vacuum we’ll leave behind when we graduate.
“Your girl talked to mine.”
Carter chuckles. “Zoey isn’t our girl. She’s one of us.”
“Apologies.” It doesn’t surprise me. She’s not on a lap and she’s not holding any of their hands. She’s her own person. Zoey is clearly not owned.
“Don’t sweat it.” Zoey leans in. “I get it. You only see girls as good for one thing, but that’s not what we’re about.”
I give her a nod. “I just want to make sure you weren’t part of the trap for Harper.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t know what they had planned. I figured the skunking was the main point. Made sense Sidney wanted you to smell her when you fucked your girl.”
“It would be something Sidney would do.” I nod. “But things are different. I’ve got people coming at my girl from all angles. Do you guys know anything about that?”
They all meet each other’s eyes, like they’re communicating without words. I can see what Zoey told Harper. It’s the way the Horsemen have always been. We don’t just attack. We think it through. We use our allies wisely.
Logan clears his throat. “There are rumors and vague notions going around. Some guys wanted to get back at you by going after your girl.”
“That’s the thing. What did we do to Zach Gray? As far as we know, we don’t have any beef with his crew, and he shouldn’t have any with ours.”
Zoey laughs. “You guys really don’t think with anything beside your dicks, do you?”
I arch an eyebrow. Most people don’t speak to me like that.
“Zach Gray wants your position. He tried a power play. It’s why he’s with Sidney. She’s queen fucking bee. He wants the loyalty and the pussy. But if he took your girl before you could, he would have been—”
“A rapist.” The word bites out of my mouth. We didn’t give her much choice, but had she completely locked us out of her life, we would have dealt. Not violently taken something she didn’t want to give.
Do I regret taking pleasure from her when she fought us? That self-reflection will have to wait for another time.
“True, but he would have gotten one over on you.” Zoey shakes her head. “His methods aren’t good for the school. Someone should put him back in his place. And Sidney needs to fall.”
Her guys nod, and I can’t help but agree with her. If he’s willing to go that far to prove he’s on top, he needs to know he’s never going to reach it. And if Sidney was part of it, she can’t be allowed to continue her reign.
I glance at my phone and know I have a little time before I have to get to Harper’s house. Just enough time to look into one more thing.
Harper
The music is loud as we walk into Jason’s house. I still don’t know who Jason is, but apparently his party is the party to be at tonight.
“I texted him.” Caden leans down to say into my ear. Him being Luke, who has neither called nor texted any of us.
I’m torn between anger and worry. He skipped dinner with my mom. That’s not a good sign that he’s in this, but what if he’s being held up by something worse than him just being a dick?
I blow out a breath and focus on my surroundings.
The whole house is filled with teenagers.
The inside is dimly lit. We passed a lot of people on the front lawn, but there are even more people in here.
I’m not sure why the police haven’t been called, but Jason’s family seems wealthy. Maybe they know a cop.
Eli keeps his hand on my hip, pulling me in close to his side. Caden clears the way for us, while Jack and Nico protect us from the back.
I slicked my hair straight and put on red lipstick and dark eye shadow. Eli insisted I wear my collar tonight, so I changed into a black dress with a swing skirt and put on my boots again.
My gaze roams the party, looking for the familiar blond head, but I haven’t spotted Luke.
“Hey!” A female voice yells, and I turn to see Penny and Nat heading our way.
“I need to talk to them,” Eli whispers in my ear, sending a little shiver of awareness through me as his lips brush my earlobe.
I smile encouragingly at the approaching girls. Penny grins and tugs Nat along.
“We found a space outside that’s nice.” Penny’s gaze drifts from me to Eli before returning to me. “If you guys want.”
When Eli nods, Penny dances on the balls of her feet and turns into Nat, who just shakes her head slightly. Caden gestures for the girls to lead the way and turns to follow them.
Outside is noticeably cooler, and there’s a pool with people in their underwear playing in it. Someone tosses a beach ball into the middle and they all pile after it.
“Do you want a drink?” Nico taps me on the shoulder.
I meet his dark eyes. “Just a soda tonight.”
Jack and Nico take off back into the house. Someone screams and a splash cuts it off. My head jerks toward the sound. A girl in jeans and a t-shirt surfaces in the pool.
“Fuck off, asshole,” she yells. Makeup streaks down her face. Her blue eyes are livid. Her soaked brown hair is plastered to her head. She swims to the side, and someone holds a hand down to help her out.
That sucks. Also glad that wasn’t me. I don’t want to show everyone my underwear again.
Eli guides me toward the place the girls have picked out. Patio furniture is spread out over a covered tiled area near the pool.
Caden takes my hand and pulls me down on his lap while Eli gestures to Nat and Penny with his head, and they sit on the couch. He talks to them in a low voice I can’t hear, but they both listen intently.
“Figuring out what Sidney and her group know,” Caden murmurs in my ear. “He doesn’t want to approach Ashley directly.”
That makes sense. I relax into Caden as my gaze scans the party. Luke isn’t here, but he knows where to find us. What if he’s in trouble? What if someone found him alone like they found me alone?
“Can you track Luke to see where he is?” My lips brush Caden’s ear as I ask him.
He tightens his fingers on my thigh. “No, but Jack can if we need him to. I trust Luke.”
I meet his eyes. “I do too, but what if he’s in over his head?”
Caden’s lips press into a thin line, and he nods sharply. I might not be the only target for whoever is playing with me. The guys are usually together, but what if they found him alone?
Jack and Nico come and pass out drinks. When Jack sits next to Caden, Caden leans over to talk to Jack. Nico sits on Caden’s other side and hands me a Cherry Coke. My gaze jerks up to his, and when he smiles, I see my friend again.
My chest aches, as I open the soda and drink it. We haven’t talked about what happened. I don’t know who he is anymore. It hurts because at one time we were each other’s worlds. Best friends. We did everything together as kids. Now, I’m not even sure I knew him back when we were kids.
He never told me he was friends with Luke, Eli, Caden, and Jack.
Even if he said he was hiding me from them and not the other way around, the kid who was my friend didn’t hang out with the most popular boys in school.
He hung out with me. And I thought he’d always have my back.
Always be on my side. But things were changing when he left. Maybe I only saw what I wanted to see.
It also makes it harder to just go on like I would with the others. I thought I knew Nico. Even when he came back, there was still this feeling of friendship like he never left.
But he did.
Maybe I don’t need to forgive Nico. Instead, I need to get to know who he is now.
“Get Eli’s attention,” Caden turns to say to Nico. Caden lifts me to my feet, and everyone stands.
“We’ll be back,” Eli says to the girls, and they nod.
Caden takes my hand and leads me into the house. We climb a set of stairs before Jack holds a door open for us. The room is a bedroom that isn’t currently being used by teenagers, which is a little surprising, given the sounds coming from the other bedrooms we passed.
Jack runs a hand through his dark hair. “He’s at Zach’s house.”