Chapter Three
HOLLIS
BEFORE…
I’ve been at this school for less than five minutes, and I already know I’m gonna hate it.
Everything is shiny and new, including the students, and the parking lot looks like a dealership for the rich and famous.
My mom is in heaven.
This is the kind of lifestyle she thinks she was born for. The kind of lifestyle she thinks she deserves.
She deserves—not us. Just her.
I’m just here because I have to be. She’s not exactly sure who my father is, and her parents died years ago. So there’s no one for her to pawn me off on, and she stopped pretending to love me a long time ago.
Her latest boyfriend, Todd Lockwood, is the richest man my mom has ever dated. He made a fortune selling some app that does something I don’t give a shit about, and now he spends all his time golfing and trading stocks. He met my mom at a catering event she was working.
Now, here I am, living in fucking Malibu, going to a school that literally looks like something out of a nineties teen drama.
I look up from the paper schedule the registrar gave me, searching for a classroom number, and that’s when I see her.
Standing a few feet away by the lockers, she’s easily the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
Even with her head turned slightly away, I can see the subtle slope of her tiny button nose and pink pouty lips.
Her hair is long and golden blonde. She’s tall.
The black cutoff shorts she has on over a pair of ripped tights make her legs seem to go on for days.
Before I can even take a step in her direction, I hear someone shout in my direction, and my day instantly sours.
I’ve gone to enough new schools to know how to keep under the radar. Being the new kid has taught me that. But it doesn’t matter. There’s always that one guy.
And apparently, he’s already found me.
I chance a look over in the girl’s direction, and for a split second, our eyes meet. My stomach flips like in one of those cheesy rom-coms, and I swear it actually feels like fucking butterflies.
“Who the hell are you?” the generic bully asks, demanding my attention. His group of friends laughs, like he’s just cracked the world’s funniest joke.
“No one,” I answer.
“Well, No One,” he sneers. “You’re in my way.” He motions to the locker behind me. There isn’t anyone on either side of us in the hall. He could obviously go around.
But this isn’t about that, is it?
I’ve met dozens of guys like him, and they’re all the same. Privileged, starved for attention, and maybe even a little deranged.
He’ll probably be a politician someday.
When I step back without so much as a single word, his face goes slack, disappointment marring his face.
Not the reaction he was hoping for.
“You here on some sort of scholarship or something?”
My brow furrows. “It’s a public school.”
“Yeah. In Malibu,” he emphasizes with a snort. “So did you just move here?”
“Sure,” I deflect, adjusting my backpack.
He eyes me warily. “Why are you so shifty? Are you sure you go here?”
I scoff. “Why else would I be here, man? Do you think I snuck in to go to gym class or something?”
He shrugs. “We have one of the best athletic programs in the area.”
“Whatever.”
I try to step out of his way, but he blocks my path.
I am not a violent person. Not because I don’t necessarily want to be, because there are times when I definitely want to be, like right the fuck now. I have plenty to be angry about, but I can’t afford to be.
The last time I took a swing at a guy like him, my mom and I were out on our asses in less than two days.
While I hate most of my mom’s boyfriends, I hate being homeless and hungry even more. Which is why I take a deep breath and calmly try to step around him. His friends, however, box me in, and suddenly I’m cornered.
No one else in the hallway pays any attention.
Or if they do, they pretend not to.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” the guy says. He’s up in my face now. Whatever his mom made him for breakfast still lingers on his breath, and I try not to gag. “What is your name?”
“Hollis!”
We all turn around. Yeah, I kind of want to know who’s shouting my name too, especially when I don’t know a single person in this school.
If these guys are quintessential jocks, then this newcomer is the bad boy. Dressed in ripped black jeans and a Megadeth T-shirt, he looks like he belongs on a stage with a guitar in his hand.
Or at least in someone’s garage, dreaming of being on a stage.
He steps right up to me, with his bag slung over his left shoulder. A lazy smile hangs on his lips as he pushes his hand through his sandy blond hair. “You have first period bio, right?”
What the fuck?
“Uh, yeah.”
“Cool. Let’s go.” Then he turns toward the ringleader of the bully welcoming committee. “Hey, Alex.”
“Hey, Hendrix.”
“Might want to lay off the onions in the morning. Your breath is rank.” Alex’s eyes go wide a second before his expression hardens.
If he was planning on offering a rebuttal, he doesn’t get a chance, because Hendrix relaxes back into that easy-going smile again and pats him on the shoulder like they’re good buds.
Something tells me they’re definitely not.
“Thanks for looking out for my new friend, Hollis. I’m sure you were making him feel welcome. ”
That hand on his shoulder squeezes. Hard. “Yup,” Alex winces.
“Oh, and Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay the fuck away from my sister.”
Hendrix motions for me to follow him, and I suddenly wonder if I’m just trading one bully for another, but I walk ahead anyway.
“I’m Hendrix,” he says once we’re out of earshot of Alex and his friends.
“I gathered that. What I don’t understand is how you know who I am.”
“Oh.” He laughs. “I was in the front office when you came in this morning. Heard them say your name and go over your schedule. I’m nosy as fuck. But it worked out, right?”
“I can fight my own battles.”
“Oh, no doubt,” he agrees. “But I meant it more like now you have an excuse to be my friend.”
“I don’t really do friends.”
That’s usually a conversation ender. Not for Hendrix, though. He just seems to go with the flow and instead nods and says, “That’s because you’ve never been mine.”