Chapter 1 #3
Beats the hell out of me.
Everything about Monroe Walker screamed trouble. Selling weed at school should have been enough to back that up. But it wasn’t. When he’d started selling to his tormentors, they had eased up on him. It was his solution to survive here, and I understood that more than I wished I did.
He was ridiculously smart, hence the full scholarship to Kendry, and stupidly good-looking.
It was stupid because I couldn’t deny it.
I didn’t know of any girl at Kendry who could.
His hair was as dark as compressed charcoal, cut short on the sides and back but long enough on top to look tousled.
It sometimes fell into his beautiful blue eyes.
When it did, he’d slick it back with his tattooed fingers.
That was another thing that made him stand out at Kendry.
Students here wore pastels, polos, and pearls when we weren’t in uniform.
He was all denim, black leather, and tattoos.
Rumor had it that he’d gotten his first tattoo before freshman year and had been getting them ever since.
Along with his lip, both his ears were pierced.
He wore black metal studs in his ears every day.
His cheekbones and jawline were perfectly chiseled to make his face what my friend Alicia described as “a perfect place for a lady to sit.” Not that she or anyone else at Kendry had a chance.
He didn’t date girls from this side of the bridge, and I didn’t blame him.
“Aw, don’t be like that, Lottie. I’m having a party tonight,” Tristen whined jokingly, pulling my thoughts back to my current inability to floor it out of here.
My eye twitched from the amount of irritation I was holding in. “Then could you move your teammates so I can pull out? I have somewhere to be.” I mentally patted myself on the back at how calm I kept my voice.
“If you move your car, then the rest of us won’t be able to get what we came for,” Tristen said.
I wasn’t confident that I had the patience for this. Not when my delay would anger Mother.
Monroe handed over one more baggie of joints to another jock for a wad of cash before turning toward his motorcycle. “Let her leave. I’m sold out anyway.”
The next jock who’d stepped up to buy frowned. “What?”
Others behind him who had yet to buy also voiced their dissatisfaction.
Spoiled assholes. I was going to be stuck here longer because of them.
Monroe shrugged and I watched as he smoothly took off his burgundy blazer that the boys of Kendry wore, folded it, and shoved it and the cash he’d made today into one of the saddlebags on the back of his motorcycle.
“What the fuck, Walker! You said you’d hook me up,” raged Chris, the next jock to buy, as he took a step closer to Monroe.
Chris was the tight end for Kendry Academy’s severely untalented football team.
Seriously, our school’s team was a joke.
They’d won two games this school year and not by much.
Luckily, the season was over, and our school didn’t have to endure any more humiliation.
Unluckily for me, that meant the players got to party it up without their coach nagging them.
Chris was a big guy with buzzed dishwater hair. He was bigger than Monroe by height and weight, and it was clear that he was trying to intimidate him.
My watch buzzed again at that moment. It was another text from Mother, wanting to know how much longer she’d have to wait for me to arrive.
That set off a new dose of fear and anxiety that threatened to chisel away at my control.
I wanted nothing more than to unleash everything I was feeling on these pampered mouth breathers to get them to move, but appearances and reputation were important.
So I did what I was supposed to do. I just stood there and watched.
If Monroe was intimidated by Chris, it didn’t show.
Instead, he looked unbothered as he began rolling up the sleeves of his black button-up shirt.
One tattoo after another was revealed on his forearms until he stopped rolling his sleeves a few inches down from his elbows.
“I can get more and bring it to the party tonight.”
I tried not to let my eyes linger too long as I took in the inky drawings that covered his pale skin. He didn’t have full sleeves, but it looked like that was the direction he was going.
“You think we want trailer trash coming to one of our parties?” Chris sneered.
The words came out of my mouth before I even thought to stop them. “Do you want your weed or not, Chris?”
My uncharacteristic outburst caused everyone to glance in my direction.
What the heck are you doing, Lottie?
Hell if I knew.
Chris narrowed his brown eyes at me. “What crawled up your ass today, Lottie?”
Fuck it.
What did it matter at this point? Mother was going to be pissed now regardless.
So fuck it.
“Did you not hear the part where I said I had somewhere to be?” I snapped.
I looked to Tristen, who’d been silently watching everything, appearing entertained as hell.
“You heard him. He’s sold out. Are you going to move your teammates along or are you going to let things get out of hand and draw unwanted attention? ”
Tristen was also the team’s captain. I hoped that pointing out the implications would get him to help.
“It’s not like anything would happen to us,” Chris said as he smirked at Monroe. “Can’t say the same for the charity case here.”
Still unbothered, Monroe shoved his hands into the pockets of his black uniform slacks. “If that happens, I guess I won’t be selling to you anymore.”
I could have laughed at the realization that showed on Chris’s face if I hadn’t been so overwhelmed.
“All right, guys, you heard him,” Tristen said in his captain voice. “Walker will come party with us tonight. So hit him up then.”
There was some grumbling and others told Monroe to bring some girls.
“Girls from that side of the bridge give better head,” one guy snickered as they began to walk away.
“Easier lays,” another added.
“I’d be careful. You know they just want to baby-trap you for your money,” another warned.
I watched Monroe as he listened to them. The vein along his forearm bulged as if he were flexing…or as if his hand were fisted in his pocket.
Tristen put an arm over Chris’s shoulders, who hadn’t moved and was just watching his teammates leave. “Come on, man,” Tristen said and the two of them walked off.
Before climbing into my car, I spared one last glance at Monroe. I found him already staring at me. He was giving me a strange look that felt a little too piercing for my liking. Not having the time to care, I got in my G-Wagon and drove off.