4. Xander
Aweek.
Seven days of Penny MacHale pretending I don’t exist. Walking past me in the hallway like I’m furniture.
Changing direction when she sees me coming.
Taking routes to class that add five minutes to her commute just to avoid the corridor where my locker is.
She’s good at it—the avoidance. Clinical.
Like she mapped the geometry of Edgewood Prep and surgically removed every path that intersects with mine.
And in every space she’s vacated, Iz has appeared.
Iz walking her to class. Iz carrying her coffee.
Iz leaning against her locker with that easy grin, making her laugh—the real laugh, the one that starts in her belly and fills the hallway and used to be mine.
Iz’s hand on the small of her back as they walk together.
Iz whispering something in her ear during lunch that makes her shove his shoulder and call him an idiot.
He’s not doing anything wrong. That’s the part that makes it worse.
Iz isn’t crossing a line—he’s filling a vacancy.
The vacancy I created when I called her a whore in front of everyone she loves.
He’s being the person I was supposed to be, and he’s doing it effortlessly, because Issac Walsh has the emotional intelligence God forgot to give the rest of us and he’s using every ounce of it on my girl.
Not your girl. Not anymore. Not after the pool house. Not after the closet. Not after any of it.
But the animal in my chest doesn’t listen to reason.
The animal knows what it knows: Penny is mine.
Was mine since the friendship bracelets.
Will be mine until the threads dissolve to nothing.
And watching another boy make her laugh is doing something to my nervous system that no amount of pills or punches can override.
Danny’s house. The Rorke estate. Twelve thousand square feet of modern architecture on four acres, the kind of house that has a separate wing for the staff and a pool that’s heated year-round because the Rorkes don’t believe in seasons.
Danny’s parents are in New York for the weekend—Cliff at a research conference, Louise at Fashion Week—which means Danny’s house is tonight’s location for the particular brand of controlled chaos that Edgewood Prep calls a party.
I’m on the couch. Blunt in one hand. The other hand resting on the thigh of a girl whose name I’ve already forgotten—Mia or Mila or something, junior year, brunette, the kind of pretty that requires no effort from me to acquire because she’s been orbiting me all night with the single-minded determination of a girl who thinks proximity to Xander Anderson is a status upgrade.
She’s perched on the arm of the couch, her leg draped across my lap, her hand playing with the collar of my shirt.
I don’t want her. She’s furniture. A prop in the production I’m staging for an audience of one.
Because Penny is here.
Across the room. On the dance floor that Danny’s house doesn’t technically have but which materializes whenever enough rich teenagers and a Bluetooth speaker occupy the same space.
She’s in a black dress—short, fitted, the kind that makes every line of her body a conversation—with her Converse on, because Penny MacHale will die before she wears heels.
Her blonde hair is down, the teal streaks catching the light from Danny’s ridiculous smart-home system that somebody has set to “party mode,” which means the entire living room is pulsing with color like the inside of a nightclub.
She’s dancing with Iz.
Not close. Not dirty. Just… together. His hands on her waist, casual, the comfortable grip of a boy who has been given permission to touch.
Her arms around his neck. They’re laughing about something—Iz says something into her ear, his mouth close enough that his lips brush the shell of it, and she throws her head back and laughs and the sound hits me across the room like a physical blow.
Then Iz leans down again. Closer this time.
His mouth at her neck. Not kissing—maybe kissing.
From here I can’t tell the difference between whispering and kissing and the ambiguity is a blade turning slowly in my chest. His hand slides from her waist to the curve of her hip.
She doesn’t pull away. She leans into it.
Tips her head to give him access to more of her neck.
That should be me. Those should be my hands. My mouth. My name she’s laughing at. That was supposed to be me and I destroyed it and now I’m sitting on this couch with a girl I don’t want watching the girl I do want find comfort in someone who actually deserves her.
Mia-or-Mila shifts in my lap. Her hand moves from my collar to my chest, fingers tracing patterns. “You’re staring at her, you know.”
“No I’m not.”
“You literally haven’t blinked in two minutes.” She follows my eyeline. Finds Penny. Looks back at me with an expression that’s half amused and half offended. “Should I just go, or…?”
Before I can answer, Danny drops onto the couch beside me. He nods at the girl on my lap in a way that clearly communicates “leave” without saying it, and she reads the room—stands, gives me a look that says “your loss,” and dissolves into the party.
Danny turns to me. His face is set. The expression Danny Rorke wears when he’s done being the quiet one and has decided to use words.
“We need to talk.”
“We really don’t.”
“Yeah, we do.” He leans in. Low. Under the music. “What’s Reece giving you.”
Not a question. A statement wearing a question mark’s clothes.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I live in this house, X. I see Reece every time Daisy brings him around. I see the way he looks at you. I see the bags he passes under the table. I’m not fucking stupid.”
“This has nothing to do with you, Danny.”
“It has everything to do with me. That’s my sister’s boyfriend.
This is my house. And you’re my boy—which means whatever shit you’re into, it’s my shit too.
” He grabs my arm. Turns my hand over. Looks at the knuckles—still scabbed, still healing, the permanent evidence of a boy who spends his weekends in a cage.
“You think I don’t know about the fights? You think any of us are that dumb?”
I pull my hand back. “Drop it, Danny.”
“Are you using.”
Silence. The music thumps around us. Someone screams from the pool area. The party lives its life while Danny Rorke sits three inches from me and asks the question nobody else has had the balls to ask directly.
“I’m handling it.”
“That’s a yes.” He shakes his head. Looks at the ceiling. “Jesus Christ, X. How deep are you?”
“Not now, Danny. Please.”
The “please” stops him. Danny reads people better than anyone in the group—not through analysis like Ryan, not through emotional radar like Iz.
Through silence. Through the spaces between words.
He hears the “please” and he hears what’s underneath it: I’m drowning and I know I’m drowning and I can’t talk about it yet without going under.
“This isn’t over,” he says. Standing. “We’re talking about this. Soon. All of us.”
He walks away. I grab my blunt from the ashtray. Take a long drag. Let the smoke fill my lungs and hold it there until the edges of the conversation blur.
When I look back at the dance floor, Iz has his arm around Penny’s shoulders, pulling her close, saying something that makes her look up at him with an expression I recognize. It’s the expression she used to give me. Warm. Safe. Trusting.
I take another drag. The smoke doesn’t help.
I watch as Penny breaks away from Iz—bathroom, probably, or a drink refill. She’s alone for thirty seconds. But that’s all it takes.
Reece materializes beside her the way predators do—not approaching, just appearing, as if he’d been standing in her trajectory the whole time and she walked into him.
He’s smooth about it. A touch on her elbow.
A lean toward her ear. His smile—the one that doesn’t reach his eyes—aimed at her like a weapon disguised as charm.
His hand comes up. Tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Penny doesn’t flinch—she smiles at him. The easy, familiar smile of someone who has an arrangement with this person, a transactional relationship that runs on chemistry and currency.
Then he kisses her cheek. Slow. Deliberate. His lips lingering on her skin for a beat longer than friendly. His hand finds her hip—squeezes once, possessive, proprietary. She leans into him—just slightly, just enough—and his other hand comes up between them.
The pass. I almost miss it. His hand to hers.
A small fold of something—paper, plastic, doesn’t matter.
Her fingers close around it. She slips her hand to her mouth, fast, the practiced motion of someone who has done this enough times that the choreography is muscle memory.
A sip of her drink to wash it down. Eyes closed.
Head tilted back. And then the smile—the slow, chemical bloom of a girl who just took the edge off everything that hurts.
I’ve known. I’ve known since Reece said “your girl’s got debts.
” I’ve known the way you know a thing you refuse to look at directly—in your peripheral vision, in the way certain facts arrange themselves when you stop actively avoiding the pattern.
Penny’s weight loss. Her pupils. The tremor in her hands that she blames on coffee.
The chemistry between her and Reece isn’t sexual—it’s transactional. Buyer and seller. Addict and dealer.
But knowing is abstract. Seeing is a knife.
Reece walks away. Finds Daisy on the couch. Puts his arm around her like he didn’t just hand Penny MacHale a pill at a house party. He catches my eye across the room. Smiles. Waves. The wave of a man who wants me to know exactly what he’s doing and exactly how little I can do about it.
Red.