Chapter 7
Iz’s Lexus pulls into the lot at seven-fifteen, and Cat is in the passenger seat.
The reaction is instant. My jaw locks. My hand tightens on the coffee cup hard enough to dent the cardboard. X glances at me sideways but doesn’t say anything, which is how I know it’s obvious.
They get out. She’s laughing at something he said—head tipped back, that sound I’ve heard exactly once before, at Xander’s party. She waves to Iz, slings her bag over her shoulder, and walks toward the school without looking in my direction.
I grab Iz by the front of his blazer the second he’s in reach and shove him against my car. “What the fuck, man. She’s off-limits.”
Iz doesn’t even blink. He removes my hands like he’s brushing lint off a jacket. “Fuck off with that. Pennington slashed her tires yesterday. The tow truck driver was a creep. Her parents weren’t answering. I wasn’t going to leave her stranded in an empty parking lot. I didn’t touch her. Relax.”
“Pennington slashed her tires?”
“Yeah. She ended it with him, and he lost his shit. Got rough with her and Penny. Slapped her across the face in the dining hall.”
X straightens behind me. Danny and Ryan have drifted over.
“What made her end it?” I ask. “I was stuck with my mom all night.”
Danny holds out his phone. Doesn’t say anything. Just holds it out.
I hit play.
Shaky video. The dining hall. Cat standing, Jon in her face. She says something—calm, steady, the way she says everything—and then Jon’s hand connects with her cheek. Open palm. The sound is tinny through the phone speaker but I hear it fine. My vision narrows. My hands go numb.
But the part that gets me—the part I can’t stop replaying in my head—is after. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t touch her face. Just looks at him. Like she’s been hit before. Like this barely registers.
I hand the phone back. My jaw is so tight my teeth ache.
Iz crosses his arms. “He didn’t like the picture of you two from the party. Thinks she cheated.”
The picture. The garden shot I paid the photographer to take and posted anonymously because I thought it would be funny. Because I wanted to watch it blow up in Pennington’s face. Because I didn’t think about what would happen to her.
I shrug. Try to keep my voice flat. “I’m not upset about it. But I didn’t post it so she’d get hurt.”
“Well, she did,” Iz says. “She got slapped. Slammed into lockers. Tires slashed. She thinks it was you.”
“Does she know?”
“Anonymous account. But she’s not stupid, Kaid. She’s connecting it.”
Nobody says anything for a second. Danny scuffs his shoe on the asphalt. Ryan stares at the sky.
“I know you’ve got this thing with her,” Iz says. “This whole…hate her, want to fuck her, can’t leave her alone thing—”
“I don’t want to fuck her.”
Danny snorts. “Bro. We all see how you look at her.”
“Whatever. She walks around like she’s bulletproof. Like nobody can touch her.”
Iz goes quiet. Looks at the ground. Then back at me. “Have you seen her wrists, Kaid?”
I don’t answer. The answer is yes. I felt the scars at the book launch and I haven’t stopped thinking about them. But I don’t know how to say that without saying more than I’m ready to.
“Stay away from her,” Iz says. “Pick on another girl. This one’s carrying shit you don’t want to make worse.”
Ryan bumps my shoulder. “He’s right. She’s the only girl who’s ever turned you down and you can’t handle it. One more year. Let her go.”
I push off the car. “You don’t get it.”
I head toward the school before any of them can ask what exactly I mean by that, because I don’t know the answer and the not-knowing is making me feel like I’m losing my grip on something I can’t name.
I spot her near the library. Walking alone. Books against her chest. The bruise on her cheek has deepened overnight into a mottled purple that’s visible from twenty feet.
I don’t think. I grab her arm and pull her through the library’s side entrance, weaving through the stacks to the back corner.
“What the fuck, Kaiden!” She rips her arm free. “Get your hands off me.”
“Just stop. One second. Christ.”
She crosses her arms and glares at me. I lean against the table and try to figure out why I dragged her back here, because I didn’t actually have a plan. I just saw the bruise on her face and my body moved before my brain caught up.
“Have a nice ride this morning?”
Her eyes roll so hard I’m surprised she doesn’t strain something. “That’s why you pulled me in here? Iz gave me a ride because my tires got slashed. Remember that? The tires that got slashed because someone posted a photo that made my boyfriend think I was cheating?”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh, fuck you.” She throws her hands up. “Where did you even get that picture, Kaiden? It was from the garden at my mother’s private party. Anonymous account—you think I can’t figure that out?”
I should deny it. That’s the smart play. Instead, I shrug. “I have my ways.”
Wrong answer. Her face goes from angry to something harder. Colder.
“Your ‘ways’ got me slapped in front of the whole school. Your ‘ways’ got my tires slashed. Your ‘ways’ got Jon throwing me into lockers while everyone watched.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and she kills it instantly—seals it shut like welding a breach.
“Stop it. Stop playing games with my life.”
I move toward her. Two steps. Close the gap. My hand finds her chin—not gentle, not rough, just firm—and I tilt her face up to mine. “I never wanted him to hurt you.”
She stares up at me. Searching. “But you can do it? You can grab me whenever you want, drag me into rooms, put your hands on me—that’s fine?”
I don’t have a good answer for that. So I give her the honest one.
“When I do it,” I say, walking her backward until her shoulders hit the wall, “you like it.”
“I don’t—”
My hand moves from her chin to her throat. Not squeezing. Just there. The weight of my palm against the warm skin, my fingers curling around the side of her neck. Her mouth opens. Her eyes go black—pupils swallowing the green until there’s barely a ring of color left.
I lean down and bite her earlobe. Slow. Deliberate. She gasps, then moans—a small, involuntary sound that she tries to swallow and can’t—and my entire body responds so hard it physically hurts.
“You were saying?” I murmur.
She shoves me. Both hands, full force, and I let her because the alternative is pinning her there and finding out what other sounds she makes, and we’re in a school library and I still have enough self-control for that. Barely.
Cat straightens herself. Fixes her hair. Her hand goes to her throat, touches the spot where my hand was, lingers there. She catches herself doing it and drops her hand like it burned her.
“Fuck you, Kaiden.”
“Play your cards right.”
Her cheeks are red. Her breathing is uneven. She looks at me like she wants to hit me and kiss me in equal measure, and the fact that I can’t tell which one she’ll choose is the most alive I’ve felt in months.
“Why are you even here?” she asks. “What do you want from me?”
I lean on the table. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I posted the picture to mess with Pennington. I’ll own that. But I didn’t think he’d—”
“You didn’t think.”
“No. I didn’t.”
She watches me for a long time. Long enough that the silence starts to feel like something physical. “Why should I believe you?”
“You probably shouldn’t. But ask yourself this—do you actually think I want Pennington putting his hands on you?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Then, quiet: “No.”
“If he comes near you again, tell me.”
“I don’t need you to protect me, Kaiden. I’ve been handling things on my own for a long time.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” I don’t mean it the way it sounds. Or maybe I do. The bruise. The scars. The way she flinches from casual touch but leans into something rougher—there’s a story in that contradiction and it’s not a happy one.
She catches the implication. Her eyes harden. “Don’t pretend you know anything about me.”
“I know enough.”
“You don’t know shit.” She picks up her bag from where it fell. Slings it over her shoulder. Looks at me one more time with an expression that’s part contempt, part something else I can’t read. “I’m not a weak girl, Kaiden. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I am.”
She walks out. I stand there and watch her leave and do absolutely nothing to stop her, which is a new experience for me.
After school. Hallway by the locker rooms.
Jon Pennington is walking toward us with his face in his phone. He doesn’t see us until I have him by the collar and his back is against the lockers.
The metal buckles. The sound fills the hallway. X, Iz, Danny, and Ryan spread out behind me. Five on one. Not fair. Not supposed to be.
“Pennington.”
“Monaghan.” He tries to sneer. It doesn’t land. His hands are shaking.
“Listen carefully because I’m only saying this once. You don’t touch Catherine again. Don’t talk to her. Don’t look at her. Don’t go near Penny MacHale. Every girl in this school is off-limits to you.”
“She’s too good for you,” Jon says. His voice is thin but he says it anyway, and I almost respect him for that. Almost. “You’ll never have her.”
I slam his head against the locker. His teeth click together. “Yeah. She’s too good for me. She’s too good for both of us. Difference is, I know it.”
I let go. He slides an inch. X spins him around and pins his arms. I put my fist through his face.
His nose breaks under my knuckles. I feel the cartilage crack. Blood hits my hand, hot and sudden. X drops him. Jon crumples against the lockers and slides to the floor, cupping his face, blood running through his fingers.
“That’s for Penny.”
We walk away. Nobody talks. We get in our cars and leave.
The Skyline’s engine settles into its idle as I pull into the garage. I sit there for a minute with the heat ticking off the turbo and my hands still smelling like Jon Pennington’s blood.