Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
The line she’d carved on the treehouse wall flipped through my head like a tattered movie reel. Seeing those words a few weeks ago pissed me off because she had no right to miss me, not when she was the reason we had split up. I doubted she’d gone through the emotional shitstorm I had—the betrayal, the fucking heartache. I miss you seemed like a swift kick in the balls. It felt too insincere and selfish.
And it still did.
The dying embers of anger over the situation fanned back to life.
I stormed through the living room after her, tired of playing these stupid games. Tired of hurting and hating myself over her. “Too bad. You missing me and trying to be my friend isn’t good enough for me, Lola.”
She grabbed her backpack from the bottom step and shouldered it before stopping by the front door. “Please, Hendrix.” Her voice wavered, and the desperate look in her eyes damn near broke me. It was regret and hope, devastation all mixed into one. “Let it go.”
What the hell had I missed? “What are you not telling me?”
The horn blared from the drive again. “Nothing,” she whispered, then opened the front door and left.
Nothing? That was a damn lie.
Chapter 20
HENDRIX
Half past four on a weekday, and there were only a handful of cars in the parking lot of The Squealing Hog—every one of them with a Barrington High decal hanging from the rearview mirror. Wolf rounded the front of his truck, glancing at an electric-blue Mercedes convertible. “Cooter Scooter,” he laughed when he read over the license plate. “Rich people are weird.”
I shoved through the double-doored entrance. The old-timey, country-western music blaring through the speakers gave me an automatic headache. It was almost as obnoxious as the thick scent of smoked meat hanging in the air.
“Damn…” Wolf nudged my shoulder, jutting his chin toward the girl in the plaid shirt at the hostess stand. “I wanna ride on her cooter scooter.”
I gave her a once over, not the slightest bit interested. Lola had broken me. I snatched a handful of crayons and one of the coloring pages from the stand. “She has a freckle on her nose that looks like a flake of shit, man.”
He furrowed his brows. “You’ve got issues.”
Shit Flake strutted up with two menus, grinning as she showed us to our table. I glanced around the restaurant for Lola but didn’t see her blond pigtails anywhere. The girl dropped the menus on the table and walked off, and as soon as she did, a balled-up piece of straw paper hit the side of my face.
“Dude. That girl was giving you fuck me eyes.”
I glanced across the booth at Wolf. “I don’t give a crap.”
“She Who Shall Not Be Named has really screwed you in the head.”
“I’m just trying to be more selective. That’s all.” Selective as in only Lola.
I took one of the crayons and colored in the smiling pig’s face.
The way she had looked at me before she left this morning… left something unsettled in the pit of my stomach. What the hell was she hiding? Was she seeing someone else? Was that why she was so hellbent on friend-zoning me?
Maybe I was an idiot, just asking to get my pussy heart tossed into a blender and pureed into a little bitch smoothie again.
“Oh, shit…” Wolf slid his phone across the table. It skidded to a stop in front of my menu. “Look at that crap.”
I dropped the crayon, picked the device up, and skimmed the group chat between a bunch of Dayton football players.
@WolfBrooks, check out the message Olivia sent me.
A screenshot of another chat sat right below that message. I read over the exchange between a few of the Barrington football fucks.
* * *
Ethan: If he throws the first punch, it’s self-defense.
* * *
Harford: I’d pay money to have that asshole behind bars.
* * *
Jackson: All of them…
* * *
Ethan: Hunt has a temper. All it would take is one comment about his whore.
* * *
My jaw set. Heat bled over me, instigated more by his stupid comment about Lola than anything else. God, I hoped he came waltzing in here. I shoved Wolf’s phone back across the table.
“He’s after your ass. So, whatever happens, if he walks in here, you can’t go all black-out rage on him.”
And that would be a problem. I picked up the crayon again, aggressively coloring more of the picture.
Wolf lifted a bushy brow. “I’ll knock your ass out if I have to.”
“You probably will.”
“I think—” Wolf’s attention strayed behind me just before a plaid shirt came into view.
“Hey, I’m Chad. I’ll be your—”
I lifted my gaze to Gracie’s smiling, blond, trust-fund foster brother.
He went silent, and my jaw set. He and Lola worked together? Which meant she was around him all the time. Working with him. Riding in his shiny, dickdribble truck with him. We can’t do anything. Probably because of this blond turd right here.