Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
I crane my neck, trying to see if he goes in, but I can’t tell. I can’t see the door from here.
But he disappears from my sight, and he doesn’t come back. There was no one else with him.
Hurrying to my closet, I yank a T-shirt off the hanger, pull it on, and then push down my lounge pants and pull on some jeans. Slipping into a hoodie, I don’t bother to deal with my hair before I put on some socks and shoes and bolt out of my bedroom.
There’s not one good fucking reason for Constin to be there alone with her.
I race out of the house and slam the door, damn near leaping down the steps.
He’s not standing at her door.
And he’s not on the street.
He’s inside.
I launch up her porch stairs, twist the door handle, finding it unlocked. I swallow the bitching I’m going to do at her later and step inside.
A dish clangs in the kitchen, and I charge through the living room, gaping at them both standing next to the sink.
What the fuck?
Dylan’s eyes meet mine, and Constin turns, following her gaze.
She stands there in a tank top and blue-and-white-checkered boxer shorts. Boxer shorts? Are those hers?
My heavy breathing is the only sound. “What are you doing?” I finally ask.
I don’t know if I’m talking to her or him, but I’m looking at her. She’s barely dressed.
Her expression is soft, a gentle smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “He’s giving me a ride to school.”
Constin grins.
I take a step. “Get out.”
This time I’m looking at him. I don’t know him as well as Farrow knows him, but I know enough, and he treats everyone like shit. He’s not taking her anywhere alone.
“Go,” I bark.
Dylan moves around him, addressing me. “Are you kidding me?”
But this isn’t her decision.
“Out!” I growl at Constin.
He swaggers past me, throwing me a look, and I know I probably can’t make him leave, but he’s not going to be left alone with her like he planned now.
He walks out the front door, and Dylan throws out her arms. “Why do men suddenly think women didn’t survive at all before their arrival into their lives?”
I close the distance between us. “He just walked into your house?”
“He could’ve come in any time while we were both asleep last night!”
“And that’s probably true!” I shout. “It doesn’t seem like you know how to lock a door!”
He could get past a lock if he really wanted to, but that’s not the point.
“Go get dressed!” I yell down at her.
She scowls back up at me. “I need a shower!”
She marches past me and stomps up the stairs, and I glare at her back as she goes.
She disappears into her bedroom, and I cross my arms over my chest, standing in the foyer below. When she comes out again, she’s wrapped in a towel, and I watch her cross the hallway and throw me a glower as she kicks open the door to the bathroom.
I stand guard the entire time.
She pouts all the way to school. She glares at me in Forensics. Ignores me in the hallway. Snarls on her way to P.E.
Every time I look at her, she looks away, and I struggle not to laugh, because it reminds me of when we were kids. The little spats we’d get into that always bummed me out because I hated her being mad at me. Now I realize if she’s mad, she cares. I can still piss her off. Good to know.
“You want to go to the homecoming dance?” someone asks during lunch.
I turn back to the lunch table, seeing Arlet in Farrow’s abandoned seat, except she sits on the table with her shoes propped up in his chair.
“You didn’t ask anyone else.” She peels an orange, her red hair swept over to one side of her head. “I’d like to go with you.”
I glance over at Dylan, sitting at a long rectangular table to my left. She’s alone, acting like she’s preoccupied with her phone and that I can’t see her periodically looking up to watch me.
“You don’t need to babysit your cousin that night,” Arlet tells me.
A couple sits at the end of Dylan’s table, the girl dressed in a makeshift Pirates cheerleading uniform as she bounces on top of her boyfriend.
I narrow my eyes, hearing him chant, “pirate girl, aw yeah, pirate girl” as the young woman laughs.
“She’ll be back in the Falls by then anyway,” Arlet goes on. “To her own homecoming.”
Another guy comes up, pawing the cheerleader’s breasts while she moans, as if Pirate Girls love to be sexually harassed.
I start to stand, forgetting Arlet, but then a guy is behind Dylan, emptying a bottle of water into her lap. She flies up from her seat and shoves him in the chest, and I throw my chair back, running over.