Page 54 of Defiant
He obviously wasn’t from around here. If he was, he’d know not to mess with me or anything that was mine. I was a Scott, and unlike him, I knew how to play the game.
And Jaz? She was mine.
“Well, sure, we just met last week, but that doesn’t change the fact that we should’ve been in each other’s lives all along,” Dante spoke, only having eyes for Jaz. My stomach curdled at that. I hated watching him stare at her so possessively. “You and I, Jaz, are meant to be together. It’s just going to take some time for you to realize it.”
Jaz opened her mouth, probably to tell him off, but I spoke first: “I think Jaz can make her own decisions when it comes to who she wants to be with, and it looks like she’s already made up her mind about you.”
He turned his icy blue stare to me, a frown tugging at his lips—though he kept trying to smile. It wasn’t a good look. “I don’t think I like you very much, Vaughn.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I whispered, wishing I could take my spork and stab him in the eye with it. I’d get expelled, maybe arrested, and Markus would never trust me to complete any jobs for the family, even the ones in the basement.
No. I had to be smarter about this.
Jaz coughed, causing both of us to look at her. “I think,” she stated loudly, “both of you need to calm down. I don’t want to see any pissing matches between you two, and I don’t want to hear of any fights.” Those brown eyes bore into me for a few moments before moving to Dante. “Is that understood? No more attacking anyone else.”
Anyone else? Had Dante attacked someone before now? I wondered. Maybe I didn’t have the whole story.
“What’s my reward for being good?” Dante asked, and again, it was like I had ceased to exist.
Before she could respond, I spoke assertively, “Jaz, I need to talk to you. Alone.” I made it a point to emphasize the word alone and glare at Dante as I said it. He was an unknown, and he did not seem like the predictable sort, which made him dangerous. Plus, with his apparent fascination with Jaz…I couldn’t be too careful.
“I’m not getting up,” Dante spoke with a shrug.
Jaz stood. “That’s okay, you can stay here.” She moved around her seat, and I got up, following her to the edge of the cafeteria. The strange part was, we were mostly ignored as we went. Even the teachers who were in charge of keeping watch over the lunch periods were gossiping among themselves, and I wondered if they were talking about Dante.
Dante. Seriously, what the fuck was up with him?
Once we reached the outer edge of the cafeteria, where the tables abruptly stopped and gave way to a hallway full of lockers, I watched as Jaz’s eyes darted back, toward Dante. For someone who she had allegedly just met last week, she seemed to be eyeing him up an awful lot.
She didn’t like him, did she?
“I can’t believe he’s here,” Jaz muttered. “I thought…fuck, I don’t know what I thought.” She ran a hand through her hair, causing its long, black lengths to tumble over her shoulder.
“How do you know him?” If I understood that, maybe I could understand why he seemed to be so obsessed with her.
Granted, I was kind of obsessed too, but that was beside the point.
“Remember last week when I wasn’t here?” Jaz asked, crossing her arms over her chest. I tried not to stare, because I didn’t want to ogle her like Dante had been, but it was difficult. She was…she was frankly the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, everything about her drawing me in like no one else ever had.
I would do anything to keep Dante away from her. Anything.
After I gave her a nod, she whispered, “Well, Dante showed up before school that day, caught me just outside the building. He said he’d go after my mom if I didn’t go with him. He knows where I live—he’s been watching me.”
The more she spoke, the angrier I became. Who the fuck did this guy think he was?
“I went with him,” she added. “I think he was supposed to bring me somewhere, but something happened, and he couldn’t, so instead I spent the day with him, and I thought that was that. I didn’t think he’d show up here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” This was all news to me, and I hated the fact that I’d been in the dark until now.
He kidnapped her? Threatened her mother? And then Jaz spent the entire fucking day with him? What in the hell…how was I supposed to take this?
It appeared as if she took offense to that. “I don’t have to tell you everything,” she told me. “You’re not my boyfriend. You’re not…I don’t even know what you are to me.”
That much was true, I supposed. I wasn’t her significant other. She wasn’t officially mine, even if I viewed her that way. Jaz did not belong to me, but I wanted her to.
“Anything,” I muttered, glancing back at our table, finding that Dante was reaching over and pulling a chicken nugget off my tray. The bastard. I planned on throwing them all away; they weren’t for his consumption. “I’ll be anything you want me to be, Jaz.”
My words hit her like a train, and she swayed on her feet a bit. “I…be careful, saying those things. I might just decide to take you up on it.”
