Page 315 of As the Rain Falls
“I thought we were cool.” Maria rushes to his side, trying to get him to stand up. She looks a fucking mess, scared shitless because her boyfriend isn’t having the upper hand this time around. “Cass and I, I mean. She seems fine with what happened.”
Cass?
The nickname rubs me the wrong way.
Nobody calls her that but me.
My jaw ticks, lips parting to tell him to go to hell, but Mateo sighs loudly, stepping between us before I can say something.
“Shut the fuck up, Caleb!” he groans. “Just give him the password, okay?”
Maria hauls her boyfriend up, gripping his shoulder. She eyes me, unsure and impressed.
“We weren’t going to leak the pictures,” she tells me, and I’ve never hated a girl like I’m hating her right now. “I’m not that fucking stupid!”
“I don’t need you to defend me!” Caleb spits, violently throwing her off him. She stumbles back, her face falling. I take a step forward, ready to hit him for the way he’s treating her, but he turns to me and starts giving me the passwords. “I hope she’s fucking worth it to you!”
Always.
“What the fucking hell, hitting me for a girl half of the town has already slept with, anyway.”
I lunge forward, but Maria steps between us, forcing her boyfriend to walk away.
“Stop!” she yells desperately, looking back to make sure I’m not about to hit her. “We’re leaving now!”
I pull back, watching them rush back to his car, rage burning through me. It’s then that I realize just how much I need him dead. Him, then Nathaniel, in that exact, precise order.
Mateo roars behind me, “What the fuck was that, Beckett? You can’t just go around hitting people. First Nathaniel, now Caleb. You have to stop, man!”
I spin around, still breathing hard. “Stop? What the fuck is up with you? You’re Cassandra’sfriend. Nothis.”
He pales, uneasy. “I know that!”
“No, you don’t!” I press. “What about Angelina? You’re close. Do you even know what that fucking asshole did to her? And yet you’re defending the guy who treated her like some kind of—”
“You don’t get it. He’sdangerous, okay? People like Caleb can get you in a lot of trouble,” Mateo cuts me off, hands shaking. “Fuck, he can getmein a lot of trouble, too!”
“That didn’t stop you from getting drunk with him last night!” I point out, facing him off.
“I was just…” Mateo winces, regretting making his features look weaker, almost vulnerable. “I made a mistake. I wasn’t trying to betray anyone’s trust. When a guy like Santiago Garcia tells you to drink something, you don’t question it, okay? Youjustdrink.”
“Well, you certainly just betrayed mine!” I narrow my eyes, considering his reaction for a second. My words are cold, unflinching. “What’s he holding over your head now? What happenedafteryou got hammered?”
“Nothing!” Mateo answers, sounding just a little too nervous. “Nothing happened, I swear. I think I just asked Caleb to drop me home after his shift, and he did.”
“Are you sure of it?” I press, sensing he’s just saying things to get me to back off, but his story is inconsistent. “Because you don’t seem sure at all. At least, not to me.”
Caleb glances back then, and I swear to God, something flickers in his expression at watching Mateo and me fight. It’s malicious, the way his lips twitch like he’s holding back a smirk. As if this, the tension and us arguing, is exactly what he wanted.
I don’t have to ask them what the fuck is going on.
Whatever it is, it can’t be good.
And the thing is, I don’t have time for it. My priority now is my girlfriend.Everybody else can go to fucking hell.They don’t matter more than she does, not to me.
“I’m sure of it,” Mateo insists, too sick to realize that I’m seeing through his bullshit. “Everything is cool, man. Let’s just go back to the parade, okay?”
“Sure.”
