Page 48 of Revenge At Raleigh High
This guy doesn’t look like the kind of person Alex would hang around with outside of school, either. The hair, the clothes. The guy’s stiff, rigid posture makes him look like he’s got a stick shoved three feet up his ass.
He rolls his eyes, pretending to remember his manners. “Apologies. I don’t know where my head’s at today. I’m Zander. Zander Hawkins. Alex and I go way back. It was a real nice surprise to find out he was a student here when I registered. Always nice to see at least one familiar face when you find yourself in strange new surroundings.”
There’sdefinitelysomething off about this guy. It’s not the clothes, or his crew cut, or the stiff, off-kilter way he speaks. It’s all of it, combined together, that just feels wrong. Like an act. With so many months spent on the peripheries of the school, absolutely no one daring or stupid enough to talk to me, I spent a lot of time watching people. Wasn’t like I had anything better to do. After a while, I got really good at understanding how people worked, what made them tick. How their body language was often a precursor to their actions, giving away what they were going to do next.
This Zander Hawkins guy doesn’t seem tohaveany body language. He’s reined in so tight, I get the feeling he’s counting out each time he blinks inside a minute to make sure it’s not out of the ordinary. Whatever this is, this bizarre charade he’s acting out, he’s faking it.
“You went to Bellingham, then?” I squint at him, trying to place him there. The Roughnecks have played against the Braves more times than I can count. As a member of the Sirens, I visited the Bellingham school campus whenever we had an away game, and I never knew what to make of the place. The building itself is way older than Raleigh—stone-built, solid, with creeping vines and ivy snaking up the walls. Stained-glass windows everywhere, throwing bolts of color up the walls of the high-ceilinged hallways. The place looks like something out of a gothic nightmare.
Half the students in attendance at Bellingham are from rich, well to-do families and have their noses permanently stuck up in the air. The other half…let’s just say they’re from a lower socio-economic tax bracket andtheirnoses are usually firmly glued to a coke mirror. Despite how he’s dressed right now, I’m guessing Zander hales from the later demographic.
“Actually, no,” Zander says. His eyes are burning into my skin in a really weird way. He’s studying me so intensely that his scrutiny is almost unbearable. “Alex and I know each other from a different…institution.”
I don’t understand. A different institu—oh.Oh!He knows Alex from juvenile detention! Zander grins mischievously when he sees the realization dawn on my face. “Yeah. Nice vacation spot,” he says airily. “Me and your boy had some good times. He isn’t beatin’ on you, is he?”
“I’msorry?”
Zander points to his face, gesturing to his jaw and neck. “Quite the bruise collection you’ve got going on there. Looks pretty gnarly. I never thought Moretti’d raise a fist to a girl, but I guess you never know.”
I cover my jaw self-consciously, arranging the collar of the thick, cable knit sweater I picked out of my closet this morning higher around my neck. “Jesus,no. Alex would never hurt me.”
Zander seems to think about this. He seems to think a lot before he opens his mouth. I get the feeling that a word doesn’t make it past Zander Hawkins’ lips without having been thoroughly vetted and designed for a specific purpose first. “Then there’s someone in Raleigh who probably ought to be walking around with an armed detail right now,” he observes. “Alex is pretty mellow most of the time. Until hereallyisn’t.”
“Alex knows I’m handling it,” I tell him. My voice drips with ice. I don’t know why, but I don’t think I like this guy.
A thick silence falls over the hallway. Takes a moment for me to notice it over the beating of my blood in my ears. Zander’s little disguise slips for a second, amusement burning off him like warmth from a flame as he looks at something over my shoulder, his eyes tracking something as it approaches. I’m unable to resist; I turn and look.
The crowded hallway splits apart, everyone making room for Jacob as he makes his way toward his locker. His head is held high, defiance and anger roiling in his eyes, daring anyone to mention the fact that he’s got a split lip, a black eye, a deep cut above his right cheekbone, and a broken fucking nose.
“Holy shit,” Zander mutters under his breath. “Someone must have taken a tire iron to that poor fucker’s face.”
“No.” I try not to smile, but my smug-levels are almost off the charts. “I’m pretty sure it was just their fists.”
“THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL STARING AT?” Jacob’s roar echoes down the hall, startling Abigail Whitley, who just so happens to be standing closest to him. “I got tackled in football practice. Big fucking deal. Let’s all just mind our own fucking business and get on with the day.”
No one questions him. No one asks how he took so much damage to his face with one bad tackle. No one dares to refute his story. The king has spoken.
Jake always makes a point of leaning against his locker each morning, leering at me and making lewd, disgusting comments about me to his dumbass football buddies, but not this morning. He doesn’t even glance in my direction as he rummages in his locker, head down, then snatches his backpack up from the ground and scurries off to class.
“Well, well. I’m pretty good at math, but I just tried to multiply five foot six against six foot three and the numbers just won’t seem to add up. Seeing is believing, though, right?”
When I spin back and face Zander, the sardonic look on his face says it all. The bruises on my neck, jaw and hands, coupled with the mess that was once Jacob Weaving’s perfect fucking face tells a tall tale. One that’s not so easy to wrap your head around. Zander’s figured it out in no time at all, though. “You reallydidhandle it, didn’t you?” he says, laughing.
“Yeah. I guess I did. And I’ll keep on handling it for as long as I need to. Alex doesn’t have to worry about me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to class.”
Zander Hawkins grins devilishly, stepping to one side so I can get past him. “Of course. Heaven forbid I make you late.”
* * *
I forget all about Zander Hawkins the moment I lay eyes on Alex in AP Physics. He very rarely smiles inside the walls of Raleigh, choosing to maintain his blank, indifferent exterior in front of the other students, but he treats me to the smallest hint of one as he weaves his way between the desks and slumps himself down into the chair beside me on the back row.
He smells like winter. Like fresh pine needles, and the cold, and the color green. As always, my insides do strange things when he locks eyes with me, and I feel myself come alive.
His dark, wavy hair is tumbled from the wind, and his cheeks are flushed, telling me that he just came in from the cold. When he takes his leather jacket off and slings it over the back of his chair, I can’t tear my eyes away from his bare arms, covered in ink, strong and corded with muscle. I flush when I remember what it feels like to grab hold of those shoulders of his and cling onto him while he fucks me.
He looks at me, well, catches me openly staring at him, actually, and his small smile widens just a little. His eyes dip to my neck, hidden beneath my sweater, but he doesn’t say a word about what happened yesterday. I could kiss him for avoiding the topic. I don’t want to talk about it. From here on out, I don’t want a thing Jacob Weaving does to ever mar the time I get to spend with Alex. His dark eyebrow forms a crooked arch. “What’s got you looking so red in the face?” he whispers. Like raw silk, his voice is that perfect combination of rough and smooth that makes my skin break out in goosebumps.
“My red face has absolutely nothing to do withyou.” My response is mild, seemingly uninterested, but Alex chuckles ominously under his breath. He doesn’t believe me for one goddamn second. “You seem like you’re in a good mood,” I tell him. “Your meeting went well?”
