Page 70 of Riot Rules
He pulls a face, pretending to cry. I think it’s the most endearing thing I’ve ever seen. “Fuck. I wanna sneak in there and hold you. I wish I fucking could.” He can’t though. He has to go and make sure that the cleaners have shown up at the house, and that Wren isn’t choking on his own puke in his sleep. I know all of this, but it doesn’t stop me from groaning, too. I kiss him one last time and get out of the car.
“I mean it. Text me!”
I wave as I jog up the academy steps, my breath blooming all around me on the cold morning air. The Maybach’s tires kick up a hail of gravel as Dash peels away, burning down the long driveway. I’m tired, and sore, and still dizzy on Dash as I open the door to the academy, which is why I don’t see him until it’s too late.
“Bastard could have given me a ride.”
Pax is leaning up against the wall with a half-smoked cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He winks at me, and I’m hit by the strongest sense of déjà vu: with his knee bent and the sole of his left shoe resting up against the wall, and his head kicked back with that trademark Pax Davis smirk on his face, he looks exactly the same as he did in a Calvin Klein I saw last month.
He takes a long drag from the cigarette and holds the smoke in his lungs before blowing it down his nose. “That lookedveryfriendly.” He says it casually, but his tone feels dangerous. “Wish my uber drivers made out with me like that when they droppedmeoff.”
“Pax—”
He shoves away from the wall. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna say anything. It is literally none of my fucking business.” He jogs down the steps and walks away from the academy. Staring at his back, I search for something to say to him, but I come up totally blank. What am I supposed to say? There’s no way I’ll convince him that he didn’t just witness Dashkissingme.
So, I let him go.
He keeps on walking, the smoke from his cigarette growing fainter and fainter as he disappears down the driveway toward Riot House.
28
DASH
Mistakenly,I think it’s the wolves at first.
I’m half asleep, and the high-pitched wail sounds like Rasputin’s haunting, eerie bay. But then I register the Doppler shift, and the sense of approaching, imminent doom, and I’m launching myself out of bed so fast that I crack my head against—ahhfuck!—against thecoffee tablein my room; I didn’t even make it to the bed before I passed out. I’ve been crashed out on the damn floor.
Doesn’t matter.
The ringing in my head doesn’t matter.
There arecopsburning up the road.
Out on the landing, Pax tears down the stairs, grim and ready for a fight. He sees me and stops. “Where is it?” he demands.
He’s talking about the drug stash Wren bought for the party. Finding and disposing of it is our main priority right now, and we only have seconds to get the job done. If they knock on the door before we find it, we’re fucked.
“Idon’t know!” I race down the stairs in my boxers, frantically ripping the cushions of the couch, trying to locate the little wooden box that Wren stashed forty thousand dollars’ worth of narcotics inside last night. Pax starts on the drawers in the console beneath the TV. “Could it be in his room?”
“Maybe? Shit!”
Pax stills. The sirens are getting closer. “Could we have done it all last night?” he asks.
“NO! Everyone’d be fucking dead if they polished off that much coke.”
“Good point.” He goes back to rifling through the drawers.
What time is it? It’s broad fucking daylight. Maybe nine? My head’s pounding from lack of sleep. The cleaners have come and gone, and the place is spotless aside from the mess we’re making right now. I’m sure they found and disposed of any baggies Wren hid that weren’t found by our classmates. We’re probably in the clear. Or we will be, once we find that wooden fucking box!
Pax runs to the window, bracing against the sill. “Fuck. They’re here. They’ve got the lights going, too. We aresogoing to ja—” A deep frown rumples his brow. “Wait. They didn’t stop. They kept going up the mountain.”
“Shit.” This doesnotbode well. We’re in the clear for now, but how long will that last? If Harcourt discovered drugs on one of the kids up in the academy, then it’ll only be a matter of time before they spill the tea and tell the cops where they got it from. Pax and I trade hard glances. “We need to get Wren up.Now.”
* * *
“I swear to god, if you slap me one more time, I’m gonna rip your fucking arm out of its socket. Let me drink the coffee. Let me fuckingthink.” Wren is as grey as a corpse. He’s already thrown up once, and I’m sure he’s got another batch brewing. It took three minutes and a pot of ice water to rouse him, and he’s been seething mad ever since. He shoots murderous glares at both Pax and me, mentally flaying the skin from our bones. I know this is what he’s doing because he fucking said as much when I slapped the cup of coffee in his hand and ordered him to drink it.
“Maybe you hallucinated the cop cars,” he grumbles. “I’ve seen some fucked up shit over the past twelve hours.”
