Page 20 of Forged in Rain

Washing up, I fix my hair and emerge with a stone-cold face, sitting on the couch and brooding as everyone moves around me.

“Coffee, LB?” Jig asks, and I shake my head.

He searches my expression before sitting beside me and pulling me into his arms. Sniffling, I sit stiff as a board until I finally relax and bury my face in his chest.

He strokes my hair while I fight back the tears, the gentle touch soothing until Cyn says gruffly behind us, “Let’s roll.”

I smile pathetically at Jig, pulling away stiffly before following him out the door and getting in the back seat. When I see Cyn slide in beside me, I plaster myself against the door, and all the way to school, I sit in misery, the tension between us filling the car in vicious waves.

∞∞∞

Once we’re parked, I blow from the car and stalk away, gratified when everyone parts as I pass because I’m in no mood for bullshit.

First period is a blur, and although Jig tries to cheer me up while he escorts me between classes during second and third, I’m still brooding during fourth period.

Jig eyes me piteously and proceeds to make jokes at everyone’s expense, but I’m too pissed off to pay him much mind. Why I continue to let Cyn get to me is anyone’s guess, but I need to figure out how to shut the shit down. Otherwise, it may be World War III up in here soon.

After class, Jig pulls me into the cafeteria with his arm around my neck, groaning over some chick’s juicy ass, and I can’t help my smile because he’s a dick.

Cyn hasn’t arrived, and I’m eating my fries halfheartedly when Bastion, sitting next to me, grunts and says, “He’s jealous.”

“Are you actually speaking to me?” I snark, turning to him with wide eyes.

He gives me a dirty stare. “Cyn’s jealous, and your bad attitude isn’t helping.”

“Really? Well, maybe I’m jealous,” I scoff, looking away so he can’t see my pained expression.

Raising a brow, he says, “Then maybe fucking show it. He doesn’t know what’s going on with you, and it’s mixing him all up.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I told him I wanted a relationship.”

He shrugs. “You also lied about Saul.”

Looking away, I say uncomfortably, “Bastion, my cousin looked me in the eye and told me that her stepfather raped her. What would you have done?”

Into the silence, goosebumps pebble my arms, and I suppress a shiver when he rasps, “Kill the fucker.”

“Right, well,” I say, shifting uneasily. Bastion can be seriously intense sometimes. “There you go.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that he sees Saul touching you every time he looks at you.”

“I can’t change that,” I say, hunching over miserably.

“Maybe,” he mutters, turning back to his food.

Mulling over his words, I wonder if there’s truth to them, but if so, it doesn’t change anything because I can’t take back what I did, and he can’t see past it.

Not only that, but his extreme cruelty is beyond unnecessary, so if he is jealous, he needs a life lesson on how to woo a chick.

The object of my obsession comes strolling in, and to my dismay, he’s got two bitches wrapped around him, and when he unerringly finds me at the table and raises a wicked brow, I sigh.

Pushing back from the table because today is not a good day, I approach the doors in the opposite direction only to run into Rand standing before me.

“Hey, Rain,” he says, looking me over with a leer.

Rolling my eyes, I push around him, but he grabs my arm, and with an exaggerated sigh, I growl, “I’m fucking tired of this shit. Let go of me.”

“You should be careful how you treat me. I know a lot of shit you wouldn’t want to get around,” he insists, his eyes flashing.

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