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Lev
Saint brought my clothes and the rest of my shit home with him from the locker room, so—dressed in the jeans and Henley I wore to the game—I lie with Scout as she tries to drift off to sleep, and the others wait downstairs. Saint sits in the chair beside her bed. Cub’s eyes close and her breathing deepens. I glance at her hand, held tight in her brother’s. He glares at me.
“I told you this would happen. I warned you what would happen to her when the entire school found out,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“They kicked her off the squad. Nova grabbed Scout’s things from her locker. Did you know she was being blackmailed?”
“The fuck?” I demand, too loudly.
Saint lets go of his sister’s hand and gently pulls the covers up to her chin. He tilts his head toward the door, but I’m already there, itching to get out of this room and go break some faces.
I stalk across the threshold and Saint follows me, quietly closing the door behind him.
“Talk. Now.”
“I only had time to look at a few of the pages. It’s some fucked up blackmail bullshit. There have to be at least ten. Each with a more disturbing line about what they knew, what they planned to do to her. It seems someone’s been gunning for Peaches a long time.”
“I’m gonna kill that bastard.”
“We don’t know it was him, but it’s a good guess given what he tried to do. When the fuck did this happen? How did this happen?” He lowers his voice and twists his mouth into a sneer. I’ve never seen Saint so angry. “How far did he get?”
“During the second half. I was on the bench. I saw him follow her from the bleachers. He’d dragged her to the end of the lot, where it was dark. I didn’t save her; she saved herself. Kicked him in the shin and ran. She said he didn’t get far—shoved his fingers inside her panties, and then she heard me calling to her, so she took the chance while he was distracted.”
“And you beat the shit out of him?” Saint’s face is stoic, but I know this asshole. He’s wondering why I didn’t end that fucker’s life.
“I would have,” I say clearly, “if she hadn’t been there, trembling in shock. If she hadn’t needed me. I would have beat his fucking head in. I would have killed him. I want to kill him.”
Saint nods. For all his control, for the calm façade he puts in place for the world, there’s something deeply disturbed about my closest friend. Fuck. It’s why we’re friends. We’re kindred spirits, closer than Nav and I ever were. Saint is broken too, in different and darker ways than I am. He’s just better at hiding it.
“Did she tell anyone about the blackmail? Nova? Blythe?” I frown. Why wouldn’t she come to me with this? If they were blackmailing her with this sex tape, I had a right to know. I could have prevented this from happening.
Saint shakes his head. “I don’t think she’d tell Blythe or Violet, but Nova didn’t know anything about it either. She was just as shocked as I was.”
“I want to see them.”
Saint releases a deep sigh. “I’m not sure you want to.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“They turned my stomach. The things he said to her.”
“Show me.”
Saint leads me downstairs into the kitchen. I can hear the guys in the lounge, my brother’s drunk accusatory rambling as Saint pulls the letters from an envelope in the top drawer.
I read them, one after the other, each growing more disturbing than the last. When I get to the letter about meeting in Saxon Woods, I blanch. Had that been the day I met her? Thank fuck I came along when I did. Jesus. Justin had attacked her in the school parking lot where anyone could have found them. Alone with her in the park? She might have screamed for hours with no one to save her.
“Why wouldn’t she show me this?” I ask Saint. What I really want is to go upstairs, shake her awake and ask her, but she doesn’t need any more stress tonight. We had to hand her a couple of sleeping tablets to get her to rest at all.
“I can’t be in the same fucking house as him,” Nav shouts. and a beat later, the front door opens and closes.
“Go sleep it off, brother,” King calls after him. I shake my head. I don’t have time to deal with my twin’s ego right now. I’m sure at some point we’re going to have it out again, and next time, King, Saint, and River won’t be there to stop us. We’ll settle it the way Fox men have settled every dispute in our family—with blood and pain and fists.
I stare at the letters in my trembling hands. Rage courses through me from head to toe. Why wouldn’t she mention this to me? What the fuck was Scout thinking?
I drop the notes on the counter and stalk toward the door.
“Where the hell are you going?” Saint says.
“To kill Justin Hearst.”
Outside, an engine roars to life and Saint and I share a worried look. “No! No, he isn’t!”
He darts toward the door and I follow as the engine roars in the drive. The other boys join us, and we all clamber out the front door in time for Navrin to throw Saint’s McLaren in reverse and peel out of the driveway.
“No! No! No! No!” Saint falls to his knees. “You fucking Foxes are nothing but thieves.”
“Fuck!” He’s in no state to drive, much less to have the speed of a McLaren at his fingertips. My bike is still at the school, or I’d have already taken off after him.
I glance at the Jeep in the drive. “River, give us your keys.”
He tosses them to me as I dart toward the Wrangler. “Call Violet and get the girls over here. Scout shouldn’t be left alone.”
“On it. I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry,” River says as he pulls his cell from his pocket.
I jump in the driver’s seat and tap the frame. “Let’s go.”
Saint and King scramble in and I peel out of the drive with a screech just the way my brother did.
“Where the fuck would he go?” Saint says.
“Where we all want to,” I reply. But as I drive the few blocks over to Hearst’s house, Saint’s car is nowhere to be seen.
“Fuck!” I bang my fists against the steering wheel. I don’t know what I’m more pissed about—Nav not being here, or the fact that Justin is just a few feet away, presumably in his bed, and I’m going to miss another opportunity to beat the shit out of him.
“What now?” King says.
“Now we find my fucking brother. Later we deal with Hearst.”
I push the pedal to the floor and we take off in a screech of burning rubber.