ALEC
“Wolfe!” Landon called from down Redwood’s hallway, jogging to catch up with me. He kept my pace as we headed for the cafeteria and nodded toward a side hallway. “We’re meeting with Avery in five. You’re coming with us.”
“Me?” I asked. “What happened to you agreeing to work with the girls?”
Not that I actually wanted them to work with Poison. But João had finally cracked yesterday while sitting in the hospital and told Maddie that if she kept her mouth shut, they would work with them. And I was still pissed.
“Fuck that,” João growled from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see him pulling out a pack of cigarettes and walking alone toward Landon and me, heavy bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept.
“They’re not getting involved.”
Thank fuck.
“You need to control your girl, Wolfe,” João said, lighting up in the middle of the hallway and blowing smoke out through his nose. He pulled the cigarette from his lips and shook his head. “She’s fucking crazy.”
“She’s passionate,” I said.
And a little crazy too—which I loved about her, but it’d get her hurt one of these days.
“Where’s Kai?” I asked. “Blaise?”
“Kai’s at home, working on figuring out who shot at the girls,” Landon said. “Blaise is …”
“At the hospital,” Jace said, leaning against Mr. Avery’s closed door. With a football in his hands, he tossed it back and forth. “He texted the group this morning and said that he was staying with Vera today.”
“The group?” I asked, brow furrowed. “What group?”
“The group chat,” Landon said.
“What group chat?”
“The one we added you to last night,” João said. “Come on. Stop being fucking stupid.”
After pulling out my phone, which I had turned off to ignore Mom’s nonstop texts about the dinner that she was making for me and Dad tonight, I turned it on and saw a bunch of texts from unknown numbers in a group chat called No Girls.
I rubbed my forehead. Damn, these guys are trying hard to get themselves in trouble with their girlfriends, huh? Because if any of the girls saw a group chat labeled No Girls, they’d immediately become god-tier hackers to get into their phones and figure out what we didn’t want them to know.
“Don’t listen to him,” Landon said, following João into Mr. Avery’s room. “He’s just pissed off about what happened to Imani.”
Mr. Avery looked up from his desk, where he sat with Sakura, eating lunch, and grimaced at us. After wrapping Sakura’s grinder, he stuffed it into a brown bag and handed it to her. “Why don’t you eat lunch with the girls in the cafeteria?”
While Sakura couldn’t be more than a few months pregnant, her belly had already grown so much since the last time I had seen her.
After setting down the grinder on his desk, she glanced back at us and pulled on an oversize sweatshirt to hide her stomach, then grabbed her belongings. “I will see you after school.”
Mr. Avery kissed her on the lips, guided her toward the door, then locked it behind her.
João whistled. “Baby mama doesn’t want anyone knowing that you’re the father?”
“Doubt that Imani would ever want anyone to know that you were the father of her baby if she had one either,” Landon said.
And I mean, I didn’t disagree with him because João was so explicit and hard to get along with.
“What do you want, Rocha?” Mr. Avery said, heading back to his desk.
“Information,” Jace said.
Mr. Avery leaned against the desk and crossed his arms, brow arched as he looked between Poison and then at Jace and me. “Has Poison finally accepted new members into their little clique?”
“Fuck no,” João growled. “But this has to do with all of us. Even you.”
“Me?” Mr. Avery said, shaking his head. “I’m not getting involved with this shit anymore. I have Sakura to protect and a baby on the way. If anyone realizes that I’ve left the mob to work with Poison, they’ll be in danger.”
“Well, the girls got shot yesterday, and Sakura could’ve been one of them,” Landon said.
Mr. Avery drew his tongue across his teeth, his gaze faltering for a moment. “What is it?”
João handed Mr. Avery a slip of paper. “Do you know any of these guys?”
Mr. Avery sat down at his desk and kicked his right ankle up onto his knee, scanning the sheet. “Are these the guys who did it? Because … they don’t look familiar to me. I can ask around to find out who they are, but no promises that I’ll come up with anything.”
“You’d fucking better find something or—”
“Or else what, João?” Mr. Avery asked, looking up at him. “You’ll kill me? No. You won’t do that. You only kill people if you’re getting paid for it.” He forced out a breath. “I’ll do what I can, but nothing more.”
João lunged at Mr. Avery, but Landon caught him and threw him back so hard into the desks that three of them tumbled to the ground on top of João. “Step the fuck back and settle your ass down, Rocha.”
Yep, they were still in the same fight as yesterday.
I leaned against the whiteboard, stuffed my hands into my pockets, and pursed my lips, not wanting to get involved in their drama too. I had way too much of my own right now. Maddie had barely said two words to me since our argument at the hospital yesterday.
While I knew that she just wanted to fight for her friends, it was too dangerous. Because the enemies were brawling with bullets and willing to kill a group of good girls, and neither one of us knew how to properly hold a gun. Never mind how to shoot to kill.
“You hear anything, message Kai,” Landon said to Mr. Avery. “We’ll make sure that nothing happens to Sakura in the meantime.”
“The girls are supposed to go to the hospital after school,” Jace said.
“Maddie is probably going to talk Sakura into going with them,” I said.
“Allie too.” Jace nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on her if you need extra time, Avery.”
“Don’t let anyone touch her,” Mr. Avery said. “I’ll be at the hospital for Sakura’s doctor’s appointment at five thirty. And if I’m even two minutes late”—he looked over at João—“that’ll mean something happened to me, and you’d better take Sakura and the girls somewhere safe.”