Josh fucking Richardson.
You have got to be kidding me.
I knew something was up the minute he slid into the seat next to hers in math today. He always sat in the bottom left corner of the classroom. Where he could play games on his phone in the shadow of his desk without being noticed. Josh Richardson was the kind of guy that escaped notice most days anyway.
Flying below the radar of popularity even though his family was among the wealthier ones at Briar Hall. He treated school like a holding cell. Like it was just a thing he had to sit through to make it to whatever came next. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him hand in an assignment, and yet he was still here. Still just below the top of the class. At Briar Hall, your money didn’t just buy you nice clothes and a straight-toothed smile. It could also buy you halfway decent grades. I wondered if his parents would continue paying for A’s when he went to college.
I didn’t give a flying fuck about Josh fucking Richardson. Until today.
He leaned into Ava Jade’s side, whispering something I couldn’t hear from four desks back.
I should’ve sat next to her.
Why hadn’t I sat next to her?
Oh, right, because I didn’t want to push my luck and get fucking stabbed again. She’d do it. I had no doubt. But I also wanted to give her a little space. A little time to think over Corvus’ offer without me right there, hovering. Show her that not all of us were as hard as Corvus or as bloodthirsty as Rook.
Being the nice guy got you absofuckinglutely nowhere. Corv was right about that. It turned out he was right about a lot of things.
When Ava Jade laughed at something Josh said, my jaw clenched tight. No matter how hard I tried to relax it, to not let this thing inside of me swell too big, it didn’t work.
Was she trying to goad me? Was that it? Was she doing this on purpose?
She couldn’t be serious, right? This had to be a joke.
This guy?
I caught the way her arctic eyes flitted over him. In an analytical way. Like she was taking a measure of him. Of his ability to please her. Like she might eat him alive if he couldn’t perform. She twisted her ankles together beneath the table, and I wondered if she was imagining his cock inside of her. Pressing her thighs together against the ache forming between her legs.
My pencil snapped in my hand and a few eyes turned to me before they fled back to their work. But not her. Ava Jade didn’t turn. She didn’t look.
I dropped the pencil remnants to my desk and ran my teeth over my lower lip, leaning forward slightly. Trying to hear.
Was he handsome?
I critically evaluated the fucker from head to toe. He was tall. My height maybe. Not as tall as Corvus. A decent face, young and bright, like the darkness of life hadn’t tainted him yet. Hadn’t seeped into the hollows beneath his eyes or carved premature lines in his forehead.
His hair was dark, a chestnut brown that shone in the classroom lights like it was covered in a thin film of oil. I grimaced. Did she prefer men with darker hair, then? Men who looked like they would take you for a late breakfast at IHop after fucking you gently and texting another side bitch in the bathroom when you weren’t looking?
Fucking Christ. I was jealous.
I was jealous of Josh fucking Richardson.
I couldn’t remember ever being jealous with Brianna. Not for even a fucking second. I wasn’t even sure if that was the emotion I was feeling. Couldn’t remember ever experiencing it before. But I knew one thing for sure, the idea of jumping to my feet and smashing Josh’s smug ass face into his desk sounded really good right now. Magical, even.
I wondered if she’d smile at him then? When his nose was broken and his face covered in blood.
No. She might like that.
…fuck
This is madness.
The bell couldn’t ring fast enough. I gathered up my unfinished work, stuffing it into the crook of my arm as Ava Jade put her hand on Josh’s arm.
“Thanks,” she said, and he grinned at her like a starved kitten who’d just been given a bowl of milk.
Thanks? Thanks for what?
He nodded vigorously. “No probs,” he said, the epitome of douche.
As she went to hand her work in to Mr. Williams, I rushed Josh, not even fully aware of where I was going until my shoulder collided hard with his, almost knocking him on his ass.
“Sorry,” he muttered, gripping his shoulder as he steadied himself on a desk. “Didn’t mean to get in your way.”
“Watch it,” I sneered at him and caught Ava Jade smirking at me from the head of the class, where Mr. Williams was casually trying to get a peek down her shirt while she was distracted.
“Yeah, man, my bad,” Josh mumbled, stooping to lift his scattered blank pages and binder from the floor.
I tore my gaze away from her and stalked from the class, my body flooding with unspent adrenaline, making my muscles shudder and twitch.
Maybe Corvus was right. That girl was trouble with a capital T. Bolded. And underlined.
But I didn’t want her gone. I wanted her all to my fucking self.
I wanted all her smiles. Her laughter. I wanted her thighs to squeeze at the image of me inside of her.
They would, I decided, picking up speed as I thundered down the corridor and jabbed the elevator button.
Yes, I thought, the rage that’d been making my stomach clench loosening by the second now. I will have her.
I relaxed, rolling my taut shoulders back and cracking my neck. Grinning to myself in the solitude of four metal walls.
No girl had ever refused me, and I’d never backed down from a challenge. I wasn’t going to force Ava Jade into Corvus’ agreement. I would have her eating out of my palm without the need for forced coercion. It would just take some time, and time I had, since she’d made it very clear she wasn’t going anywhere.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I dug it out, seeing a message there from Corv.
Corvus: Cafeteria.
I snorted. Knowing now that she had her talons in him just as deeply as she had them in me. We rarely ate in the cafeteria, preferring to take the Rover out to the Crow’s Nest or get takeout instead. Since Ava Jade showed her pretty face on the streets of Thorn Valley, we’d only missed a single school-provided meal. Not the coincidence I originally thought it was.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Or the fact that Rook clearly wanted to take a literal bite out of her, too.
I didn’t feel the same thing toward my brothers, as I did Josh, but Corvus… He’d always been possessive. If he decided she belonged to him, there would be no room for negotiation. Unless…unless…
Oh. Oh. This would be good.
I found my brothers in our usual spot, set near the back of the cafeteria, in the only spot that afforded us an unobstructed view of the entire room. I nodded to them before going for the food. I snatched a tray from between two queuing students and skipped ahead of the line to grab what I wanted, not really paying attention to the what as much as making sure I had enough to fill the unfillable void that was my stomach.
Rook tipped the contents of a flask into his glass of OJ, securing himself a scowl from Mrs. June, who seemed to be on cafeteria duty for the day. She didn’t say anything, though, and she wouldn’t. He’d been working her since our first day at BH. If Diesel St. Crow wasn’t enough for the majority of the teachers and staff to turn a blind eye to us, Rook had the VP herself by her married little cunt.
A word from him could ruin her career and her marriage now. He had tapes of them. Several. They liked to fuck in the mornings in the rarely used chapel. He had one of Jesus’ eyes carved out and replaced with a micro camera. It had to be some sort of blasphemy, but if there was a hell, we were all headed there anyway.
I fell into my seat opposite Corv and dug into my food, considering how best to broach the topic.
Rook rubbed a coin between his thumb and index finger, rolling it through his knuckles and flicking it to spin atop the round table. He was oddly pensive as he sipped his boozy afternoon drink.
I followed his line of sight to where she sat with Rebecca Hart. Honestly, she was about the only other girl at this school who wasn’t a vapid, self-absorbed debutante. I’d be glad they were friends, if it weren’t for the fact that Rebecca Hart would definitely be smart enough to warn Ava Jade away from us instead of goading her toward us, like the majority of the others bitches here would.
Ava Jade inhaled her lunch. Putting Becca’s small bowl of low-sodium soup to shame with a tower of finger sandwiches and a bowl of fruit that I wonder if she knew was meant to be scooped from, not taken in its entirety to her table.
Was she left alone as a child?
Had she gone hungry?
Was she forced to fend for herself?
My stomach audibly rumbled, prodding me to pick up the next in a row of sandwiches on my own plate and take a large bite.
There was a time when a sandwich the size of the one in my hand right now would have looked like a feast to my 8-year-old eyes. When all there was were crumbs to be found beneath kitchen cabinets and mom had been gone for two weeks.
She came back sometimes. But the guilt of seeing me, rail-thin, gaunt, and starving always drove her away again.
I didn’t only starve for food. I starved for her. For human connection. To not be left alone in the house out in the country with only my dead stepfather’s library for company.
If a teacher from my school hadn’t come by the house to check up on me after the phone was disconnected, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I was almost gone. At the point of organ failure.
Literally starved to death.
My stomach turned now, remembering that pain. The ache. The eventual nothingness that followed.
Stop it.
I gave my head a shake, coming back to the present. Deciding there was no better way to do this than to just give it a shot. I set down the sub sandwich dripping tomato juice down my wrist and swallowed the tasteless lump in my throat before speaking.
“I have a proposition.”
Rook’s glass halted an inch from his lips. He raised a brow, setting the glass back down.
Corvus cocked his head at me, trying to read the words I hadn’t yet spoken in my stare.
“A game,” I explained. “Winner takes all. Winner takes Ava Jade.”
Rook perked up, leaning forward over the table with a gleam in his eyes. I had his attention.
“You want her,” I said, telling Corvus what he wouldn’t admit. “So does Rook.”
I sat back, sighing. “So do I.”
Corvus crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw working behind the wall of his lips. “What are you suggesting?”
“You were right,” I admitted. “She was never going to go for our deal.”
“Thought we weren’t going to give her a choice?” Corvus asked, eyeing Rook before turning his attention back to me.
“She’ll fight us tooth and nail,” I said, shaking my head. We didn’t know her. Not really. But that much I thought we could all agree on.
No one denied it, so I went on. “What if we didn’t use…the usual tactics? What if we tried to reel her in instead? The only way she’s going to be controlled—unless you want to get rid of her…”
I let that thought hang in the air, banking on them not wanting to vote for that option. Their eyes widened before they settled back into mute scowls, trying to play it off like they didn’t give a shit. Liars.
“…is if it’s on her terms. Like, if she were with one of us. We make it a contest, first one to fuck her wins. First one to fuck her gets to keep her.”
Rook liked this idea, I could tell by the way he twisted his lip ring with his teeth, his breathing heavy.
Corvus’ face pinched. He stared at me like that, unmoving, for so long I almost began to squirm in my seat. But letting on that he was getting to me would only boost his already massive ego.
“You want to date the new girl?” he hissed, studying my face for a reaction.
My stomach twisted, but I kept my cool.
Did I?
Was that what I was suggesting here?
Shit.
“Never mind,” I muttered, snatching up my water bottle for a long pull. This was a stupid fucking idea. What was I even hoping to accomplish? All I’d done was show my cards. Admitted I was a pussy. Right to their faces. Proved to them how weak they already thought I was.
Probably made Corvus even more certain that he needed to make her disappear. Proved to him that she was the threat he thought she was from the start. A thing that could come between us. Distract us. Infiltrate our ranks and destroy us from the inside out.
But I’d win, the thought whispered through my head. And they know it.
It was at that moment Josh Richardson entered the cafeteria, carving a path through the tables toward the one Ava Jade and Becca shared across the room.
“Get your head straight,” Corvus uttered, stealing a thin chicken strip from my plate and tossing it into his mouth. I lifted a brow at him, not over what he said, but over the fact that he had just eaten a fucking strip of breaded, deep-fried chicken.
“What?” he grunted, but dropped it when Josh stopped at Ava Jade and Becca’s table.
Josh flashed Ava Jade a smile, leaning down onto his elbow to put himself closer to her eye-level as they chatted. Becca glanced between them, her interest clearly piqued by the whole encounter. Ava Jade hadn’t told her friend about her little conversation with Josh Richardson in math class today. Was that because she didn’t think it was important?
Because it didn’t matter?
“The fuck is Richardson doing?” Corvus demanded, swiping the back of his hand over his grease-stained lips.
I wondered if it looked the same to my brothers as it did to me: like a fucking golden retriever propositioning a lioness.
Fucking cringe.
“He was all over her in math today,” I told my brother. “I think they exchanged numbers.”
Corv couldn’t whip his head to me fast enough, his accusing stare fixed on me. “And you let that happen?”
My mouth popped open. “Should I not have?”
“We gave her an out this morning,” he said. “Made a deal. She is ours.”
“She didn’t agree,” Rook corrected him. “In fact, I’m pretty sure she said she’d rather die.”
“And we’re just going to let her get away with refusing us?” Corvus demanded, his slanted eyes cutting between Rook and me. “Have you gone soft there, Rookie?”
Rook frowned, back to looking like his usual bored self. Exhausted with Corvus’ antics.
He wouldn’t rise to the bait. He rarely did.
When I made no reply, Corvus fell back in his chair and pressed his lips into a tight line, his disappointment clear as he let his eyes track back to Ava Jade. She was still locked in conversation with the senior prick, smiling in a sultry way that told me she knew exactly what she was doing to him.
When Josh rose to say his goodbye’s, he remained slightly hunched, angling his body away from Ava Jade. Hiding the chub in his pants.
Becca immediately descended upon Ava Jade, leaning far over the table with wide, glimmering eyes, demanding details.
Corvus’ chair screeched against the linoleum floor as he shoved back and stood, following Josh Richardson from the cafeteria, without another word.
