Nora passed behind Wolf’s truck, glaring like she wanted to strangle me. Cute. She’d taken Drew under her wing like that broken little bird we all knew she was.
“Hey, Nora.” Hendrix stood up in the bed, motioning toward his crotch. “You wanna suck on my spirit stick?”
She flipped him off before disappearing between a set of pickups. And my attention went straight back to Drew as she opened the door of a shiny, black Audi TT. The adjustment to life in the drive-thru and a school of drive-bys must be tough on Little Miss Entitled. Unfortunately for her, her family's recent financial downfall wasn’t my problem, but her attitude sure as hell was.
“Man.” Hendrix sat on the edge of the tailgate, passing a joint to Wolf with narrowed eyes. “What the hell? She’s got a TT. We should set that shit on fire.”
Smoke billowed from Wolf’s lips; his stare aimed at the ridiculous car like he was contemplating it.
“We’re not setting fire to her car,” I said. “Yet.”
Hendrix frowned. “I vote, we do it now.” He pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicking the lint. “We need retribution, Bell.”
The engine to Drew’s car revved before she peeled off, swerving around a stalled-out Toyota. Wolf leaned over the bed’s edge. “Think she got the message?”
Hell no, she didn’t. Instead of backing down, all I saw was a challenge rising in her eyes. This girl was not the type to go down without a fight, and if a fight were what she wanted, well then...I guess that’s what she’d get. But I wasn’t entirely unreasonable, payback didn’t have to start with fires, which was why, later that afternoon, I left a message for Eddie at Frank’s Famous Chicken, then I laid on my bed and beat one out to the thought of how pissed she would be. Twice.
I’d just cleaned myself up, when Wolf texted that he was pulling onto the street. Grabbing my backpack, I went into the hall, stopping in the kitchen to kiss my mom on the cheek. “Love you, Momma. I’ll be back before you leave for work.” I had to be home to make sure my piece of shit dad didn’t try to take a swing at my little brother Arlo.
“Love you, too.” She leaned back from the stove to peek through the window. “It sure is sweet of you boys to take those foster kids to ride Go-Karts.”
I forced a smile before ducking through the door. I hated lying to her, because Wolf and me sure as hell weren’t taking underprivileged kids to ride Go-Karts. We were the underprivileged kids for Christ’s sake. But her and Arlo were the most important people in my life, and the last thing I wanted to do was break her heart by letting her know her oldest son was a car stealing, drug dealing piece of shit.
I had to be. It was Dayton. And all of us had already tried to scrape by with some part-time job. It didn’t work, and we had no other choices.
I passed by Arlo, sitting on the couch and watching SpongeBob, scrubbing a hand over his messy head. “See you later, buddy.”
“K.”
The kid couldn’t be bothered when he was watching that stupid cartoon. I closed the door behind me and headed toward Wolf’s pick-up idling at the end of my drive. I slung my backpack into the back and climbed in. “I gotta be back before midnight.”
“No problem.” The truck backfired when he pulled off, headlights cutting over the neighbor’s overgrown grass. “We taking that old Volvo over at the Pig?”
“That’s what Tony said he wanted.”
And that Volvo would get us a grand to split between us. Enough for Wolf to help his dad with rent. Enough for me to try and catch up on the mortgage before the bank tried to foreclose. Zepp getting arrested a few months back had fucked us all in the ass.
I stared through the window, thinking how shit Dayton was as we passed by the 7-11 and the hookers standing on the corner by the phone booth. We didn’t have the luxury of few responsibilities. Hell, Hendrix didn’t even have parents. This city was like toxic sludge that ruined anything and everything it touched.
“The new girl’s hot. You gonna bang her?”
I thought about the way Drew moaned in the back of Nash’s van and smirked. “Might as well.” She may be a pain in my ass right now, but I’d gladly be a pain in hers once we got our little disagreement straightened out.
The truck rattled over a speed bump when Wolf kicked it into the Piggly Wiggly lot where the rundown Volvo sat beside the dumpster. Wolf parked beside it, blocking the view from the road, and I climbed out, maneuvering between the truck and the car.
Within a matter of minutes, I had the lock popped and I sat behind the wheel, dismantling the steering column and twisted the wires together. A plume of smoke puffed up before the engine rumbled to life. Wolf gave me a thumbs up and swung his pickup around, speeding out of the parking lot with me behind him.
When I got home, I kissed mom goodbye again, then checked on Arlo on my way to my room. And the second I closed my bedroom door, I shoved the cash I’d made into the envelope I kept tucked away in my top drawer, then crawled into bed. The familiar lullaby of cop sirens blared in the distant, mixing with the angry shouts from the neighbors, made it hard for me to unwind. So, I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling and imagined sinking my dick between Drew’s thighs. Because I was going to make that girl hate me, and one thing I knew for sure, girls like her couldn’t resist a good hate fuck with the bad boy.
I felt like a smug bastard the next afternoon when I strolled into biology because soon enough, shit was going to blow up.
Drew scribbled in her notebook, too focused to notice me when I started down the aisle. But the guy behind her sure as hell did, hiding his face behind his book as he slumped in his seat.
I touched the corner of his desk, and he jumped. “Get up.”
He shoved out of the chair so fast the thing bumped against the wall, then he stumbled to the back of the class where I usually sat, while I dropped to the seat behind Drew.
That damn perfume of hers seeped into my lungs, possessing my mind with thoughts of her thighs wrapped around my head. Gripping the edge of the desktop, I forced the idea of sex out of my head. “What kinda mood are you in today, baby girl?”
“Until right now—” She turned in her seat and judging from the lack of reaction—nothing had transpired from my little complaint. Yet— “It was just fine,” she said, then with a roll of her eyes, she faced the front again, and I fought a smirk.
That rich girl, look-down-her-nose expression called to the primitive part of me. She may have looked at me like she hated me, but the way her chest rose on uneven swells screamed that she’d still let me bend her over and have a go. Because girls like her wanted nothing more than to be dirtied and tainted by a bad boy. I had every intention of taking that invisible, privileged, princess crown and tarnishing every last gem and fuck if that wasn’t bad news for her.
The tardy bell rang just before the classroom door slammed shut and Mrs. Smith tossed her planner to the desk with an annoyed huff. “You’re gonna need a partner for the lab class you’ll all most likely fail or get high in. So, find another student you can work with, without killing.” She took a swig from her thermos. No one moved. She rolled her eyes, then snapped her fingers. “I said, find a partner.”