“What are you planning?”

“I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m waiting on something. That’s all I can say.”

“This is bullshit. We’re supposed to be together on this. All of us—you, me, Sam, and Nate. The foursome fearsome, remember? What are you planning? And why can’t you tell us? You haven’t said a word to Nate about it, and I’m guessing you haven’t said a word to Sam either.”

“I’m waiting,” was all he said.

“You’re stalling.”

“Logan.” He was so damn resigned.

I gritted my teeth. That shit, that sound from my brother…I was right whether he’d admit it to me or not. He was waiting until football was done. That was what he was doing. It’d be too late.

“He’s going to go after Sam,” I said.

“Not if we don’t engage him more.”

I clipped my head back and forth. He wasn’t getting it. I wanted to rip off his fucking door to throw at him, but I couldn’t. Feeling a twinge of disappointment for the first time, I said, “You’re wrong, Mase. He’s going to go after her whether we wait or not.”

“Yeah. He’ll go after her for sure now.”

“And you have one security guard on her.”

His shoulders lifted, held in the air, and lowered slowly. He couldn’t refute it. One guard for all of Sebastian’s friends.

I asked, “What if he really tries to hurt her?”

“I’ll fucking kill him.”

“And that right there is how he’s going to win this time. He does one thing to her, and you’ll go after him. Boom, he’s got you. Cops show up. He’s got hidden cameras recording the entire thing, and he’s won. Your career is gone. Your future is gone, and fuck, Mase, it could get bad enough to where you do time. All the crap we do, we should’ve done some time by now.”

We were arrested before, but James got us out every time. That was over. If we got caught again, there would be no rich daddy to help us out. I tried again, “Let me handle Sebastian.”

“Logan,” he started, shaking his head.

“I’ll run everything by you. How about that? You can help me with the masterminding shit. I mean, holy dumbass, I took a page from your book last night.”

“What do you mean?”

“My original plan was to go in, get a hit in, and jump over the fence and have Nate there, waiting for me with a getaway car. I couldn’t do that, and I had to switch agendas.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought you heard?”

“Drew called this morning. All he said was that you got into a fight with Sebastian’s guys. That was it.”

“Oh.” My shoulders felt a little lighter. I almost felt pride as I told him, “I outed some of his enemies. I put them in a corner where they admitted to hating him, or they’d have to kiss his ass and slink away with their tails between their legs.”

“And?”

“They fought with me.”

Mason nodded, a look of admiration in his eyes.

My head lifted. My shoulders straightened again. I stood an inch higher. My brother was proud of me. “Fuck yeah.” I grinned at him. “They were a little sore at me later, but those guys will fight with me again, if I need them. They think they’re manly men now.”

Mason nodded again, grinning back at me. “Good job, brother.”

“Damn straight.”

He gestured to the ceiling. “And sorry for interrupting. I knew you had a chick. I just wanted to be a dick back to you.”

“Ah, I see. You’re learning from me. I’m not just a smart-ass with my words. I can be a smart-ass with my behavior, and yes, barging in when you’ve got Sam straddling you, that’s definitely a smart-ass dick way of doing things.”

Mason narrowed his eyes at me and said ruefully, “Yeah, I must be learning from you.”

“I’ll teach you more ways, my student, but first,” I lifted my hand to look at the number, “I might need to show up somewhere with a latte. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Sam, it’s that girls love their lattes.”

“Logan,” he called out as I turned to leave.

“Yeah?”

The gravity on my brother’s face made me pause for a second. I’d only seen that look a few times—when our mom left, when we found out Sam was beaten up in the restroom, and when Nate’s vehicle crashed in front of us. There were other times, but those were the ones that ran through my memory.

He said, “Be careful with this one. He thinks like I do.”

It wasn’t an insult, but I knew what Mason was saying. Sebastian strategized. He analyzed. He thought five steps ahead, whereas I didn’t. I was two steps ahead, if I were lucky.

I nodded and murmured, “I will.”

SAMANTHA

It was fun to walk to the football game with the girls. I hadn’t enjoyed hanging out with a group of girls in so long that I almost missed what it was like. Gossip. Laughter. A few tears, but I wasn’t sure the cause for them. Some whispering. The occasional belch, followed by some farting jokes. This hadn’t happened with my old group, and it was sad to realize that Jessica and Lydia were my last real group of girlfriends. Cattiness and competition came with them.

Who knows? I skimmed over the group of my floormates. If I grew closer to them, perhaps the same thing would occur.