Pretty Reckless

“Just checking.” He laughs.

“What are you doing up?” I eye him curiously. Is he snitching for the Followhills?

I can hear feminine coughing from his house. He winces, tossing his Bloody Mary back and finishes it with a gulp.

“Missus is feeling under the weather. She’s about to join me outside for some fresh air.”

I have nothing to say to that, so I just nod.

“You can crash here tonight,” he offers.

“Nah. I have some unfinished business with your spawn’s friends.” I bite off a callus from my palm and spit the dead skin on the ground.

Maybe I just want to be near Daria and Via. Make sure they haven’t killed each other yet. I turn to leave.

“Do you love her?” Dean Cole’s voice makes me stop dead in place.

I don’t know how he knows.

I don’t know if that means Jaime and Mel know, too.

And I have no idea why my face feels so hot.

All I do know is that now’s not the time to think about this question.

I shake my head, chuckling. “It’s just harmless fun.”

“Harmless for who?” he calls as I resume my way to the Followhills’.

For me, I want to say. The tin man.

“Are you gonna tell Jaime and Mel?” I turn around as I continue walking backward.

He refills his glass with a bottle on the arm of his recliner, his eyes on the liquid.

“And miss out on the moment he finds out and kicks your ass? I think I’ll let your sloppy ass do the job for me. But save me a front-row seat when that happens.”

“Deal.”

I slip behind the pool house, a good few feet from Gus and the All Saints football team.

In my defense, I didn’t come here with the intention of playing Sherlock and eavesdropping. The task rolled onto my lap the minute I slipped through the backyard. I was about to cross the lawn and find my sister to make sure she wasn’t overwhelmed when I heard Gus’s voice. Now, I can’t stop listening.

“…if we don’t make it to State, Coach’s going to cold-blooded kill us. Principal Prichard is going to burn whatever’s left of our bodies, and the mayor is going to kick us out of town.” I hear their running back moaning into his beer. “And, Gus, dude, I know we’ve been lucky, but you’ve seen our form at practice. We, like, suck.”

Gus laughs. I peek behind the pool house and watch him boomerang a loaded ashtray into the pool.

“Just because you suck doesn’t mean everyone else here does.”

“Alexa.” Knight Cole billows smoke after sucking on his joint, turning to the virtual assistant sitting next to him on a table between pool loungers. “Tell Gus that he is not fooling anyone. That we’ve been so bad the last couple of games we won by little, even though the other teams weren’t on the field, and that we’re about to run out of luck and need to start talking to Coach about making some serious changes if we want to get to State.”

“Relax, Cole.” Gus puffs his chest. He rearranges his ball cap on his head. The one that looks like it stinks. “I have it all under control. Shit, that rhymes! I’m hella creative when I’m high.”

“How do you mean?” Knight asks seriously. I detect some alarm in his voice, and Knight doesn’t get his feathers ruffled easily. I know Gus is off guard, drunk, and high, and if he is going to say something that would put him in deep shit, it’s going to be right here, right now. I suck in a breath, my skin bursting out in goose bumps. Gus opens his mouth, and the first words come out, but then I hear a loud whine directed at Gus.

“There you are! I’ve been looking for you.” Via throws her arms around his neck and purrs.

Her voice is bubbly, bright, and as per usual—all fucking wrong. I close my fist, using every ounce of self-control in me to make sure I don’t slam it against the concrete wall I’m leaning against. Via blabs about trivial shit—apparently, they’re folding out and everyone’s leaving, so if the guys want another beer, now’s the time to get it. She just ruined my chances of hearing an admission from the horse’s mouth.

So much for reconnecting, rebuilding, and all that crap.

People are starting to file out of the house. A neighbor threatened to call the police, but they gave Daria thirty minutes to get her shit together before they sent the boys in blue. Something tells me that Dean’s doing me a solid. I know if I stay behind the pool house, people are bound to notice me when they round the house and head to their cars, so I slip into the pool house to hide.

Inside, it’s more like a guesthouse with an open-space living room and a kitchenette, turquoise marble over dark oak throughout. There is also a bedroom with a glass wall. You can see into the bedroom from any spot in the living room. Not that I currently have to. As soon as I reach the switch to turn on the light, I stop. The moans bleeding into my ears tell me I just walked in on a very private moment in the see-through bedroom.

Chuckling, I turn around, about to open the door and head back, when a small body bumps into mine. I look down and see Daria.

Her eyes widen, and her mouth falls open.

“What’s your ass doing on this side of the house?” I demand, continuing my perfect strike of stupidity/creep behavior for the evening. She lives here. I’m the one who was supposed to stay away tonight. But Daria is always a tad disoriented when we see each other, something that brings my ego and cock much delight.