“Exactly.”
He grunts, doubling over in pain as my fist connects with his stomach.
“Fuck,” he groans, dropping to the floor like a sack of shit.
“Anyone else need to know how it’s going to feel if you so much as look in her direction again?”
Three terrified faces shake their heads at me.
“N-no. We’re s-sorry.”
“Sure you are. Stay out of our fucking business before we make you our business.”
They stand there trembling like little punks. I half expect wet patches to emerge on their trousers, but sadly they seem to hold it together.
“Fuck off, then,” I snap and watch with amusement as they dive toward their friend who’s still rolling around on the ground, drag him up, and disappear around the corner.
“Shit,” Alex sighs, lifting his hand to push his hair back. “That was too fucking easy.”
“I barely even hit him.” I crack my knuckles, needing more to rid myself of the irritation coursing through my veins at listening to their bullshit.
“Maybe you should go and find your princess. Take it out on her.”
His suggestion is seriously tempting. Or it would be if I hadn’t already convinced myself a good fifty times this morning that I was going to give her some space and see how long it took her to come crawling back to me, begging for a repeat of last night.
The second I looked into her eyes when she emerged from the toilets earlier, I knew I was still at the forefront of her mind.
The rest of the day is boring and uneventful. We have football practice after school, ready for our first game on Thursday night. Theo and Nico’s absence pisses off Coach, but there’s little he can do about it. When the boss calls, you have little choice but to jump.
Toby shows his face but barely mutters a word to either of us despite Alex’s attempt to hold a conversation with him. It seems that while I might have been the one who instigated Saturday morning, he’s equally as pissed at the others for letting it continue.
Theo isn’t at home when Alex drops me off, so I jump in my car and head to Mum’s to see if she’s still somewhat sober.
To my surprise, when I let myself in I find that she’s not even home.
Feeling totally lost, I end up spending the rest of the night in Theo’s gym, trying to work out the frustration those pricks put there earlier as well as my burning need to go back to Stella’s house and find out if she’s done anything to keep me out tonight.
* * *
“What happened?” I ask Theo the next morning when I find him sitting at the breakfast bar, wearing yesterday’s clothes and looking like shit.
“Ugh, don’t,” he groans, finishing his drink and declaring that he’s going to bed.
Whatever the boss called him in for yesterday was obviously about the Italians, seeing as he was happy to put us in the middle of it on Saturday and I kinda want to know what’s going on.
“Nothing. He sent us out for intel but we got nothing.”
“Assuming you’re not coming in today?”
His answer is to slam his door.
“I’ll take that as a no then.”
The first person I see when I get to school is one of the boys from yesterday.
He takes one look at me as I climb from my car and damn near breaks into a run toward the building.
Shaking my head, I meet Alex and together we make our way in.