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“You’re a big boy. I’m sure you can figure it out.” He wagged his eyebrows as though I didn’t already know what he meant.
“Go for a hike.” This gem came from Fox.
“It’s a day in the life. I don’t hike.”
“Well, you do now. She’s not to know otherwise.”
“So I’m supposed to spend half the day up a fucking hill with this chick so that we can break into her room?”
“Exactly.”
“Aside from the fact that I can’t imagine anything worse than spending hours in the middle of nowhere with her, I have classes, which I’ve already skipped too many of. I’m not here just for the social life; I do actually need to graduate, you know.”
“Well, dick for brains, if what happened that night gets out, none of us will be graduating, so man the fuck up and do what you need to do.” Xavier’s tone told me the topic was no longer open for debate. He’d made up his mind. “If that means missing classes, that’s shit of the toughest kind. So that’s settled. Only, thinking about it again, I think we need to be smarter about this. We don’t want her to know we were there. Well, not right away...”
Chapter 12
Honey
“I’m a writer. I don’t hike.” I panted the words out as I doubled over at the waist, resting my hands on my knees.
“Well, I’m an athlete, and I do. You wanted your ‘day in the life’. Well, now you’ve got it. I guess you should be careful what you wish for, huh, Ms. St George?”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Shit. Had I said that out loud?
“Hmmm...? Nothing. I guess that as far as a day in the life articles go, it’s better than ‘jock trains and goes to class’ so I shouldn’t complain.”
“Complain. Don’t complain. Damned if I care. As long as we can both tick this whole ordeal off our to-do-lists, I don’t even give half a fuck.”
“What is it with you guys? Why do you have to be such assholes, all the fucking time?”
“’You’ guys? You. Guys. Are you for fucking real, right now? Exactly what guys are you referring to?”
I realized too late how my comment might have been taken the wrong way. Double shit. I turned to face him so that he could read the genuineness in my eyes. “I meant Masters of the Universe like you and your buddy, Xavier Cross. You guys think you’re above the law, and above decency and every other social structure put in place to protect people like me from people like you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I didn’t say I was friends with him.”
“Well you didn’t say you weren’t either, so...” I shrugged.
“So in your mind, pleading the fifth is an admission of guilt? Just don’t become a lawyer, that’s all I can say.”
“Not that I have any intention of doing any such thing, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I implied. That you’d be crap at it. The foundation of our judicial system is that people are innocent until proven guilty, not vice versa. Also that silence isn’t an admission of guilt. It’s that kind of thinking that gets people fried in the chair after a trial by media, regardless of their actual guilt or innocence, or evidence that could prove that one way or the other. It’s disgusting.”
“I agree that anything that perverts the course of justice is to be avoided at all costs, but I see the media as playing a key role in any Western democracy. It’s a keen and active press that helps keep the fat-cat lawyers and associated cretins in check, otherwise their corruption and greed would make a total mockery of our legal system.”
“So you’re in favor of kangaroo courts, then?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Who cares about what you said? I can infer your meaning from what you didn’t say.” The smug look on his face drove me almost to distraction, but I had to admit that he had me backed into a corner.
“Touché.” He was definitely smarter than I’d originally given him credit for.
“Anyway, that very unsubtle segue isn’t going to make me forget my original train of thought, about your association with Xavier Cross.”
