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“I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
We can both see Leo off to our right, still surrounded by friends, laughing and joking. He won’t stay distracted for long if Dean tries to waltz me around in front of him. I know Dean hates Leo. I’m not going to let him use me to start some kind of a fight.
“He has nothing to do with this.”
Dean’s hand snakes out and grabs my wrist, with that alarming speed he seems to possess. I have to twist my wrist hard to break free of his grip, and the moment I do, I hurry away from him, before he grabs me again, before he can make a scene in front of all these people.
My face is flaming, and I don’t understand what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. I thought Dean and I had reached a kind of reasonable equilibrium. We finished our banking project with minimal conflict. In fact, we got a perfect score. I thought that was proof that if we couldn’t be friends, we at least didn’t have to be enemies.
But now he’s trying to stir up some kind of shit with Leo again.
Then I remember why.
The Captainship. It was announced today—Dean must be pissed that Leo got it instead of him. Makes sense. I can’t imagine Dean is going to enjoy taking orders from Leo. Same with Bram.
Leo’s going to have a tough time winning when half his team is in mutiny.
I want to talk to Leo about that—about a lot of things, actually—but there’s so damn many people crowded around him, I can’t do more than catch his eye, to which he gives me a warm and apologetic smile.
Usually I don’t mind that Leo is so popular. I want him to get all the love and attention in the world. But right now I feel anxious, our unspoken and unfinished moment gnawing at me.
“It’s all war games!” Matteo is saying, swinging his arms around so wildly that his drink sloshes out of his cup, dousing his sleeve. “The upperclassmen will have more experience, obviously, but if we can?—”
I never hear Matteo’s brilliant plan, because Gemma Rossi pushes her way into the center of the group, clutching two red plastic cups in her hands.
“Leo!” she says. “I heard you made Captain! Congratulations! Guaranteed we’ll win with you leading us!”
She looks up at him, batting both eyelids as hard as she can. She stepped on my foot on her way by, and I’m seriously regretting not tripping her as I’d considered doing. With her hands full, she would have fallen flat on her face.
“Let’s all toast Leo!” she chirps, thrusting one of the drinks into Leo’s hand.
Leo shoots me a look, knowing that I’ve got a massive eye roll just waiting to be deployed. But I don’t let it loose. I don’t feel sarcastic or amused at the moment. I just feel . . . anxious.
Everyone holds their makeshift drinks aloft—the dusty bottles of homemade beer brewed at the castle that are supposedto be for teachers but are frequently stolen by students. The wine made at the vineyard south of campus, the bottles stamped with the Visine Dvorca label. And the cocktails mixed with smuggled liquor that students snuck in their suitcases or bought at outrageous prices from the fisherman who go back and forth with supplies for the island.
I don’t have a drink. Leo holds out his cup to me, but I shake my head. So he toasts himself along with everyone else, drinking down whatever Gemma brought him, grinning as everyone cheers for him.
Leo lowers his cup, licking his lips with relish.
“I’m telling you, it all comes down to Game Theory,” Matteo says.
“No, it’s pure fitness—” his friend argues.
At that moment, the music cuts out abruptly. It resumes a moment later, but it sounds garbled and dull.
I look around to see if Chay is fucking with the speaker again. Or maybe it’s the long-awaited Sam, who has arrived at last and is chucking a football back and forth across the sand with Kasper Markaj, with no regard for who or what lies between them.
Chay is nowhere to be seen, and neither is the stereo—the pile of driftwood that held it aloft now holds nothing at all.
Swearing under my breath, I stalk over to the fire so I can see what the hell happened.
Following the sputtering sound, I find my speaker half-buried in sand. Some idiot must have knocked it over—definitely Sam, I bet.
I pick up the speaker, stopping the music so I can remove the outer shell, take the batteries out, and clean all the sand out of it. I should never have lent it to Chay in the first place. If it gets broken, how the hell am I going to practice in the mornings?
