Page 11 of Midnight Curfew

But I could feel his pulse through his skin. He might be able to hide his feelings on the outside but not on the inside.

Obviously, he’s not stupid. Not only can I get him fired now, but he doesn’t want to make the same mistakes as his brother. He’ll pick his moment and make it worth it.

Five years ago, he tied me up into one knot after another, and a year later pulverized any last shred of self-respect I had, and it’s going to feel good, getting him out of my system.

Fuck, it’s going to feel really good. I lick my lips, the ridge of his ear still there in my mind, against my mouth.

“How the hell did he get a job teaching at our alma mater?” Milo shifts uncomfortably, looking between Jerome and me. “As if the board didn’t know those fucking Jaegers are sloppy, poor trash whose sense of culture revolves around beer can pyramids.”

“Because they’ve been playing chess while we’ve been playing checkers,” I reply, finally looking straight at my friend. “Father Bill baptized Dallas.”

His gaze falters, everyone in the car well aware that Father Bill is the priest at Marymount Academy and has been for thirty-five years.

“He baptized all of them,” I continue. “And Krisjen sits on the city council these days. And Trace’s storehouse supplies liquor to Fox Hill, which shares many of the same board members as Marymount.”

The fucking list goes on. Marymount hired Dallas to teach the philosophy course a year ago, and they could’ve had anyone. A doctorate, a tenured professor slowing down for a few years, or someone with more experience, at least. But no, the job went to someone with only a bachelor’s degree whose priorities consist of fucking, breathing, and eating, in that order.

The Jaegers are more powerful than ever.

“A lot has happened in the past four years,” I state to my friends before looking pointedly at Milo. “And Dallas doesn’t drink beer out of cans.”

Just for your information…

“He’s clever,” Jerome says.

I dart my eyes to him. “And smart.”

We can boost our egos by joking around that the Jaegers are Neanderthal garbage all we want, but they didn’t keep hold of their land for five hundred years by force alone.

Dallas might not have had the educational pedigree to deserve that job, but the number of students requesting his class for fall has doubled in a year.

“But…” Vincent chimes in next to me, “isn’t it the boosters who fund the humanities and the arts now?”

I nod, smiling a little. “Yeah.”

Soft laughter echoes around the interior of the car, because Dallas’s class is an unessential course, unlike math or science, and his paycheck is covered instead by alumni donors.

By us.

We can decide if the class is useless and that the money should go to athletics or a trip for the seniors or fucking bidets in all of the bathrooms.

But I won’t do that. I don’t want him gone.

I don’t want him fighting for his life.

I just want him trapped, preferably in the same room as me.

“They’ll want revenge for what we did to Liv,” I point out.

“What we tried to do,” Milo grumbles.

The two of us were in high school with Dallas’s sister, and I took my anger with him out on her. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but it did get his attention.

Milo tells everyone, “Macon is mine.”

“Macon Jaeger is mine,” Jerome retorts.

I shake my head at both of them. Krisjen Conroy went out with Milo in high school, and when she dumped him, Jerome Watson wanted her for himself. Sadly, Dallas’s oldest brother, an ex-Marine with the most miserable fucking personality I’ve ever encountered, fell in love. Jerome’s still seething, and Milo only gives a shit because Macon gave him a beating so bad he finally decided he’d rather be at college.