Page 22 of Always: A Legacy Novel

She quickly found her brother across the lot, sitting on the steps leading into the upper Academy’s wings.

She found someone else quickly, too. Cross Donati. He sat on the hood of a cherry red Camaro. His attention snagged by an older boy with a pair of keys in his hands.

Catherine still hadn’t decided to take him up on his offer of making friends. Mostly because she didn’t do things like that—skip out, blow off already made plans, or blatantly break the rules her parents made. Not going home with her brother and cousin, with a guy her parents didn’t know or hadn’t met, without an enforcer definitely fell into the category of breaking rules.

Several rules, really.

She was already halfway across the lot, heading in her brother’s direction, before she could think better of it.

“Johnathan is going to be late,” Michel said without even looking up at his sister’s approach.

“How late?”

“Thirty minutes, or so.”

She peeked over her shoulder, only to find that the black-haired, dark-eyed boy was still engaged in conversation with his friend, and hadn’t noticed her at all.

Cross didn’t notice her staring.

Michel did.

“Made a friend, did you?” her brother asked.

“I guess.”

His brow lifted. “Not sure Dad would like that, Catherine.”

“Why not? He keeps telling me to make friends, and then I’ll like it here.”

“Cross Donati is a fucking troublemaker. I don’t think that’s the kind of friend Dad meant.”

“He doesn’t seem like trouble to me.”

That was a lie.

Cross seemed like all sorts of trouble.

He also seemed like fun.

It was that thought alone that cemented Catherine’s next choice. “Ma and Dad aren’t going to be home until later, right?”

“Around seven,” Michel said, going back to his phone.

“So I could just … call to get a ride home, if I wanted to stay here for a bit.”

Her brother did look up at that statement. “And what are you going to do while you’re here?”

Well, she didn’t know yet. And who the hell knew if she would be staying?

“I don’t know,” Catherine said honestly.

Michel looked across the lot.

Catherine followed his gaze.

The pretty boy sitting on the cherry red Camaro wasn’t distracted anymore because he was staring straight at her. He flashed a smile, then tipped his head to the side as if to silently call her over.

“You’re going to get yourself in a world of shit,” Michel warned.