Page 24 of Three, Two, One [321]

“Not for Ray, though.”

JD does a snort-laugh. “No shit, asshole. I wasn’t thinking about hiring her.”

“You wanted to hire her this morning.”

He grabs his cereal and sits on the edge of my desk, spooning it into his mouth and talking as he chews. “That was before.”

“Before what?” I manage not to growl. But just barely.

“Before I spent the day with her.”

I just stare at him. “So you fucked her?”

He just stares back. “You got something you wanna say about this girl, Ark? Because I’m all ears, man. I get it, you saw her first. So she’s yours. But I spent the day with her. And I like her too. And no, asshole, I didn’t fuck her. I wouldn’t do that to you and if you think I would—” He shakes his head. “Well, fuck you.”

I look away and take a deep breath. Because he’s right. We’ve liked the same girl before. That’s why we have the I-saw-her-first rule. But this one feels… different. “Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s been a long day.”

“You take care of Ray?” He’s back to eating his cereal, so I guess our standoff is over.

“Yeah.”

“You talk him down? Or did you get the movies?”

“I got them.”

JD says nothing to that. He knows what it means, because I’ve had to do this before when we fell short.

“So…” I say.

“So,” he picks up. “I think you need to see something.” He stands up, sets his cereal down, and walks over to the doors. “Let me show you.”

I get up and follow him out and we walk down the hallway to his door, which is now closed.

“Shhh,” he says to me as we stop in front of it. “I don’t want to wake her up but I have to show you what I found.”

I give him a nod and then he opens the door and reaches into his pocket to pull out a tiny flashlight. We walk over to the bed where the girl is lying face down with her cheek pressed against his pillow.

A wave of jealousy flows through me, and by the time I get it under control, JD is moving her hair off the back of her neck.

She screams and flails out, knocking JD’s flashlight to the floor where it rolls under the bed.

“Fuck.” They are struggling, her still screaming and JD yelling back, telling her to calm down, when I reach for the light on the bedside table. It flashes on and JD is on top of the girl, pressing her arms above her head so she can’t struggle.

“Get off me,” she growls.

“Just calm down, Blue.”

“Fuck you. Get off.”

JD looks up at me. “Look at the back of her neck.”

“No,” she yells. “Get off me.”

JD and I both ignore her now. He’s looking up at me as he continues to straddle her waist and hold her arms still. “You need to see this, Ark. Just look.”

“Let me go,” she whines. But the fight is gone that quick. She starts to cry.

I lean down and swipe the hair off the back of her neck to find a raised scar in the shape of a circle.