AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Remy.” I’ve never sounded calmer. “What the fuck happened?”
“He thought it was funny.” She drops her hair, sunshine blonde covering my hand, and faces me again. “He didn’t think it was that funny a minute later.”
“Why? Did you break his goddamn nose?”
“No. Some random guy on the street did. Came out of nowhere and laid him out. It was…” A bewildered shake of her head, like she can’t believe the things her eyes have seen.
“How did this even—a random street guy at study group? That’s in one of Mason’s buildings. There’s no way security let in some guy from the street.”
Remy bites at her lip. “I was outside by myself.”
“Without your nine thousand bodyguards?”
“I was by myself for aminute.” She pushes a hand through her hair. “They were going to be right behind me. God, Jameson, it’sfine.And you don’t have to worry about the Good Samaritan guy. I don’t know who he was. Somebody who wanted to do a good deed.”
Remy’s shaking by the time she finishes, and I put my arms around her and pull her in. “That Smartwater isfreezing,” she says, inching away from it, but she doesn’t let go. I rub her back and smooth her hair, and Christ, it was terrible when she was a kid. Nobody ever burned her with a cigarette, though.
“I’ll take care of the asshole.”
“Don’t. Nothing ever happens to him. He got arrested a couple years ago for being a menace and always brags about how the judge let him off with a slap on the wrist.I owe everything to a guy named Beaufort.He’s always saying that.”
My brain freezes. My blood. Everything freezes. There’s only one goddamn Beaufort that I know of, and it’s Beaufort Hayes, the judge who signed off on condemning us to hell. The judge with the kid granddaughter and the evil heart. He’s the one who guaranteed Mason years of excruciating pain, and Gabriel years of torture, and me—
Me—
“A guy named Beaufort, huh?”
Remy groans into my shoulder. “It’s a hilarious joke to him, how Judge Hayes gave him a second chance at life.”
“Jameson? Did you find out if—” Mason’s at the doorway, Gabriel right behind him. He takes one look at Remy and his face goes hard. It’s Dad-mode if I’ve ever seen it. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Remy says.
She’s drowned out by me saying, “Some prick in her class fucked with her.”
Chaos ensues.
Remy leaps out of the bed, going toe to toe with Mason about how her study abroad trip to Greece is going to befine, it’s not a big deal, she can take care of herself. In the hall, Gabriel paces back and forth, somehow on the phone with the dean of Remy’s college inside the first minute, saying things likethreat to my sister and the communityandhold you personally liableandthere is no limit to the amount I’d spendin a voice so sharp I’m surprised we’re not all bleeding. Elise and Charlotte and Nate and Lydia have come down to see what the fuss is about.
“—this is exactly the danger I’m talking about,” Mason says, voice rising above everything else. “This motherfucker is going to face consequences, and you—”
“Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if I was in Greece!” Remy counters.
“It would have happened.” I don’t mean to enter the fray, it just happens. All the noise is getting to me. It’s making me want to fuck something up. This bastard from her program. The judge. It takes everything I have to stay here, to stay still. I’m pretending to be fine for areason, damn it, so that none of these people have to bail me out of jail when Charlotte could go into labor any second and Gabriel has a new lease on life.
“Jameson, there’s no way toknowthat,” Remy says, her hands together like she’s praying to me to understand the inherent goodness of study abroad.
“Yes, there is. People like that never stop. They fuck with people’s lives until someone stopsthem.Fuck him up, Mason. Burn him to the ground.”
2
LILY
The best way to clear one’s mind is with movement.
I get it. That sounds like one of those sayings painted on the wall of a yoga studio in big, swoopy calligraphy with a butterfly perched on them. It’s still true.
That’s the thing I love most about my aerial hoop routines.
