Amber clapped her hands. “Yay!”
The small group around us went quiet as Miller sang Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Not my jam, but holy fuck, the guy could sing. He turned the song into something else, made it his own. Every damn lyric told the story of him and Violet.
A smashing of glass cut through the noise of the party. A guy with silver hair and fancy clothes stood on the dining room table, a broken bottle at his feet. I’d heard some people talking about him earlier by the pool—his name was Holden, and he was new to the school, like me.
“Everyone shut the fuck up!” Holden bellowed. His drunk, watery gaze was focused on Miller. The rest of the house followed his lead.
Miller didn’t miss a note as the entire house went quiet, listening. Violet came tearing in from the back and stopped short, recognition on her face.
Because this is their song.
Miller’s eyes met hers, and he sang straight to her.
“For you, I’d bleed myself dry.”
That could’ve been my motto. To bleed myself dry for those I cared about. It was too late to save my mother, and all that was left was the grief and anger. Anger that was the same as my father’s, coursing through my veins like it had in his. It flared and burned, and I wished it would flame out altogether, but it never did. The only thing I could do was to use it to protect those who needed protecting. Like Miller. He poured his love out of his guitar, straight to his girl.
Violet, crying now, ran for the exit. Miller stopped the song with a twang and got up to follow her. Someone stopped him at the door.
“Well, lookit who crashed this party. Where you running off to, Stratton?”
Frankie Dowd.
My anger flared like fire when gasoline hits it. I shook out of my jacket and cracked my neck left and right.
Let’s go.
“Back off, asshole,” Miller snarled at Frankie.
“Or what? You going to have your convict bodyguard cold-cock me again?”
I snorted. The dumbass hadn’t seen me. I moved in front of Miller and crossed my arms, cold and stony, while inside, the fire raged.
Frankie wore a bandage over his nose and his eyes were rimmed with bruises. They widened in fear. “You’re fucking dead, dude. You have no idea who I am.”
“I know who you are,” I said. “I know exactly who you are.”
The cowardly, punk-ass bitch who tried to keep my friend from his medicine.
A handful of seconds passed, the air tightening with every breath, until a bellow sounded from the adjacent dining room.
“Dude! What the fuck are you doing?”
All eyes went to Holden who was tap dancing on the mahogany dining table, grinding shattered glass into the wood and drunkenly crooning “Singing in the Rain” while Chance Blaylock stared wide-eyed at the damage.
“My parents are going to fucking kill me,” Chance seethed. “Someone get over here and help me get this prick off the table.”
River Whitmore emerged from the kitchen, and the two of them made grabs for Holden, who easily danced out of reach despite looking as if he’d drunk half a keg all by himself.
“You’re dead, fucker,” Frankie snarled, drawing my attention back to him. He pulled a police-issue Taser from his board shorts.
Miller held up his hands. “Whoa, hey…”
Frankie lunged. I dodged right and swung my left arm up, knocking the Taser out of his grasp. I gripped him by the front of his shirt and drove him away from Miller. The crazy fucker with the silver hair had danced his way to the living room coffee table, but he barely registered. The rage was free now, flowing through me and into Frankie. He stumbled and went down, and I went down with him, both of us grappling and throwing punches wherever we could. I reveled at the burst of pain when one of his fists connected, almost more than when I got one in on him.
Which was more often.
It wasn’t a fair fight; I could beat the shit out of the scrawny guy…