Golden boy didn’t take his father’s lack of faith in him very well and unleashed his wrath on Dia. Made her life a living hell, crossing every line imaginable to get her to quit, but she was determined to see things through.
Long story short, they hated each other.
Until… their genitals didn’t.
Thus began the most confusing love/hate relationship to ever exist. Why? Because Dia and Finn aren’t dating. Not really. They like to say they’re “friends with benefits,” but anyone with half a brain knows that’s a load of crap. Everything a couple does, they do. Sex, PDA, exclusivity, nauseating nicknames.
The list goes on and on.
It’s so painfully obvious that they have it bad, but you will never hear them refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. If you ask me, their so-called “casual” relationship is a big, fat disaster just waiting to happen.
Two fire trucks branded Silver Springs Fire Dept and a police car come charging into the school’s lot before Dia and Theo can argue further.
“How’s that for a drill, Finn’s girl?” Theo snarks.
“Shut up, Cox,” Dia grumbles, grabbing a handful of her black, curly hair and squeezing the water out. The deluge has decreased into a drizzle. It’s about time. I don’t know how much longer they could’ve left us out in the pouring rain.
“Speaking of, where is Finn?” Dia pushes to her tiptoes, searching for her not-boyfriend. She’s right. He should be here by now—these two are like magnets. Plus, it must’ve taken five minutes topsfor kids to disobey their teachers and go find their friends.
“How should I know where your boyfriend is?” Theo drawls, his phone pinging with a text. He plucks it out of his pocket, his jaw going slack when he skims through the message on his screen. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“What?” Dia asks.
“These crazy sons of bitches. They actually did it,” he says, more to himself than us.
“The hell you talking about?” Dia pushes.
“It’s—” Theo stops talking abruptly, eyes dead set on something in the distance. And it’s not just him. The entire student body has gone quiet.
Dia and I track Theo’s gaze to the school’s main entrance, more specifically to the two six-foot-something morons being escorted out of the building by the sheriff.
The first person I see is Finn.
Then I see him.
Xavier Emery.
Finn’s brother—I’d say best friends, but these two are practically family. They literally wear matching chains for Pete’s sake. Xavier is a lot of things: popular, captain of the basketball team, so beautiful it’s almost painful, but to me? He’s the asshole little boy who cut off one of my pigtails when we were kids.
Dia loses it. “Cox, so help me God, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I’ll—”
“Chill.” Theo caves. “I heard them talking about some prank after practice yesterday. Thought it was just locker room talk. I didn’t think they were serious.”
Is that why we were evacuated?
The basketball team’s star players pulling a prank?
What could they have done that was so bad they had to pull the fire alarm and evacuate the whole school?’
“What sort of prank?” Dia’s voice wavers with worry.
Theo shrugs. “Something about stink bombs, I think?”
Dia squeezes her eyes shut and exhales a long, exasperated sigh. Worst part is, she doesn’t even look surprised. Finn Richards has always been the troublemaker.
That impulsive, reckless kid who, if it weren’t for his rich daddy, would have been expelled many moons ago. But, hey, what can you do? Easton High needs the funding, and just like Xavier, Finn is one of the team’s most valuable players, so they sweep his behavior under the rug.
Objectively, Finn is a no-brainer. It’s the Xavier part of it all that makes no sense to me. Dude hasn’t so much as breathed wrong since freshman year, so to take part in a prank like this? I don’t get it.