I closed my eyes and held onto the coffee and Ian. “Thank you for the songs last night,” I whispered. “They really helped.”
“Good,” he said. When he pulled back, he studied the red mark on my cheek. I should so have checked if it was showing before I left. I’d been in too much of a hurry to get out of there. “Just—Coop said you don’t want to talk about it. She’s done this before.”
A part of me didn’t want to answer, so I just stared at him. But that wasn’t fair. Ian had recorded fucking lullabies for me to help me sleep. He didn’t deserve me being a bitch about anything.
“Yes, but it’s not like it happens all the time or every day. Now, I was just telling Jake and Coop, Rachel is going to loan me some make up so I can hide this, and I’m gonna meet her at the girl’s bathroom in the theatre hall. No one is there right now.”
Jake’s expression had gone almost unreadable, but Archie’s darkened further, and I didn’t think that was possible. But all he said was, “Okay.”
“I got her bag,” Coop announced as they fell in around me like an escort.
It was both sweet and a little unnerving.
“I’m really capable of going to the…”
“Don’t,” Ian said, and he was the last one to snap of the four of them. Coop did it when it was just the two of us. Archie and Jake always did, they weren’t shy. Ian tended to just be nicer. “We’re escorting as much for us as for you, okay?” His tone gentled toward the end, and I lifted my hands to surrender the moment.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. “Sometimes, it’s just easier to pretend it didn’t happen. Then I don’t have to think about it. It’s a lot harder when all of you know.”
They seemed to chew that over as we headed inside. Jake took point, and we went down one of the quieter hallways toward the theatre rooms and black box theatre tucked away behind the auditorium.
“It’s a lot easier to be all alone that way, too,” Coop said. “Not my favorite.”
And I knew that.
At the girl’s bathroom, I pushed the doors in, leaving them in the hall to talk. Rachel leaned back against a sink, phone in hand when I walked in. She took one look at me and frowned. “Okay, when you said you needed to borrow make up, I thought you meant you had bags under your eyes. Which of those bitches hit you?”
Oh.
Boy.
“It wasn’t anyone from school.”
Her phone lowered. “One of the four idiots?”
I blew out a breath. “No, Rachel, it wasn’t any of them and look, I appreciate the concern. I really do. I just want to cover this up so I don’t have people staring at me all day. They’ve had enough reasons to do that lately.” Crazily enough, she’d been the first one I thought to ask.
Tucking her phone away, she pulled a small cosmetics pouch out of her backpack and held it out to me.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, you need a hand doing it? I’m not so bad at it.” With a wince, she added, “Not that I’m implying you are.”
“I didn’t think you were,” I admitted, then took a sip of the coffee before setting it down. “And yeah, it’s been a while since I had to cover up something this big.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve had to cover up something like this before?”
“Yeah, most recently hickeys.” I really needed to just shut up, or I was going to end up revealing a lot of crap I didn’t want to reveal.
Touching her tongue to her teeth, the other girl canted her head and said, “I told you I thought you could use a friend and that I’d like to be that friend.” The words sent recognition sparking through me. “I understated it—youneeda friend, and I am going to be that friend.”
Wait.
What?
Rachel was Mr. Thorns?
The corner of her mouth kicked up, and then she touched her fingers to my sore cheek and began applying the coolness of the concealer. “Probably not the best time to drop the surprise on you,” Rachel said. “I really wanted to tell you Saturday, but you looked so miserable.”