“Listen, Liam, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to the prom, and I won’t go out with you either.”
I try to enter homeroom, but he yanks on my elbow and claps a hand over my mouth. In my dream, when Brett did it, the gesture had been sexy. He kept me quiet so that the whole school wouldn’t know that he had been fucking my brains out. Liam wanted me quiet for devious and dubious reasons.
I slam my elbow into his gut and then up to his face, but he moves his head away just in time. Still, I’m able to twist around and grab his shoulders. I try to push him back to make it easier to sweep his leg out from under him and get him to go down, but he grabs my shoulders in return and slams me against the wall. I barely have time to duck my chin toward my chest so that the back of my head doesn’t hit against the wall.
“What I don’t understand is why you’ll whore it around with all of the Mutineers but won’t look at anyone else.”
“I’m no one’s whore,” I snap.
“Here’s the thing,” Liam says, leaning in far too close. “You wouldn’t be a whore with me. I can give you the world—”
“What the hell is going on here?” a familiar voice asks.
Not Tyler.
Shane.
Shane casually places a hand on Liam’s shoulder, but his fingers are digging in tight, and he forces Liam to back away from me.
Shane to the rescue.
Liam brushes Shane off. “We were just talking about whores, so it’s funny that you showed up, what with your mom—”
I grab Liam’s shoulder again, and I haul off and deck him for Shane.
“I didn’t need you to do that for me,” Shane snaps as Mr. Winters rushes out of homeroom.
“What in the world is going on here?” the teacher demands, glaring at me.
“Liam here walked into the wall, didn’t you?” Shane asks.
Liam glowers at Shane and me. There’s hatred in his eyes. Fuck. I just gave myself a huge enemy.
“Is that true?” Mr. Winters asks him.
Liam mumbles something. His nose is gushing blood, and he hurries off to the bathroom. Maybe I broke it. Had I broken it before? Oh, that’s right. I hit him in the kisser before.
Mr. Winters shakes his head. “Erika, inside. Now.”
I nod, but Shane grabs my arm the moment my teacher’s back inside his classroom.
“He had no right to say what he said,” I say, “and I did it for you. I don’t want you to end up in jail beside your mom.”
He slowly releases me, and something about him seems to soften. I want to ask him about his tattoos, but I don’t.
As if we’re on the same wavelength, he rubs the one in the webbing between his index finger and thumb, the four dots to form a square with a dot inside. Maybe he’s thinking about telling me about it, but instead, he mutters something that might be thanks and stalks off.
These Mutineers. I swear they’re going to be the death of me.
* * *
When I head inside homeroom finally, Mr. Winters glares at me. “I should send you to the principal’s office for being late and disrespecting me.”
“I would never disrespect you,” I say sweetly.
“You didn’t come in—Mr. Tremaine, why are you late?”
Tyler winces as he waves to Mr. Winters. “Sorry. Got in a bit of an accident.”