“I do too,” I sighed. “But I don’t know how we’ll ever get away from the Organization. I don’t think we can.”
“Fuck, I hate this,” he said and slammed his hand against his steering wheel. “I have to save you!”
“We’ll play by their rules until we have a chance to act,” I said and ran my hand down his arm to wrap it around his fist. “We can have patience and then strike when they aren’t expecting it.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he replied. “I can’t treat you like that, I can’t work on breaking you the way they want me to. I don’t have it in me.”
“I know,” I said. “And I know Valen and Archer won’t be able to, either. The Kings aren’t capable of that kind of violence, but you have to fake it or they’ll find others who are. And you know they’ll have no problem finding them.”
“I know,” he said in a strained, pained voice.
He started his truck then, and we drove to school in near silence as the seriousness of our situation wormed its way through our hearts.
When we got to school, Valen and Archer were waiting for us and Valen looked terrible. His nose was crooked and he had two black eyes with a swollen, split lip.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe they did that to you,” I cried out and I wanted to hold him, to comfort him and make him feel better. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know who would be watching. I had no idea who belonged to the Organization and if any of them were at our school.
“It looks worse than it feels,” he said and gave me a lopsided grin. “Okay, I lied, it hurts like hell.”
“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I feel like this is somehow my fault.”
“Never your fault,” Valen exclaimed. “None of this is anything you could prevent. It’s all on the shoulders of the Organization, and that fucking bastard, Max.”
“He is such a piece of shit,” I said, and told them what he did to me in the car, and what Reg had said to me this morning. “I think there’s no getting out of this at the moment. We’re going to have to play it safe until we can make a move.”
“Has anyone told Ryker?” Kingston asked. “Does he factor into any of this?”
“He’s with Max on paper, but I have a feeling if it came right down to it, he’d be on Team Everly,” Archer said. “I mean, we all would be, but I think Ryker in particular has it bad for her.”
“Then we have to keep in touch with him. We need to secure a way of contacting him and each other, first of all. Burner phones, we’ll get them after school.”
“We might need to send him one,” I suggested. “He doesn’t exactly have any money himself.”
“Consider it done,” Valen said. “We’re smarter than any of them, and we’re doing this for the right reason.”
“What reason is that?” I asked.
“Love, of course,” Valen replied, and I melted with emotion and fell hard for all of them all over again.