One
Maci
It was impossible to study when Rowan Kennedy was in the room. Not because he was gorgeous—arguably he was, but I had no time for such fleeting fantasies with finals next week—but because I wasn’t certain that he wasn’t about to set something on fire. The last thing I needed was to be the one to put out such a mess in the middle of the library the week before I’d have to take the hardest tests of my life so far. Junior year just sucked.
I had half an hour left before I had to go to work, where I’d spend the next four hours loading and unloading boxes at the grocery store. I was lucky to get that job, considering my mother had lost hers there in such a huge way. That was true at almost every place in a ten-mile radius. I was pretty sure the manager took pity on me.
I lifted my eyes to watch Rowan and his group laughing way too loudly at the table across from me. It was always the five of them together. Rowan seemed to be their leader, but I didn’t really know for sure. They never bothered me and I didn’t mess with them, which meant, other than knowing their names, that they were a grade ahead of me in school, and they looked ridiculously cute in the way rich people seemed to be, I’d never interacted with them at all.
Rowan Kennedy. Ace Monroe. Caesar Douglass. Griffin Gaines. Tanner Eastwick.
From day one, they’d been each other’s best friends and completely uninterested in the rest of the world, at least according to the gossips I could sometimes hear in low voices in the bathroom.
Not that I wanted the guys’ attention. I really didn’t. In one and a half years, I’d leave this town that time forgot—as I liked to think of it—and get the hell out of Kenton, Idaho. I planned to head anywhere else I could go. Someplace with actual working cellular data that didn’t require me to stand on top of our trailer to get a signal.
Even then, it only worked sometimes.
Lately, though, the five richest guys in town had started causing problems—big problems, like setting things on fire. Publicly and in front of people who should probably have put them in jail for doing so. Only nothing ever seemed to happen to them. Maybe they got away with it because Ace’s father was the mayor? If I set fire to something, like Rowan had, or trashed cars up and down main street in broad daylight, the way Caesar had, I would’ve been arrested.
The police chief never held back before arresting anyone from my trailer park, particularly my mother. I chewed on my lip as I thought about her. She might even be in jail right then, for all I knew.
Griffin threw a book at Tanner’s head, who then jumped to his feet like he was going to pound on him.
“Stop.” I spoke the word before I could overthink it, or I would’ve never addressed them at all. Part of them leaving me alone, so I never had to bother with them, meant I actually had to follow through—I never spoke to them or brought attention to myself.
But I’d just broken my own unspoken rule. I swallowed.Whoops.
Five sets of eyes regarded me all at once, Rowan and Ace having to turn around to do so.
Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound.“Sorry. Look, this is the library.”Thank you, Captain Obvious. Internally, I winced. “And we have finals next week. I know that you guys are pretty much done with school. Graduating in a few weeks.” Griffin was the valedictorian, if I wasn’t mistaken. “But I have to get this done, so whatever you’re going to do, could you take it outside? Please? Like, destroy something outside, because I have a very limited amount of time to actually learn what I need to know for this test. Please?”
According to all of the YA books I’d read, this would be the part where one of them would suddenly become my bully. They’d decide they needed to pick on me, and we would fall into a destructive pattern that would leave me ultimately destroyed. At least until I rose up to become some sort of spy or something.
Maybe I’d read too much fiction because that wasn’t what happened next.
Rowan nodded. “My apologies. You’re right.”
I swallowed.Well, that is unexpected. What am I supposed to say now?“Okay.”
“You’re Maci Green, right?” Griffin rose from his seat. “You’re in my math class, which makes you two years ahead in math.”
He took the seat across from me, pulling the chair back with a squeak. Griffin towered over his friends by a few inches. Long, lean, and fit, he had huge green eyes to go with the blond hair he pulled up in a bun on top of his head. In addition to being his class valedictorian, he was also captain of the track team. I never had time for extracurriculars, not in addition to my work schedule. I envied him his time and the way that he felt perfectly confident answering questions in class. Sometimes, he even argued with the teacher because the way they were teaching was wrong.
As though he didn’t care at all if he might be considered rude.
“That’s me.” I looked down at my book. “Sorry to have interrupted. I just…”
He held up his hand. “You were right. Rowan apologized. We’re all sorry. I’ve always wanted to talk to you. But for reasons, I didn’t. Now that you’ve talked to us, I’ve decided to start doing it.”
From their table, Ace groaned and got up to join us. “If you’ve never talked to Griffin before, then you don’t know he’s an arrogant ass. Give him two seconds, and he’s going to tell you about how he’s thevaledictorian.”
What was funny about how Ace said it was that the other three all said it with him, like they were reciting it together because they’d heard it so much. I tried and failed not to grin at that, which must have been the right move because Ace grinned back at me.
He was also tall—well, it wasn’t hard to be taller than me at my tiny five feet—but I’d have put him at six feet, at least. He had dark hair and darker eyes. He took a seat next to Griffin. “You wanted to study, but now you have our attention. We have to talk to you because if a pretty girl gives you attention, as a male member of our species, we are obligated to at least spend a few minutes talking to her.”
Griffin rolled his eyes. “I might be an arrogant ass, but you’re a ridiculous flirt.” He put out his hand. “I’m Griffin; that’s Ace.”
Thoughts of my studies rapidly fled. I’d never had so much attention all at once before. One by one, they sat down at my table, surrounding me, with Rowan taking the last seat to my left and Tanner to my right. Caesar sat on the very end of the table.