Gemma went to fill her water bottle in the hallway–thirty seconds after Noah saidhehad to fillhiswater bottle in the hallway. I stood up and flipped my head over to get all of my dark hair in my hand to put it up in a ponytail. When I stood back up, a guy was standing in front of me. I’d seen him around before. He was one of thebad kids. Not bad like Kane and me, but he liked to skateboard and smoke weed, and he had tattoos up his neck and a lot of piercings. He seemed pretty cool.
“Hey,” he smiled, shaking his shaggy blonde hair out of his green eyes. The fluorescent light of the gym reflected off his lip ring.
“Hi,” I said as I secured my mop in a hair tie.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while but you’re always with those guys,” he nodded behind him to the bleachers.
I wasn’talwayswith them, but whatever.
“Okay?”
“I just wanted to tell you that I saw you beat up that basketball player last week because he pantsed a freshman in the cafeteria. That was fucking awesome,” he chuckled.
“Well, thanks. I do what I can,” I smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Finley. And you’re Dani. You’re in my History class.”
“Oh, fuck. Sorry, I’m bad with names.”
“You sit in the back a few seats over from me,” he laughed, pushing his hair away from his face again. “It’s cool, though. You’re always busy with your little reader thing.”
Mylittle reader thingwas my Kindle, and that was my baby.
“Are you stalking me, Finley?” I bit my bottom lip as I shamelessly flirted. If other people were free to have their fun, then I would have mine.
And sure as fuck Kane was staring the whole time.
“It’s hard not to. You’re…different. And I just want to say hi, I guess.”
“Is that what this is? You’re cute,” I laughed.
He grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I guess so. But I know it’s not going well for me. You just said I was cute, so basically I’m up there with golden retrievers and kittens.”
“I happen to love golden retrievers and kittens. And you know what, Finley?” I looked over to see Lauren kissing Kane’s neck, making my gut clench. “I think we’re going to be great friends.”
Finn smiled–I was dubbing himFinnfrom now on–as Gemma and Noah came back fromfilling their water bottlestogether. I introduced them to Finn, and then Theo joined our party and I introduced him as well.
Kane stayed on the bleachers with his growth until Mr. White came in and told us to spend the hour doing freestyle tumbling–which meant we would do fuck-all and he would take a nap in his office.
We hauled the tumbling mats out and set them up to at least make a minimal effort just in case Mr. White cut his nap short to check on us. I did sets of cartwheels and roundoffs, using the time to get an actual workout in, unlike what the rest of my peers were doing.
Lauren was doing somersaults and cartwheels on the mats next to ours. She was awful at all things physical. She was clumsy, not very coordinated, and liked to laugh it off like it didn’t bother her that I was better than her.
I did the splits, earning praise from Gemma, Noah, and Theo. Kane smiled–which Lauren noticed immediately.
“Of course she’s good at the splits, look at what she does in her spare time,” she said to her friends. “How’d you get to be so good at the splits, whore?”
“Ask your boyfriend,” I said as I hopped a few times, still holding the split position.
Her face turned bright red as I flipped her off.
One of these days she would learn to leave me alone. It wasn’t in my DNA to back down. The bitch would learn that when she played with fire–when she played with me–she was gonna get burned. Because I would set fire to the entire fucking place without blinking an eye.
Chapter 16
Kane
ItwasHalloween–thenightof the gun deal going down between us and Bash Sanchez. The brother of big-dicked Marco, as Dani liked to call him. Bash worked for Leonardo Dominguez, who we’ve had dealings with for years. Dad and Leonardo go way back.