“Juliet Donovan?” My upper lip curls away from my teeth at that familiar voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Lindsey fucking Crawford. I turn to face the music—or rather the bitch that I used to put up with at Silverwood Prep. At least, she had openly hated me before everyone else did.
Crossing my arms over my chest and the loosely fitted black tank top that’s tucked into the top of my jeans, I arch a brow. “I guess I’m doing what everyone else is doing, Lindsey,” I say. “Just here to have a good time. Is there a problem with that?”
She snorts and sways on the black pumps she’s wearing. Despite the cooler temperatures outside, she’s dressed like it’s the height of summer, in a thin black sheath dress with cutoutsalong the sides that stretch down and around, almost like they’re pointing directly to her cunt. The glass in her hand is full to the brim and practically glowing orange under the lights overhead.
“Problem?” She laughs again, sounding too much like the other Lindsey I’d run into at Silverwood Public—one of Megan White’s cronies—for comfort. Surely there has to be a few good Lindseys out there, just not here. “You’re the problem!” Lindsey stumbles forward and shoves a finger against my chest. “You aren’t wanted here. No one trusts you.”
I flick her hand away from me and tamp down the urge to grab her by the hair and drag her ass out back to the glistening, heated pool and shove her head under the water. “Put want in one hand and shit in the other and see what fills up faster.”
Her lips part and her eyes narrow. “Huh? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’m over this conversation,” I snap, dropping my arms and stepping away from her. It’s time to find Lex. Nolan was right—I’m not the one in need of a bodyguard. It’s bitches like Lindsey who need to be protected from me.
“Really?” Lindsey taunts as I half turn away from her. “You’re not even the least bit curious about what your old friends are up to?”
“We were never friends, Lindsey,” I say.
“Oh, I’m not talking about me.”
I pause. I should just walk away. I don’t care what she could have to say. Yes. That’s exactly what I’ll do. Just keep walking. Except my feet don’t move the way I want them to. Instead, I find myself turning to face her again.
“What are you talking about?” I demand.
A smirk twists Lindsey’s full pink lips. She knows she’s got me hooked with her tease of information. Instead of giving it up right away, though, she slowly lifts her glass to her lips and takesa long sip. My hands curl into fists. Annoyance burns in my gut and grows steadily with each second that passes.
Finally, after what feels like the longest drink I’ve ever seen, Lindsey pops her mouth off the rim of her glass. “Avery,” she begins. “She’s been sent to a boarding school in the Swiss Alps.”
I blink. Of all the things she could have said, that was not what I expected. “What? Why?”
Lindsey presses one perfectly manicured finger to the rim of her glass and wipes it clean with the pad before licking the sugary mix of juice and alcohol off the digit. “Her parents pulled her out of school because of the sex tape she made with a few of the football players—oh, and all the pictures that were going around.”
“That’s—” Not surprising considering all I knew about my ex-best friend. What’s more surprising is the fact that I haven’t heard anything about it. Even if Public is a different school, Silverwood is a small town. There are always leaks, and surely something that scandalous would’ve made its way down the gossip vine by now? Before I can ask when, though, Lindsey’s already going on.
“She should’ve expected it, though,” Lindsey says with a sniff and a shrug. “I mean, it was bound to happen once everyone found out that she’d been fucking the whole team behind their girlfriends’ backs and even some of her friends—but I suppose everyone knew about it when it happened to you. They just didn’t care.”
The last comment is meant to hurt me. All it does is piss me off.
Rolling my shoulders back, I shift closer, until my chest bumps Lindsey’s arm. She retreats, but she’s too close to the wall to really go anywhere, and she ends up stumbling to a stop with a barrier at her back and me at her front. The orange liquid in her glass sloshes over the rim and drips between us.
“What else, Lindsey?” I ask, letting my voice drop low—dangerously so. My smile, when it comes, is anything but kind. I don’t have to see myself in a mirror to know that it’s feral.
She swallows and the glass in her hand begins to shake. But true to Lindsey fashion, she shores up her defenses and sucks down a long gulp of her alcohol for liquid courage. It’s almost cute how terrified she can be when she’s debating whether or not I’m the girl she remembers—easily influenced by what people thought of me—or if I’m the girl I now am. The girl who doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks or says.
“Bran was kicked off the football team too,” she blurts out.
I tilt my head to the side. “Is that so?”
She nods jerkily. “Y-yeah. He… um… got hurt at the charity game, so he was out for a bit anyway, but he?—”
“He got hurt?”
Lindsey’s eyes latch on something over my shoulder. No sooner do I turn my head and glance back than she’s slipping out from beneath me and scurrying away, disappearing into the next room to be swallowed up by gyrating bodies and people with drinks held above their heads. It’s surprising how fast she can move in those heels when she wants to.
14
GIO
