The Eastwood Series

by M. E. Clayton

  The bell rang, signaling that class was over, and so, I powered down my Kindle and put it back in my bag. I kept my head down like a coward but was honest enough with myself to blame it on Samson Maddox being in my class. The few times I saw him after that night, I’d always been with Brayden and I used him as a shield, never leaving his side.

  I took a deep breath as I realized I no longer had a shield.

  Chapter 6

  Samson~

  She was in my fucking fifth period.

  When I had walked into Mr. Amblin’s class and spotted the black-haired head looking into her bag, I had almost tripped on my way to my desk. Normally, I would have sat in the back, but I hadn’t trusted myself to sit so close to her. I hadn’t even had a chance to absorb the fact that she was here at Eastwood, and I had to go and have a class with her.

  And the shit just got worse when I walked into sixth period and she had been sitting in the back by herself at one of the lab tables. Not sure about Ridgeview, but all of Eastwood’s science classes had experiment tables instead of desks. It was supposed to keep students from getting embarrassed if they weren’t picked as partners.

  My feet started taking me to the back of the room, ready to sit at her table, when I saw Peter Douglas take the empty seat next to her.

  I wanted to strangle the fucker.

  “Samson, there’s an empty seat right here.” I turned, and Phyllis Montague was smiling at me and pointing to the seat next to her. I thought about to what Duke had said about Phyllis trying to get her claws into me this year, and scoffed

  No fucking way.

  Instead, I kept walking, not caring if she was embarrassed, and sat next to Henry Doolittle. Henry was an alright kid, if not a bit reserved. But I knew he was smart and would do his part for his grade in any experiment we were assigned together.

  Luckily, I had P.E. for seventh period, and even if Mackenzie did too, it wouldn’t be co-ed like the other periods. All athletes had seventh period P.E., so nothing would interfere with afterschool practice. We rotated out depending on which sport was in season, and since football started immediately, we were in seventh period P.E. first. The baseball team came next, then basketball. Once our seasons were over, our P.E. period would switch with our free study period. Not sure how they managed it all, but they did.

  This class followed the same pattern as all the rest. The teacher introduced herself, went over her expectations, but in addition to what was expected of us, she went through the safety procedures for the class. We’d be working with chemicals and shit, so that was probably something I should have paid attention to, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the dark-haired beauty sitting in the back of the class with an asshole that wasn’t me.

  Forty torturous minutes later, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to know what the fuck she was doing here and if she was still with that fucking asshole. I had to find a way to get this shit I was feeling under control. My obsession with Mackenzie Harden was real and I needed to do something before I lost my fucking mind with it.

  When the bell rang, I hurried my ass out of class. I waited by the door until I saw her cross the threshold and she yelped when I grabbed her by her arm and dragged her behind me. I knew people were gawking because, being the star athlete that I was, people were always interested in what I was doing. But with Mackenzie in tow? I knew phones were out and pointing at us.

  I found an empty alcove between the science building and the hallway that led to the math building, and I had her up against the wall, my hands on either side of her beautiful head, caging her in.

  Her purple eyes were large and her face pale. She was almost an entire foot shorter than I was, so I had to leaned over to get in her face. People could record us on their phones all they wanted, but our conversation was for us only.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice low and rough with maddening obsession.

  Mackenzie hugged her bag to her body, and I bit out a low curse. “I…I go to school here now,” she stuttered.

  “Why?”

  “My…my mom got a…j…job with the city,” she said. “She thought…it’d be a…a good idea to move here and live in the…city she worked for.”

  Mackenzie was lying.

  I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, but I was pretty confident about it. It was in the way she gave her answer. Like it was rehearsed. Like she was repeating the story on command.

  “It’s only a twenty-minute drive to Ridgeview,” I pointed out. “It’s your senior year. Why not just make the twenty-minute drive, so you can spend your senior year with your friends?”

  Mackenzie arms tightened around her bag. “I don’t have a car,” she replied. I stared at her lips as she answered, and I never wanted to take a girl so badly in my life.

  I forced myself to focus and returned my gaze to hers. “And Mahoney couldn’t drive you?”

  She flinched, and if I hadn’t been so hyper-focused on her, I would have missed it. “We…we broke up at the beginning of summer.” I closed my eyes and felt my entire body surrender to the madness I knew was sure to follow.

  When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me in a way that told me she knew exactly what I was thinking. Her body began to tremble, and I wondered if it was a scared trembling or an excited one.

  “You guys broke up?” I knew I had heard her correctly the first time, but I needed absolute clarification on this one. Again, I wasn’t a poacher.

  Mackenzie nodded. “We…we broke up back at…at the end of May.”

  And this next question was the most important. “Who broke it off?” Her eyes widened, but she quickly tried to recover.

  Yep.

  Mackenzie Harden was hiding something.

  “Uhm…it was mutual-”

  “Bullshit,” I bit out. “Who broke up with who?”

  “I…I broke up with him,” she confessed, her voice soft.

  “Is it over?” There was breaking up because you were going through some shit, and then there was breaking up because it was really over. As much as I wanted this girl, I didn’t want to get caught up in a yo-yo situation.

  “It’s over,” she confirmed, her voice sounding stronger than it had been earlier. And she said it with enough conviction, I believed her.

  I pushed back and straightened to my full height. She was no longer caged in, but she wasn’t making a move to leave either. We had fifteen minutes before the start of seventh period, so I knew we didn’t have much time to get into the more serious aspects of this conversation, but I couldn’t let her go without making a couple of things clear.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets, so that I wouldn’t reach for her. I stared down at her long and hard. “Do you feel it?” The hold she had on her bag tightened to the point where her knuckles turned white. She knew what I was referring to. “Do you?”

  Mackenzie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was struggling to get herself under control and it was making my dick hard.

  Good.

  I wanted her to be as fucked up over this as I was.

  When she opened her eyes, I was back in her personal space. My hands were still in my pockets, but my stomach was pressed up against her bag. I was also very aware that we’d drawn a crowd. “Do you, Mackenzie?” Her name falling from my lips like it belonged there.

  “Yes,” she admitted softly, sealing her fate in a way she couldn’t possibly understand.

  I wanted to pull her into my arms and make up for the past year that I haven’t had her. I wanted to erase every fucking memory she had of every guy before me.

  Especially that tool, Brayden Mahoney.

  But I also knew I wasn’t strong enough to keep having this conversation without doing something stupid and making fools out of both of us. However, I couldn’t just leave things like this.

  I scowled to let Mackenzie know I was serious. “No one else gets to have you,” I told her.

  “Wh…what does that mean?” Her voice shook, tel
ling me she knew exactly what it meant.

  “It means, you may be newly single, but you’re not available,” I clarified. “If you’re going to be anyone’s at Eastwood, you’re going to be mine, Mackenzie.”

  “Samson…” Her eyes grew wide and I knew that, once I let her in, those eyes would always see right through me and bring me to my fucking knees.

  It was also the first time I’ve heard my name fall from her lips and I knew I needed to get to seventh period before I forced her to skip with me on the first day.

  “No one else gets to have you,” I repeated.

  She knew what I was saying.

  She knew what I was asking.

  Mackenzie nodded silently, and I turned around and headed for P.E.

  Chapter 7

  Mackenzie~

  The trip to my locker and to the gym were lost experiences. I had no idea how I managed to get to class, but I had. My body must have been operating on autopilot because my mind had been a jumbled mess after that…whatever that was with Samson Maddox.

  I had barely made it through the doors of the gym when Charlie had rushed forward and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me over. “What in the hell, Mack?” she whispered-yelled.

  “What?” Though I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what.

  “I was waiting by your locker for you and, suddenly, my phone started blowing up with notifications that I was being tagged in all kinds of different posts.” My phone had been vibrating in my back pocket also, and when I had put my stuff up in my gym locker, I had seen a bunch of texts from Shondra and Ella. Even a few from people I didn’t really talk to anymore.

  “Ladies!”

  I looked over and the coach was calling us all together. On the other side of the room, a group of boys were gathered together with their coach. “Come on,” I said. “The coach is calling us over.”

  Charlie fell into step next to me, but she was still demanding answers. “What the hell is going on, Mackenzie?”

  We reached the group before I could tell her anything substantial, but it was clear that everyone was wondering the same thing. Everyone was whispering and staring at me. Some looks were curious, some were mean, and others were downright hostile. Even some of the guys were glancing over our way.

  “I’m Coach Brody,” our P.E. teacher announced, “and today I really don’t care what you girls do as long as you’re doing some form of exercise. I like to spend the first day talking with the students who may have restrictions or health concerns. So, go make yourselves scarce while I attend to business.”

  “Coach Brody, can me and Mackenzie walk the balcony?” Charlie asked.

  “Just don’t fall over the railing,” she replied, and before I could ask Charlie what the hell walking the balcony meant, she was dragging me towards some stairs that led to the second floor. I looked up and, sure enough, there was a walkway that circled the entire gym.

  Once we hit the second landing, Charlie was back to whisper-yelling. “So, what the hell is going on, Mack?”

  I shook my head as we started walking. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “We have fifth and sixth period together, and…I don’t know. When I was walking out of Science class, Samson was waiting by the door for me. He grabbed me and pulled me with him.”

  “For what? There are pictures and videos of you guys all over the place, but no one could hear what was being said.”

  “He asked what I was doing her and if I was still dating Brayden,” I grimaced.

  Charlie started biting on her lower lip. “Okay. That makes sense,” she mumbled. “Samson is our reigning quarterback and there are rumors of being destined for the NFL. It’d make sense for him to want to know if Brayden might come around and cause problems.”

  “He’s…kind of intense,” I hedged. I was juggling lies and half-truths and I was starting to forget where I was with them all.

  Charlie snorted “Dude.”

  I choked out a laugh. “What?”

  “He’s beyond intense,” she said. “I don’t think the boy knows how to smile. But I think that’s because he’s so serious about football and his grades. Mind you, I don’t know him well, and I’m just repeating rumors, but he’s always been…moody.”

  “My friend Shondra texted me earlier, telling me that Brayden was telling people we were just on a break,” I told her. “We’re not, though. We’re broken up for good.”

  “Well, you did say you guys broke up, so that you could enjoy your senior year apart,” she reminded me. “Maybe to him, you guys really are just on a break.”

  I hated that I didn’t feel comfortable telling her the truth yet. “No, Charlie. We’re broken up for good.”

  She didn’t comment, but quickly went back to the subject at hand. “Is that all Samson wanted?”

  “No. He…uh, said some other things,” I grumbled, still not sure what to make of our conversation. I mean, I knew what he said, but I had no idea what that meant for me. Were we a couple now? Or was he implying that he’d be waiting when I was ready to date again? I had no freakin’ idea.

  I was so confused.

  Before I could tell her more, footprints thundered behind us, and soon, we were flanked by two male bodies, one of them throwing his arm around Charlie’s shoulders.

  She froze and I froze with her. “Uhm…what are you doing?” she asked the guy who was being super overly familiar with her.

  “Escorting you on your jaunt around the gym,” he replied flippantly.

  “Hey, Dee,” the guy next to me said, and when I turned to look at him, it was a good thing we had stopped walking or else I would have tripped all over myself.

  The guy standing next to me could only be Duke Maddox. He had the same coloring and facial features that Samson had, but he looked younger and softer.

  And then my ears perked up. “Uh…my name’s Mackenzie,” I told him. “Not Dee.”

  He smirked and my heart stumbled. He was gorgeous like is brother. “Don’t you read your Bible?” he quipped, and I immediately got the reference.

  I was also immediately offended.

  I knew that story, and I didn’t appreciate the implication. “I’m not here to betray your brother,” I snapped, not sure where the anger was coming from. Maybe I was just tired of being in the limelight, but I was starting to feel on the defensive. Or maybe I was still felling residual shame from letting Brayden abuse me for so long and not standing up for myself sooner.

  Duke grinned, and he appeared…proud of my retort. “I wasn’t referring to you betraying him,” he said softly, and that’s when my face heated with embarrassment. If he wasn’t teasing me about how Delilah betrayed Samson, then he was referring to Samson’s irrevocable love for Delilah.

  “Will you get your freakin’ arm off me,” Charlie spat to the boy still accosting her.

  “Do you know how many girls would love for me to put my arm around them?” he scoffed, offended that Charlie hadn’t swooned at his attentions.

  She shook his arm off and glared up at him. Duke and I stood as spectators as she said, “The entire school knows how many girls would love to have your arms around them, Raiden. Especially, since you’ve already had your arm around most of them.”

  Raiden Cruz.

  I’ve heard that name many times when the Eagles players hung out together to badmouth Eastwood. Raiden Cruz, Ford Abrams, and Samson Maddox’s names were often tossed around. I wasn’t sure what position Raiden played, but he was an Eastwood Tiger.

  He was also a good-looking sonofabitch. It made me wonder what was in Eastwood’s town water because Eastwood was producing prime male specimens.

  “And what are you doing here anyway?” Charlie asked him, her voice turning a bit shrilly. “Shouldn’t you be with the football team?”

  Raiden shrugged. “It’s tryouts,” he replied. “And I don’t need to try out.”

  “None of you do,” Charlie shot back. “But I don’t see the others here.”

  “Awe, babe, don’t be like t
hat,” he crooned, and I feared for him a bit. Charlie was a sweet girl unless you got her riled up.

  “Do not call me ‘babe’,” she snapped. Her head swiveled around to take us all in. “Why are you guys bothering us?”

  “Just checking on Dee,” Duke answered for the both of them.

  Having heard our earlier discussion, Charlie immediately went to my defense. “Her name’s Mackenzie, Duke. Not Dee.”

  Duke just grinned at her. “I never guessed you for being the prickly sort, Charlie Harden.”

  “Maybe because we’ve only spoken like two words to each other since you started Eastwood High,” she retorted.

  “Well, looks like we’re going to be the best of friends now,” he replied, his grin turning up.

  “What in the hell is going on?” she damn near screeched.

  “Ask your cousin,” Raiden replied.

  Charlie’s eyes were big and confused when she looked at me. “Mack?”

  There was no way out of this. Plus, I didn’t want these two dicks making her feel like a fool. “After I told Samson that me and Brayden were broken up for good, Samson…uh…”

  Raiden laughed. “He planted his flag in her ass and called it a day.” Charlie and I winced at the visual, while Duke just chuckled.

  What a hell of a first day of school.

  Chapter 8

  Samson~

  P.E. had basically been nothing more than our football coach, Coach Rawlins, separating the guys already on the football team from the guys that needed to try out. Being the quarterback and team captain for the offense, I had to be there even if I didn’t want to be.

  After walking away from Mackenzie earlier, I had sent out a group text to Duke, Raiden, and Ford and told them to put the word out that Mackenzie was mine. I knew there might still be a few guys who would make a run for her, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I just needed the word out because, had it gotten out that she was single, I would have been coming into the fight from behind instead of from the front. At any rate, there’d be questions about the posts showcasing our little moment, so all I did was provide an answer.