by Anna Martin
Dylan gave him a weak smile. “Thanks for being here. My parents are on their way…. It makes me sick to think she could have been left on her own.”
“It’s nothing.” Chris brushed off the thanks.
With a quick squeeze on Chris’s arm, Dylan ducked into the ward to check on his sister.
“Meet me back at mine?” Adam said, waiting for Chris’s nod before taking off down the hallway, letting the others follow.
Back at the house, Jared hovered on the front step while Adam took down the security system. When Chris’s ostentatious pink Caddy rolled up, he ushered the big man and Mia, who still seemed fragile, inside.
“Where’s Clare?” Jared asked as the four of them stood in the cavernous entrance hall of the Hemlock house. He’d been wondering where Ryder’s supposed friend was, and he’d been building up the guts to call her out.
“Who the fuck knows,” Chris said, sounding annoyed. “I’ve been trying to get hold of that bitch for hours.”
“How did you find out before us?” Adam demanded.
“Ear to the ground, homie,” Chris said. “You gotta know who you need to know, you know?”
“Cut the crap, Wallace.”
Chris shrugged. “I was her last dialed number. Yesterday, at lunch.”
“How did she get to the hospital? Did anyone take her in?” Jared asked. Adam let his hand fall on Jared’s lower back, apparently not caring what Chris and Mia saw or thought.
“No,” Mia said. “Whoever it was made a 911 call from a pay phone, then took off. The ambulance found her collapsed on the front step of her parent’s place.”
“Shit,” Adam drawled. “We’re never going to see that girl again. Her parents will yank her out of school and take her someplace else.”
“That’s if she even gets out of the hospital.”
“She’ll be fine,” Chris said. “Bitch has more spine than half the assholes at the Academy. She’ll get through this.”
“Her heart, though,” Mia said plaintively.
“Call Clare again,” Adam said to Chris. “See if she’s got anything yet.”
Chris speed-dialed Clare, then shook his head. “Engaged,” he said. “Has been all night.”
“You can crash here tonight,” Adam said. “It’ll be easier if we’re all in one place in case we need to go back to the hospital.”
Chris nodded and led Mia up the main staircase, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. It was a brotherly sort of hug, not anything sexual, and Jared realized that despite all the bitching and backstabbing that went on, these guys were really, really tight.
Since Adam looked pretty fragile too, Jared took his hand and led him to the kitchen, then up the back stairs to his bedroom. The sheets on the bed were rumpled from earlier, when they’d almost….
He couldn’t think of that now.
“Fucking hell,” Adam said, sinking down onto the edge of the bed, dropping his head to his hands.
Jared knelt in front of him and removed one sneaker, then the other, tossing them in the general direction of the closet. Saying nothing, he tugged at Adam’s jeans until they were stripped from his body, then pulled off his own outer layers before crawling into bed.
“Turn the light off,” Jared said softly.
The gulf between them felt unnaturally wide. In the past few weeks Jared had gotten used to sleeping with someone next to him from time to time. He stayed over more than either of them liked to think about. Not once had Jared stayed in one of the guest rooms. Not once had Adam asked him to.
Tonight things seemed different. The ache in his head was reflected in the twisting knot in his stomach, making him feel sick and something else, something he didn’t want to put a name to.
Fear, a little voice in the back of his head whispered. You’re afraid.
Sometimes the best response to fear was courage.
With each passing moment, the silence and space between them seemed to grow, and Jared didn’t want that. They were close, so fucking close to taking things to another level, one that he’d not anticipated when Clare offered him that stupid bet.
It wasn’t the time to deal with that right now, though. Adam needed something far more basic.
He rolled over on the bed, hesitating for only a moment before neatly tucking himself around Adam. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought Adam was going to throw him off, then he took Jared’s hand and pulled it to his chest.
Letting out a heavy breath, Jared shuffled forward and let himself both hold and be held.
It wasn’t a night for overthinking this. He wanted to give and take in equal measures, and Adam offered him that comfort.
After dropping a soft kiss to the curve of Adam’s shoulder, Jared let himself sleep.
By Monday, the news had spread around most of the school that Ryder Gorden had OD’d on E.
Crossing one of Clare’s number-one girlfriends wasn’t a good idea at the best of times, but Clare still hadn’t reappeared from the weekend. She wasn’t answering her phone, and when Chris had driven over, her house had been empty. It was weird. Jared couldn’t help but wonder if, or how, Ryder’s collapse was related to Clare’s sudden disappearance.
When they walked into school that morning, Jared was shoulder to shoulder with Adam, Mia on his other side, Chris next to Adam with his hand on Mia’s butt. They were solid. A team. In a strange way, Jared had been enveloped into the beating heart of this school.
In the middle of lunch period, Ryder’s parents arrived at the school and were quickly ushered into Principal Saunders’s office. Ryder’s mother, hunched and crying, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers over and over; her father, strong and tall, his arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulders.
“Bullshit,” Mia muttered once they’d passed. She was leaning against her locker, one foot kicked over the other, arms folded, eyes hard. “They don’t give a fuck about Ryder. They were off on their cozy little trip, leaving her alone, for fuck’s sake.”
“What about their brother?” Jared asked. He got a weird look in return. “Tyler, right?”
“How do you know about Tyler?” Mia demanded.
Jared shrugged. “Dylan told me. When he was tutoring me.”
Mia gave him a long, even glare, as if trying to figure out whether or not he was lying. “No one talks about Tyler,” she said eventually. “He’s the forgotten kid.”
“That’s really sad,” Jared said. “I don’t think that’s true, though. Dylan adores him.”
With a huff of annoyance, Mia turned to her locker and started rifling through it. “Maybe your precious Dylan should care more about his twin sister than their retarded younger brother. Tyler is fine, Jared. He’s just peachy. Ryder, however, is still in the ICU.”
Clare turned up to her class after lunch with a look on her face that did not invite questions. Jared was happy to stay silent, sitting a few desks behind the enigma that was Clare Metago, looking at her hair and wondering if he was right in his assessment that it hadn’t been recently washed.
Instead of meeting Adam at his car like they’d planned, Jared sent a mass text to the others, who weren’t in the same chemistry class as he and Clare shared. They were going to stage an intervention.
He still had to get through the last class of the day, a frustrating hour of French, made more difficult by the fact that he was not paying attention. He couldn’t find his motivation for languages in the same way Adam could inspire him to.
By the time the final bell rang, Jared skipped going via his locker and headed straight for the main doors of the building and down to the parking lot. Clare’s sleek little Audi was in her normal space. Even when she was absent, no one else dared use it.
Clare startled when she walked out of the school building and saw the group of people gathered around her car. She’d been ambushed, and by the looks of things, she knew it.
“Where you been?” Chris demanded as soon as Clare got close enough.
From the fro
nt, she looked even worse. Her makeup wasn’t as pristine as Jared was used to seeing, and there were dark bags under her eyes. Tiny cracks fissured around her overdry lips.
“Flying high, Big Poppa,” Clare said, her voice raspy. She reached up and patted Chris’s cheek condescendingly.
Chris frowned at her for a moment. Then his eyes went wide.
“You took my shit,” he said and poked Clare in the shoulder. Mia gasped dramatically.
“I always take your shit,” she said, looking bored.
“You gave E to Ryder.”
“Yeah, all right.” It wasn’t a confession. She sounded far too disinterested for it to be that. Instead she sounded almost bored, but Adam recoiled as if slapped. Jared watched as recognition dawned over Adam’s face.
“You gave E to Ryder,” he repeated. “You evil fucking—”
“Bitch, please,” Clare sighed, interrupting before he could finish. She looked down at her nails—which were chipped—then back to her so-called friends. “How was I supposed to know she was going to take it herself? The stupid twat knows she has a heart problem. If she asks me for shit, I’ll get it for her. Same goes for any of the rest of you.”
“I can’t believe you,” Mia said. Her eyes were watery again, and Jared wrapped his arm around her shoulders without thinking about it. “She could have died.”
“Did she?” Clare demanded, clearly knowing the answer.
“That’s not the point,” Adam said. Mia sniffled into Jared’s shoulder, and he rubbed her back in what he hoped was a soothing manner. He wasn’t great with emotional females.
“Look,” Clare said. “I get why you’re upset. But Ryder is a big girl. If she wants a dramatic exit, who am I to stop her?”
“She wasn’t trying to kill herself, you asshole,” Mia said, her voice turning to ice.
“You sure? Who would blame her? Eternal youth and beauty. Isn’t that what we all want? If she wants to pull a Monroe/Cobain/Winehouse, then whatever.”
“No,” Chris said. “Not whatever. Not when it’s my shit.”
“It’s not like you put a serial number on the pills, Chris,” Clare hissed.
Other students had given them a wide berth when walking back to their own cars or to the bus, clearly not wanting to get caught up in what was turning into an intense conversation. Jared was still slightly concerned that someone was going to overhear them, not knowing if rumors would start swirling, whether Clare or Chris would get in trouble if word got out. Or both of them.
No matter how rich Clare’s daddy was, it was unlikely he could get her off a charge of supplying illegal drugs. Especially when someone had ended up in the hospital.
“Have you been to see her yet?” Mia said suddenly.
Clare whirled around. “Why the fuck would I have done that?” she drawled.
“Where have you been, then?” Jared asked.
“I told you,” she said, her grin turning predatory. “Flying high with people other than the diet cokeheads in this town. Unlike some people, I know my limits.”
“Is that why you didn’t show up this morning?” Adam said acidly.
“Please.” Clare tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Like anyone cares.”
“Just because Jared can get away with not turning up to class, it doesn’t mean you can,” Adam said.
Clare glanced to Jared, then to Adam, then back to Jared again. Something flickered across her face, though Jared couldn’t quite catch it. She smirked, and Jared’s stomach clenched. He was suddenly sure she knew something, or at least thought she did. Jared dropped his arm back to his side and tried very hard not to think about what he and Adam were doing when Mia had called from the hospital. What they were on the verge of doing. What he was on the verge of losing.
“You should go and see Ryder,” Mia said gently. “She was asking where you were.”
Clare looked like she was battling something—probably her conscience, though Jared wasn’t convinced she actually had one. Eventually she sighed and nodded. “Fine.”
“She didn’t tell anyone where she got the shit from, Clare,” Mia continued. “She didn’t tell.”
There was a strange, almost childlike timbre to the confession. Once again, Jared was reminded that this eclectic group of people had been friends for a very long time. He looked around the almost empty parking lot and rolled his shoulders, feeling a tight strain across the back of his neck.
“I’m gonna go,” he said awkwardly.
Adam gave him a small smile. “I’ll see you later?”
Clare raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Jared said, not scared of her anymore. This version of Clare—feeling the hangover-inducing effects of a drugs binge and looking shit for it—was not an intimidating sight. He gave Adam a nod and a smile in return. “Okay.”
Chapter 10
Chris always hosted a party between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Apparently it was as traditional as turkey and tinsel. The theme varied from year to year, but he was going all out for 2014 and hosting a white party.
“Who do you think you are, fuckin’ Oprah?” Clare bitched.
Adam murmured something low in Jared’s ear about her white bikini going see-through in a pool that past summer, which made Jared snort with laughter into his nuclear waste-colored Jell-O.
Chris was insistent, though. Anyone not following the rules of his crib wouldn’t be let in. It had taken a lot for him to convince his folks to let him host another party. All the parents in town were on high alert after what had happened to Ryder, and they were serious about making sure no one else fell victim to the horrors of drug abuse.
Whatever.
Adam had told Jared all of Chris’s stash had gone. He wasn’t growing weed any more—at least, not on his parents’ property—and any dealings in the stronger stuff was strictly underground. Adam had been pissed off when he told Jared about it. Selling shit was Chris’s main source of income, and now it had been squashed by a couple of idiots who didn’t know how to play nice.
Still, according to Adam, there was going to be plenty of white powder at the white party. Enough to party on.
Relations between the tight knot of friends and the rest of the school were tenser than Jared had seen since he arrived in Washington. Other kids were scared shitless of Clare. That was nothing new, but these days they looked at the rest of the Scooby gang with a new wariness and respect, like they were expecting someone to blow up at any moment.
Ryder was out of the hospital, pacemaker free, thank God. She’d been given a prescription instead to keep her little heart going at its normal rate, and been told not to do any strenuous exercise. After the white party, she was coming back to school, or so rumor had it.
“Hey,” Adam said, leaning in to murmur in Jared’s ear.
They were supposed to be paying attention to the projected image at the front of the class, a close-up of some cells wriggling around under a microscope in real time. From the desk, their teacher paused in his lecture and scowled, but didn’t call Adam out.
“What?” Jared hissed.
“I need to go into the city to get something to wear for the fuckin’ white party. Wanna come?”
The proposition was a sexy snarl in Jared’s ear, and the fabric of his uniform trousers suddenly felt tighter across his crotch.
“Sure,” he said in a low voice.
“Awesome.”
Adam fell back onto all four legs of his chair with a thunk, and Jared couldn’t help but feel he was being watched for the rest of the class, phantom eyes burning into the back of his neck.
Jared was alone in his next class, no Clare or Adam or anyone else to distract him. It was probably unsurprising that he was doing better in history than any of his other classes. By the end of the school day, there was a faint, throbbing headache threatening behind one eye and Jared popped a couple of Tylenol before tucking his books in his locker and strolling out to meet Adam.
“Thought we’d ride in the Jag,”
Adam said, leaning against his British racing green, S-type Jaguar. It was a classic, highly desirable car, so of course he drove it to school to show off.
Jared climbed in without commenting, pulling the knot of his tie loose and pulling it off over his head, throwing it in the backseat as Adam pulled out of the lot and into the flow of traffic along the main street.
Adam had already started to undress. He was wearing his unbuttoned shirt loose over a white T-shirt, tie and blazer already abandoned. The stereo was blasting Black Sabbath, a band Jared didn’t know Adam liked. He guessed it was something about paying homage to where the car had been made.
“So, how was your day?” Adam asked as he pulled onto the I-5 and let the engine of the car do what it did best, and broke about three speed limits in the space of ten seconds.
“Ugh. Not bad.”
Adam shot him a grin and pulled around an ambling semitruck. “Did you miss me last period?”
Jared barked a laugh. “Of course,” he drawled, only half joking.
They had that kind of relationship now, one where they could rib each other and tease, the sort of friendship that normally took years to build. Jared had stopped questioning Adam’s motives, stopped wondering what the thought process was behind that beautiful, smirking smile.
Truth was, he liked the way Adam looked at him, liked the way it felt when he got to look back. There was no shame in their attraction to one another. No one was giving them a hard time for being gay, for liking the way the other guy was put together. The sexy combination of nature: genetics and nurture. Money.
Jared found it easy to get over the fact that Adam was absolutely no angel. He fucked other people, both before and since meeting Jared, or got his dick sucked even if he didn’t fuck them. They were guys, they had those urges. Jared understood that. Adam didn’t let anyone else in his bed, though. He didn’t sleep beside those guys after hour-long makeout sessions.
And Jared had a feeling that meant more than any dick-sucking that was going on.
It was an hour journey into Seattle, so of course Adam canned it in just over thirty minutes. He pulled up in front of Nordstrom and walked around the car to let Jared out, like he was a real gentleman or something.