Page 31 of Rent a Bad Boy

I stare at him. He stares back. The campus moves around us—students walking to class, someone on a skateboard, a girl arguing loudly into her phone about a group project. But we just stand here, locked in whatever this is.

He’s intense. Everything about him is. The way he looks at me, the way he fights, the way he shows up outside my buildings without being asked because he decided on his own that keeping an eye on me was more important than whatever else he had going on. It should probably scare me... but it doesn’t. It just makes me feel like I matter in a way I’m not used to mattering, and that’s the part I don’t know what to do with.

“Christine Jones is supposed to meet with you tomorrow.” He’s so helpful when he remembers things.

Just like that, the real world comes crashing back.

Tomorrow. Christine Jones and whoever she’s dragging along to make my life miserable. This is her way of applying last-minute pressure, making sure we know she’s serious and the board is serious and all of that. I’ve been so wrapped up that I almost forgot about the reason Everett and I found each other in the first place.

“I know,” I murmur in a voice much smaller than I planned on.

“What time do you need me to be there?”

“I... don’t.”

His mouth falls open before he catches himself. “What? What do you mean?”

This is the part I’ve been dreading. The part that crystallized for me somewhere around three a.m. on Monday while I stared at my ceiling, and Starlight was making soft sounds in the coop outside my window.

I can still see it all these days later. The circle of bodies in the warehouse. The fluorescent lights. The way Everett moved—fast, precise, brutal in a way that didn’t look angry. Mechanical, like his body was a machine built for one specific purpose, and everything else was just waiting.

Then the other guy dropped. He made a sound when he hit the concrete that still chills my blood.

Now I imagine what happens if Christine pushes too hard or says the wrong thing, or threatens my chickens in a way that crosses some line I can’t see. I imagine the same hands that held Marjorie so carefully in my backyard doing what they did in that warehouse.

He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t. Probably. But “probably” isn’t good enough when the stakes are my girls and my grandmother’s house, and the only stability I have ever known.

“I think...” I start, but then I stop because his face is already changing. He can read me too well. “I think I should handle tomorrow on my own.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll figure something out. I’ll talk to them. I’ll⁠—”

“You know damn well you already tried talking to them, and they didn’t fucking listen.”

“I know, but⁠—”

“But what?” He pushes off the wall, and even though he doesn’t step toward me, the shift in his posture makes the space between us feel smaller. “What changed?”

I look down at his hands. The knuckles are still bruised. The cut on the third one has healed into a thin pink line. These are hands that have hurt people. Recently. On purpose. For money.

“This isn’t a problem violence can solve,” I quietly reply.

And I watch as the words hit him. His jaw tightens, and something moves behind his eyes like a door closing, and I hate myself a little for putting that look on his face because I know what he’s hearing. That he’s too much, too rough, too dangerous to be near anything that matters.

That’s not what I mean. But I don’t know how to explain what I do mean in a way that won’t make things worse.

“I have to get to class,” I murmur, filled with regret. “I’m sorry.”

“Isla,” he growls.

“Please don’t follow me.”

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t argue. He just stands there with his coffee, looking at me with an expression I’ll remember for a long time. Hurt wrapped in something hard, the way he wraps his knuckles before a fight. Like he’s protecting himself from the impact.

“Okay,” he mutters.

My eyes are stinging when I turn and walk toward the science building, which is stupid, because nothing happened. It was the quietest fight I’ve ever had, and somehow that makes it worse.