Page 33 of The Secret Girl (Adamson All-Boys Academy 1)
Or at least … I think that's what he's wearing. He's a bit blobbish right now. Glasses, glasses, glasses, I repeat to myself as I crawl around on my hands and knees.
“I want to know why I have a bloody freaking lip, Carson. What's your problem anyway?” Ranger continues to bitch at me as I crawl around in a desperate search, panic clawing at the inside of my throat.
I was just chased by a guy with a knife.
What would've happened if he'd caught up to me?
Would I be … dead right now? Worse?
“Hey.” Ranger pushes at me with one of his big combat boots, putting the dirty sole on my shoulder. He knocks me over into the gravel, and that's when I start to cry. I don't mean to; it just happens. Silent tears slide down my face as I get back on my hands and knees and keep searching. After a minute, Ranger scoffs, bends down and snatches my glasses up, handing them out to me. “You are freaking pathetic, you know that?”
I slip the lenses up my nose and sigh in relief when I find them unbroken. Thank god. My gaze slides up to Ranger's closed and darkened face. He stares down at me with tight lips, a tattoo visible on his chest that I didn't notice before. It says Jenica with little hearts on either side.
His dead sister.
His suicidal sister … or his murdered one.
“Why do you think she was murdered?” I blurt, and Ranger's blue eyes go wide. He grits his teeth, and I cringe slightly when it looks like he might hit me. Instead, he flicks his still lit cigarette in my direction.
“None of your damn business, Carson,” Ranger sneers, looking down at me like I'm the scum of the earth. His blue-streaked dark hair hangs in razored waves over his face. With the black plugs in his ears, and the tattoos, he actually looks less like an emo-douche and more … badass or something. “Just stay the fuck away from me, okay? Don't come to Culinary Club on Thursday.”
Maybe he thinks that's a punishment … it's not.
But as he walks away, I scramble up to my feet and follow after him. No way in hell I'm being left alone out here. Once inside, I pick up the emergency phone in the kitchen and stare at it.
Ranger comes back into the room, opening the fridge and grabbing the milk, when he notices me standing there. One dark brow goes up.
“What the eff are you doing?” he asks me.
My hand is shaking, and I sniffle slightly from my brief moment of crying. If I report this, Dad will lose his mind. He'll lock me up in his house and escort me everywhere I go. Then again … how can I not tell him? Tonight might have been a prank. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it wasn't one of the Student Council members inside that hoodie.
Then again … if he thinks it's dangerous here, maybe he'll send me back to California? I pick the phone up again and start to dial “1” for the emergency line.
Ranger snatches the handset from me and narrows his blue eyes. It's so dark in here, the only light coming from inside the fridge, so it's hard to see his face, but I swear there are shadows in that stone-cold gaze of his.
“What's going on?” he snaps, as I curl my hands into fists and meet his stare dead-on.
“A man with a knife was chasing me just now,” I spit out, expecting him to laugh at me. Or deny it. Or … What I don't expect is for his eyes to go wide, for his skin to turn sallow in the glow from the fridge.
“What the hell did you just say?' he whispers as I reach for the handset, and he jerks it away from me again. This time, his nostrils flare with anger. “What. Did. You. Just. Say?” he snaps, and his tone brooks no argument.
“You heard me!” I shout back, feeling the silent tears on my cheeks again. Ranger glares at me, chest rising and falling in panting breaths. “Some psycho just chased me from my dad's house all the way back here—and he had a knife. So, who was it, Ranger? Was it Church? Spencer? One of the twins?”
“None of us,” Ranger growls back at me, shoving the phone into my hand and curling my fingers around it. He steps so close that we end up toe-to-toe. “We might fuck with you a little, but we're not completely psycho.”
“Really? Because Church came all the way up to my dad's place today to threaten me into leaving this mystery about your sister alone.” Ranger's eyes get even wider. “He shoved me into the trunk of a car and left me there for six hours. I don't know who let me out but—”
