“I don’t know as much as you think I do, Maxx.” I start back toward my bedroom, but he ambushes me, sliding around in front of me and slamming his left palm into the wall beside my head. His gaze is intense as he leans down toward me, that cool, sporty smell of his overwhelming me. I wonder if, like Parrish, that’s just his natural scent that I’m picking up on. I hope not. I hope it’s just cologne. Yeah, it’s got to be cologne. “What are you doing?” I choke out, looking up into his green gaze and wishing a hole would appear in the floor to swallow me up.
“I like you, Kota, I do,” he tells me, and my heart contracts strangely. It’s a physical reaction that I can’t control, even as I find myself disgusted by it. “But if I find out that you and Parrish are up to something, I won’t forgive either of you.”
“Up to something?” I repeat, feeling a bit of that disgust morph into anger. “You think I’m doing this on purpose?”
“You know something, but you won’t tell me what that something is. Surely you and Parrish knew that you could never actually have a relationship. Tess isn’t the sort of parent who’d allow her stepson to date her daughter; it would never happen.”
“You’re insinuating that we’d put Parrish’s entire family through something like this over a love affair?” I’m tempted to slap Maxx, but I squeeze my hands into fists instead. “You don’t know me and clearly, you don’t know Parrish very well either. He always puts people he cares about above himself. How insulting.”
Rather than back away, Maxx leans even closer into me, like he thinks by pressuring me like this, he can get me to talk. Our faces are disturbingly close at this point. If someone were to walk in on us, they might get the wrong idea.
And oh, how wrong they’d be.
I’m much closer to punching Maxx Wright than kissing him.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll keep digging until I find out. I’ll watch your every step, Dakota.”
“You do that,” I snap back at him, turning my face so that our noses touch. That gives him pause and he seems to realize what he’s doing, pulling back slightly but keeping his palm pressed to the wall by my head. “Make me out to be the enemy. I’m used to it by now.”
I go to move past him, and he grabs my arm, his fingers burning where they touch my skin. Our eyes meet. It’s impossible to deny that we have a natural chemistry. There’s just something about him that calls to me and vice versa, but if this is his true personality coming out, then honestly, I’d rather Maxine broke up with him.
“I’m sorry, Dakota, I really am. But if I think it’ll help Parrish, I’ll do whatever it takes—even if it means hurting you.” He turns away from me and heads down the hall, leaving me to stare at his back, at those perfectly inked angel wings.
A lot of care went into that design. I know Parrish and Maxx are close, but I can’t let Maxx’s zeal interfere with what I have to do.
And I’ll do anything to save Parrish.
There is no bridge that I won’t cross, mark my words. Mark my fucking words.
“Maxx is such a dick,” Chasm mutters on Monday, watching me gather my things for class. I haven’t seen him since Thursday, but we’ve been able to text on and off. Needless to say, we haven’t made much headway in locating Parrish. How are we supposed to do that with such little information?
What was it that Justin said? Find the right clues. Follow the right trail. But what clues? What fucking trail?
“Yeah, well,” I start, thinking about Maxx. Holy shit, I have to say, when that boy gets it in his mind to make someone else’s life hell, he’s damn good at it. I believe what Parrish said, about Maxx causing a guy to drop out of school when he attended Whitehall. Maxx warned me about the other students, but he’s just as bad as they are. For the last four days, he’s been watching me, as promised. Whispering reminders that he knows I know something, insinuating that he might tell Tess. It’s driving me nuts. “He’s worried about his friend, and he knows I’m hiding something. I can’t entirely blame him.”
I hook my book bag on my shoulder, checking my phone for the billionth time. Justin hasn’t messaged me since Thursday either, but he did say we’d ‘start fresh’ on Monday. So where is he? Where’s my text, my video call? I’m desperate to know how Parrish is doing.
Meanwhile, I have to head to Whitehall. I have to see the ruins of the prop room. I have to comfort Danyella when I’m the source of her pain. How messed up is that?
