I nod, but I can’t speak, not yet. A second choice. Because someone else was first choice?
I feel simultaneously guilty and nervous, all at once.
“Now, do you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asks, leaning an elbow on the table and giving me a look. “Or do I have to steal that phone and force your hand onto the fingerprint scanner all over again?”
I can’t avoid Whitehall Prep forever. I know that. But as I sit in the front of Maxx’s Jeep, watching as Kimber hops out and saunters toward the side entrance, my stomach twists into an infinity symbol, and I wonder if I might throw up before I even set foot inside.
Chasm is on his way down from the parking garage to get me. There’s no way in hell I can go in there alone. I’d rather cut again and deal with the consequences from Tess, to be honest.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Maxx asks, leaning his forearms on the steering wheel and staring out the window at the towering white stone walls of the academy. “I told you: Whitehall kids are vicious on a good day. For something like this, they’ll eviscerate you.”
Eviscerate you. That’s what Chasm told me initially, when he was warning me from pursuing Parrish.
I turn toward Maxx, wondering about something Parrish said before, during an argument between the four of us in the kitchen. Actually, it was pretty much Chasm and Parrish versus me and Maxx. I fiddle with the fabric of my black slacks.
“When Parrish said you caused a guy to drop out of school freshman year …”
Maxx exhales and sits up suddenly, leaning back against his seat. He stares down at the steering wheel before glancing over at me.
“Parrish and Chasm were freshmen; I was a junior.” X taps his fingers against the wheel absently before turning to look at me. “At that time, they weren’t the uh, tour de force that they are now.” X rolls his eyes dramatically, and I smile. That’s a great way to describe Parrish and Chasm. “And I was having the same sort of problems that you might’ve had to deal with had they not taken you under their wings. Well, them and Lumen.” He makes a bit of a face, but it’s nothing compared to his initial expression when I showed him her TikTok. He looked like he might beat her ass himself. “I would consider my parents well-off, but … uh …” Maxx lets out a small laugh and scrubs at the back of his head. “They’re poor, compared to any other family in this school. I actually had to win a scholarship to get in here; we couldn’t afford it.”
I’m tempted to reach out and touch his hand, but I very firmly keep both of mine tucked in my lap. Thing is, it was hard enough to ignore the chemistry between us when he was dating Maxine, and I was new here, and I didn’t know him at all. Now that he’s given me his virginity? That I’ve reached between our sweaty forms and felt his body firmly connected with my own, how am I supposed to deal with this?
By controlling my fucking actions, that’s how.
“There was a student here—a senior. He wouldn’t fucking leave me alone. He taunted me, mocked my family, put weird shit in my locker. Once, he even went to one of my sister’s races and heckled her. The day I confronted him about that, my dad mysteriously got fired from his job—at a business this kid’s dad just so happened to own. Supposedly, they were just ‘downsizing’ but come on. So, I turned the tables on him.” X inhales and then runs his fingers through his hair again as he looks at me. “You’ve seen how vicious they can get. I let that go to my head. I felt like I had to become one of them or get shit on by them.”
“What’d you do?” I ask, curious but non-judgmental. Whatever Maxx did in the past, it doesn’t matter now. I’ve seen how kindhearted he really is—even if he has a core of steel underneath.
“I made his life a living hell. It was my only mission in life. I stole his girlfriend.” Maxx gives a small smile at that, lifting up his hands in a placating gesture. “Nothing happened between us. I told you, I didn’t even kiss. I can’t trust myself.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit,” I tell him, and he gives me a look.
“I pulled your hair and flipped you over to do you from behind during my first time, and that was only a fraction of the things I wanted to do.” My entire body goes white-hot, and I turn away from him on the pretense of looking for Chasm. Maxx seems to sense that the air inside the car is unbelievably thick and perfumed with hormones, so he moves on. “Anyway, I spent weeks flirting with her, gave her the keys to my Jeep, and told her to get naked in the back of it, that I’d meet her there.
