Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(51)

“I never get tired of your magic,” she says.

That’s a good thing.

Violet squeezes my thigh once and I groan as I reach behind me, crack open the door and welcome the cold air that blows into the truck. I fall out and the little devil giggles as I help her settle her good leg to the ground.





Violet

I CAN’T THINK about Chevy. I can’t think about how his hand was hot on my thigh. I can’t think about how his fingers against my face caused sweet tingles, I can’t think about how there’s this pulse in my body that won’t go away after he suggested kissing.

Kissing Chevy. Once I do that, there will be no going back and that’s the equivalent of throwing myself over a cliff.

There is no thinking about Chevy.

None.

Instead, I focus on surviving high school. At least this day in high school. In high school you need armor and armor are other bodies of people you can surround yourself with and that’s what you call friends.

After dad died, I made new friends.

Considering we live in a town small enough that when someone sneezes you can hear the echoing bless you from the other side of the county, new is a relative term. They were people I had known most of my life, but I was too consumed with the Terror to notice.

Some are nice. Some are not so nice. Some need to die and be damned to an eternity of being roasted like a marshmallow. But that’s life, that’s people. I can’t control them, I can only control me and so far I’ve done a suck job at controlling me.

I’m doing what my physical therapist requested and I’m slowly, steadily, on my crutches yet using both legs to walk. As if a turtle had been let loose on the autobahn. My pack is on my back, so my hands are free to drop my crutches and catch myself if I should trip. Chevy walked with me to my first class, but I’m on my own for second, third, then going into lunch.

I barely beat the bell for Business Economics, and like the first two periods of the day, the class goes deathly silent. Yep, they heard about the Amber Alert, heard Chevy and I were kidnapped, and if I’m going to be honest, if it didn’t happen to me, I’d be staring, too.

Kidnapping only happens to strange people in big cities and we hear about it on investigative news programs. Even for the Terror, it’s a stretch and now I’m the girl who lived.

The moment my butt hits the seat, there’s shouting outside in the hallway. A scuffle. A banging of a locker and my blood pulses in my veins.

They’re here. The Riot are here.

Teachers run down the hallway, a blur of white shirts, and our own teacher sprints to the doorway and he mumbles a curse. “Get in groups, read twenty-four and finish the questions at the end of each summary.”

He leaves, the class breaks out into conversation and my body feels like I’ve been put into a meat shredder. It’s not the Riot. Not every sound is going to be the Riot.

The person behind me leans forward and says, “Jordan Johnson was fingered as the last guy in the picture scandal. Twenty bucks the fight in the hall is Leeann Matteson’s boyfriend beating the hell out of him for posting those pics of her changing in the girls’ restroom.”

I turn and blink at the sight of Addison. We’re friends, but not friends. Associated, but not associated. She’s blond hair, blue eyes and a cheerleader for our school. She’s talented and can flip like those people on TV during the Olympics.

Some of my new set of friends are friends with her, but Addison mostly hung out with her best friend, Breanna, and this is where the association comes in. Razor fell in love with Breanna this fall, Breanna fell for him and her parents recently sent her to a private school far, far away to keep the two of them apart.

“I thought you’d want to know,” Addison continues. “About Jordan.”

She’s right. Five guys tormented girls from our school with pictures they took of us in vulnerable moments and blackmailed us. If we didn’t do what they wanted, the pictures went up on a social media account they created.

I use us because it happened to me, but Razor helped catch the asshole who was blackmailing me. The guy wanted me to make people think I was dating him. Honestly, he wanted more, and when he suggested sex, I threatened to kill him and he believed I would happily sit in jail with his blood dripping from my fingernails.

I tried to flat out refuse the pretense of dating and he uploaded a picture of me. It was taken during a black time in my life. After I broke up with Chevy, after Mom and I had our millionth fight, after I didn’t understand why I wanted to keep breathing.

I drank too much and blacked out at a party. Turns out boys at parties have cameras and like to play dress up with the passed-out girl. To keep any more pics from going up, I fake dated him. Had to kiss him a few times. Even though it was just kisses, I still felt like a whore.

“Why wasn’t Jordan suspended like the others?” I ask.

“He was. Last week. But his daddy’s on the school board and is fighting the accusations and punishment. You know, the whole—” she performs air quotes and drops her voice to mimic a man “—my son would never do such a thing. He’s an angel. He was about to improve his failing grades and had told us over dinner he was going to become a rocket scientist.”

I laugh, Addison cracks a hesitant grin and I turn fully around. “I hope he gets the hell beat out of him.”