Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(16)

“He threw a trashcan on her head!” Dante screamed. “He’s twice as big as her and he punched her in the face! What the hell is wrong with this school that she’s the one in trouble for that?”

I watched him without blinking; my heart so full, I felt it would burst.

The entire terrible day had been worth it for this moment.

Without looking at me he grabbed my hand and started to tug me out of the room. “You know what?” he snarled at a still mute Ms. Colby. “We’re done here. I’m fed up with this shit. This school is out of control. Whatever you’re going to try to pin on Scarlett, you can just go ahead and take it up with my gram.”

Something moved on Ms. Colby’s stunned face. Something that I liked. Dante had clearly struck a nerve.

Dante saw it too, and he smiled unpleasantly at her. “Don’t like that, huh? Well, like I said, you can take it up with my gram. I just called her from the reception desk and let her know what happened. She’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Good luck.”

He gave her a mocking little wave and tugged me out of the room, then the building.

“Where are we going?” I asked him when we’d crossed off school grounds and had moved into the forest. I was pretty sure I knew. This was a familiar path.

“Home,” he replied. He stopped suddenly, turning to me.

I was looking way, way up at him, thinking that he was the most beautiful boy in the world, and it was only as he touched my cheekbone that I remembered I’d been punched pretty hard earlier.

“Are you okay? Does it hurt?” he asked.

“It’s fine. I was so pissed off I barely felt it. And I did punch him first.”

“Yes, I know, tiger, but he attacked you first.”

“Who told you about it?”

“Nate Becker. He got a hall pass and got himself into trouble flagging me down in the middle of Mr. Jameson’s history lesson.”

I tried to keep my face impassive. Nate seemed like a nice enough kid, but I was savagely territorial where Dante was concerned, and I hated the idea that he might be making a friend aside from me.

“And then you got yourself into trouble storming Ms. Colby’s office,” I said, smiling up at him, my heart in my eyes.

“Well, yeah, but that was after.”

I blinked a few times. “After what?”

“After I stormed into your classroom and gave Tommy Mann the pounding he deserved.”

My jaw dropped. “We’re both going to get expelled,” I breathed, but not like I was sad about it.

He shrugged. “Either we will, or Gram will take care of it. My money’s on Gram.”

I squinted at him. “She’s the sweetest woman on earth. Ms. Colby’s going to chew her up and spit her out.”

He threw his head back and laughed and laughed. “Oh, you haven’t seen her when she’s mad, Scarlett. And you know she has influence over the school board. She donates a lot of money, money they won’t want to lose. Just you watch. There’s finally going to be some justice at this stupid school.”

He grew serious again, his eyes, then his fingers going to trace softly over my injured cheek. “We need to get you home and put some ice on this.”

I made a face. “It’s nothing. Stop making a big deal of it.”

But he didn’t listen. Instead he leaned forward and pressed a soft, chaste kiss on the tender flesh.

When he straightened, I took a deep breath. I’d been struggling not to say anything sappy to him, but I just couldn’t hold it in.

I squeezed his hand really hard, looked down at my feet, and said, “I love you,” for the very first time in my life.

He squeezed my hand back. “Love you, too.” His voice was quiet, but he hadn’t hesitated.

I swear I didn’t stop smiling for three entire days.





CHAPTER





EIGHT





“Unless life also gives you water and sugar, your lemonade will suck.”

~A realist





PRESENT


We arrived at LAX before noon, with four days off looming ahead of us. I was the only one on our crew that wasn’t happy about that.

The day was sunny and fresh to an unwholesome degree when combined with my mood. I didn’t need a nice day. I longed for a dark and dreary one. I wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there. A hole dark enough to wipe my mind clean of the night before.

Why had I done that to myself?

Why did I always do that to myself?

Because Dante. The Bastard.

We got home early enough that it gave us only two choices. Take a nap, or keep going. Any activity that consisted of sitting would wipe you out after a full day of work finished at eleven in the morning.

The four of us shared a sprawling apartment in a somewhat affordable area of town (if you had enough roommates) that had just converted some old warehouses into decent living spaces. We each had our own bedrooms, spaced far enough apart that none of us felt stifled, but shared a living area that was big enough for a hell of a party when the mood hit us, and it often did.

We’d been roomies for nearly a year, and surprisingly I had very little complaints on the arrangement. I’d thought for sure at the beginning that it was a horrible idea. It had all been Leona’s idea, and I’d gone along with it because it would save me money. She’d met these two young sweet girls in her flight attendant class and they’d hit it off.