Tim didn’t stand up. As Logan and I looked at him, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. When he wiped his palms on his pants, I told him, “Relax, Cosello. I have no beef with you.” Then I lowered my voice, “Kate, leave the girl alone. All I did was sit with her at lunch.”
She lifted her chin up. “Like I said before, you have no business telling me what to do. I’ll do what I please.”
I sighed. Tate was standing too, but she remained at her table. Recognizing the gleam in her eye, I suppressed a curse. If I said anything more, I’d make it worse. Tate saw a new victim. Kate was distracted. As I stood there, my jaw clenched. I hadn’t realized this would happen, but both groups were looking at Marissa like she was prey they could both enjoy.
I turned around. Marissa was watching us, her face pale.
Kate started laughing. “Christ, look at you. What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you actually care about the girl?” I thought the only person you care about is standing next to you. He’s all you protect. Even Monson gets the shaft sometimes. She gestured to the side where Nate had stood, but he was waiting for my call. I shook my head. If he came over, it would be worse. Kate would become even more determined and Tate would be even more relentless, seeing a distraction from her own torment. Then Kate distracted me when she said, “Don’t beat yourself up, Mason. It’s not the first time that girl’s stepped out of place. We had a little round with her at the beginning of school.”
“Stop this, Kate.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Not your problem. Remember? Those are the terms you’ve always set. What I do is none of your business.” Then she walked away.
A sick feeling took root in me, but I didn’t know what to do. Kate controlled the girls. She had for a long time and I knew things went down that the guys never knew about. When I glanced to Tate, she was smug. Her gaze collided with mine and I knew she was remembering my promise. I was going to break her how she had broken Logan, but still I hadn’t done anything.
Logan was following my train of thought. “She doesn’t care.”
“What?”
He glanced at Marissa too and frowned, then turned back to me. “Tate. You told her that you’d hurt her. She’s going after that girl because of that now, to hurt you back.”
“I haven’t done anything to her.”
“Yeah, you have. Kate wouldn’t have gone after Tate if it wasn’t for you. People know what happened, Mason. They know she came onto you. It was obvious even though we didn’t say anything. They figured it out. Tate blames you for what Kate’s been doing to her.” He nodded in Marissa’s direction. “If you want to help her, distance yourself from her. The girls will do what they always do. You can’t stop them.”
He was right.
Then he said, “Mom called last night.”
I stopped thinking about Marissa. “What?”
He nodded, becoming closed off again. “She wants us to stay with her before she moves to L.A. permanently.”
“Mom’s already there. She’s going to stay there the whole time now?”
He frowned. “She hadn’t told you?”
“No.” She always told me things first.
Logan shrugged. “She’s been calling me a lot lately. I don’t know why, but yeah, I'm giving you a heads up.”
Even the thought of Mom wanting us to stay with her brought the old weight back on my shoulders. Our dad would fight that. Things were tense at home anyway, but it would get worse.
“Mase?”
Hearing the concern in his voice, I flashed him a grin and shoved all that shit down. Fuck it. I didn’t give a damn what happened. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I nodded at him. “You?”
“Yeah.”
We weren’t. Being at home was a nightmare. Dealing with our dad and his women, and now our mom wanted us to stay with her more often? The nightmare was going to get worse. I could feel it in my gut. I shook my head. I couldn’t worry about anyone else. Football. Logan. Me. That was all I could deal with. I was going to sit where I wanted. No one was going to control that. Marissa would be fine. Kate couldn’t do much to her anyway. I’d sit with them if I wanted, but glancing around the cafeteria and sensing the change in the air, I was tempted not to even come to the cafeteria anymore.
Life was just…hard sometimes.
13
ANOTHER YEAR
Things didn’t get better. They got worse. I sat with Marissa a few more times at lunch and then stopped. Those times were a breather for me. Her friends didn’t have an agenda, but the tension in the cafeteria was always too much. After a while, one of her friends told me to stop.
“Paige,” Marissa hissed, “it’s not his fault.”
Her friend turned to her with a hard expression on her face. “He’s not stopping it either.”
“It’s that bad?”