Over a thousand days since he’d wanted me, the Italian trash, out of his school.
The doorknob began to rattle and lights flooded through the keyhole, narrowly missing where we lay. I pulled Lexi closer to me, making sure we were well inside the dark, her ass now flush against my dick under my jeans.
“Looks empty, sir,” a voice said to the dean, and I heard a loud sigh.
“He’s goddamn run. Carillo was at this party. We got witnesses that can place him here. Rome Prince is gone too. That’s no coincidence. They’ve probably split together. Where you find one, you find the other. Why a good kid like Prince runs with that piece of trash is beyond me.”
It took all I had not to blow out the door and snap his fuckin’ neck. I’d show him trash.
“What next, sir?”
“Have someone patrol the grounds until sunrise. If he tries to come back, we can question him then. The cocaine we found on the four students tonight came from the Heighters. I recognized the Sicilian star symbol on the packet. We had issues with that gang dealing drugs five years ago. Carillo’s the closest connection we got to them these days. Hell, for all we know, he’s the one distributing it, making some cash on the side.”
My eyes squeezed shut. I was gonna kill Axel. No blowback on me, my ass! The dean had me as suspect number one for the drugs on campus.
Fuckin’ A.
Voices began fading as the cops moved away from the summerhouse. But they’d be here all night. The dean had made sure of that. Which meant I was stuck here until morning… and so was Lexi.
Once they were outta earshot, I removed my hand from Lexi’s mouth and laid it on the floor beside her head.
I could feel her breathing hard. She was scared. I didn’t blame her. I suspected she wasn’t used to this shit—the life of the underdog. And by the way the dean had spoken about me to the cops, she probably thought I was public enemy number one.
“What do we do now?” Lexi’s tiny voice said in the stillness of the room.
“We’re gonna have to wait until they leave the frat grounds.”
“Okay,” she whispered back and went to move away from me. Reaching out, I grabbed her hip and wrenched her back. She wasn’t moving from this spot. We needed to keep hidden.
I didn’t anticipate her reaction.
“Get off me! Don’t touch me there!” Lexi said in panic, her shrill voice sounding like a horror movie scream in the quiet of the house.
Damn Norman Bates Psycho shit.
“Fuck, bitch, I’m off you!” I snapped back and shushed her panicking ass. “You gotta stay down here. They might come back again, and they’ll see you if you’re not hiding behind this couch! The rest of the room’s too open and light with the fuckin’ skylight!”
Here in the dark shadows, I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her shaking.
What the fuck?
My hands were held up by my head just to show I wasn’t gonna touch her again. I couldn’t deal with this level of crazy right now.
I could feel warmth radiating off her like a damn space heater. And when she slipped back into a hazy beam of moonlight, her hand was on her chest as if trying to calm her pounding heart.
“Okay… okay,” she said breathlessly and slumped back down beside me. “I’ll lie back down.”
This time she was facing me and her eyes never left my hands, as if making sure I wasn’t gonna attempt to touch her again. I wondered what the hell was up with that shit? But I wasn’t gonna pry. Had too much to deal with myself to be concerned with her damn emo issues too.
Crickets chirped outside, and every fifteen minutes, the sound of the campus cops’ radios filled the house. They were doing their rounds—just like good little bitches of the dean—the light from their flashlights illuminating the room, except here behind the couch, where we had our own little pocket of protection.
Hours and hours passed in silence, and I lay on my back just staring once more at the stars through the skylight, the sky brightening with the rising dawn, the dark room now lightened by a hazy orange glow.
I heard Lexi sigh beside me, and I asked, “What do think of when you look up at the stars?”
I caught Lexi’s head tilt to the side and her eyes narrowed in scrutiny.
Minutes passed as she stared silently at the night sky. “Sometimes I wonder what they must make of our world,” she whispered quietly. I didn’t think she’d respond. “Do we fascinate them or disgust them? Do they look down on us the same way we look up at them and wonder what we’re thinking too? Do they see all our problems? Watch our sorrowful excuses for lives with a growing sense of pity? Or do they envy us for just having a life, good or bad?”
Her response surprised me. Sorrowful excuses for lives?