Page 110 of Noxious Boys (Groveton College)

We’re going to kill for you.

Chapter 43

BENNETT

Rex taps his fingers against his mouth, drumming over his bottom lip as his leg jumps, and I know he can’t help it. I know it’s not something he can control. But I want to break his fucking fingers.

I think of thecrunch,hearing it in that frat house, my little brother, who’s back at the dorm grabbing Poppy’s things, snapping Chris Matthews’ Ulna. Maybe his Radius too. My mouth twitches with a satisfied smile all the same.

“Want a smoke, Hendrix?” I ask, trying to get him to stop with the fucking fidgeting, it doesn’t usually bother me, he’s been stimming since we first met, but tonight, tonight I’ve got anger I can’t disperse.

“Fuck, yes,” he sighs, instantly stopping the tapping and reaching towards my offering of cigarettes instead as I pull them from my pants’ pocket.

“Light,” I rumble, digging into my other pocket, he leans into me, his fingers still twitching, but as soon as he inhales, leaning back in the chair, he stills. “Flynn?” I ask my brother as I light my own, he shakes his head, flicking his curved pocket knife open and closed.

I drop my head back, stare up at the ceiling as I exhale.

The three of us sit inside Flynn’s suite on the top floor of the house, the door open, the one opposite, my room, is closed. Poppy inside with a doctor, with King.

I grit my teeth. I want to be the one in there with her. But I’m too angry, I wouldn’t be thinking straight. Raiden’s got anger that bleeds out of him, but he needed his hands looking at and only one of us could be in there with her.

“Did you see what he did?” Flynn asks, elbows on his knees, the flipping of his blade paused, chin dipped, his blue eyes flash up, onto Rex, waiting.

Rex shifts, exhaling through his nose, thick white smoke slowly drifting up to the ceiling. “I don’t think he could get it in.” He cringes as he says the words, “But he was right…there.”

I feel relief at that, having already heard the same thing from him when I first arrived inside that house, pocketing a syringe and leaving behind a battered body.

Flynn nods, resuming his knife play, dropping his gaze to his bare feet. Dark sweats the only thing he has on. His silky black curls in disarray, a frizzed mess atop his head. Other than that, he is so very serene it is unnerving. I know Flynn better than I know myself. This is when he’s most dangerous.

“Flynn,” I clear my throat, pinching out the cherry of my cigarette between my finger and thumb, flicking my gaze onto Rex, gesturing for him to go find an ashtray, he climbs to his feet. “Look at me,” I say, diverting my attention back to Flynn. Very slowly, his sapphire blue eyes lift to mine, “I will find you an outlet, you will get your blood,” I am very clear with my words in that respect, making sure he knows as I hold his gaze that I’m being serious. “But not without proper planning. There will be no vigilante-”

He scoffs, cutting me off, a sinister smirk curling his mouth, dark brow dropped low, “Vigilante would imply I’m some sort of fucking hero.”

I raise a brow, slow to climb my forehead as I look at him, and I have a million and one things I could fucking say, but I go with, “Poppy needs a hero right now, and if you fuck off to god knows where and she wants it to be you, what the fuck do I do then, huh?”

He grits his teeth, Rex returning, placing a crystal ashtray down on the glass table between us. Three short couches perpendicular to one another.

“She’s got y’all,” he shrugs, dropping my gaze again. “She doesn’t need me.”

“Flynn, brother,” he glances my way, closing his knife, “she needs you.”

I need you.

After too long, bright blues flicking over my face, finally, he sighs, “Okay,” sweeping pale, clammy fingers through his wild hair.

“Got any weed?” Rex asks Flynn, but he’s already moving, opening drawers, closing them, tapping his fingers over his goddamn mouth. “If I were a knife-wielding, sociopathic psychiatrist, where would I stash my weed?” Flynn tosses the open knife at Rex, his broad back to us, and he drops down, just as the blade spins through the air, hitting the dresser. Turning his head of messy ash-brown hair over his shoulder, he licks his lips, cocks his head, looking Flynn in the eye, “Missed me, pretty boy.”

“I missed on purpose,” Flynn grunts, sighing heavily, he leans back against the couch.

“Like the last time we went paintballing, you mean?” Rex stands, turning back to face us, little baggie of weed between his fingers. “You miss on purpose then, too?”

“You’re a little shit, Hendrix,” Flynn mutters, not rising to it, exhaustion heavy on all of us, but Rex’s energy never wavers.

“Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, Rex. It’s rude not to share a spliff, so hurry up and roll one,” I say as he crosses the room, grabbing his sweats pocket and yanking him back down onto the couch.

“Jesus,” he chuckles, “okay, okay,” he says, leaning towards the table, already rolling a joint.

I hear the front door open, close, my brother’s light gait trudging up the first set of stairs, then the next.

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