Page 66 of Necessary Cruelty

I hope the message is clear: I’ll wait.

Whatever game Vin wants to play obviously involves pretending I’m not sitting directly across from him.

“Anybody catch the game last night? I swear the Dodgers are doing this on purpose just to hurt me.”

Elliot takes a bite of his apple. “Don’t forget you owe me fifty bucks. A bet is a bet, even if the game is fixed.”

They fall into some indecipherable conversation about baseball that I don’t even try to follow. But even as he shoots the shit with his friends, Vin doesn’t take his gaze off my face.

One of us is waiting for the other to break.

Like always, Sophia can’t keep her stupid mouth shut. “Since when do we let any old trash sit with us at lunch?”

My hands curl into fists on the table as the anger that has been simmering all day finally boils over. It isn’t enough that I live in the gutter while she enjoys entirely unearned luxury, but she has to rub salt in my wounds every chance she gets.

Iain doesn’t look up from the game system in his lap. “You’re here.”

If Sophia understands that was a dig, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she leans across the table towards me. Vin’s attention must have her emboldened enough that she speaks directly to me this time. “All the other hood rats are over there.”

It doesn’t even matter that she wouldn’t know a hood rat if one stabbed her in the face. Or that most people in the Gulch are honest, hard-working, and just trying to keep food on their tables.

I’ve had exactly enough of her mouth.

Launching myself up, I nearly fly around the table. Sophia’s blond curls are in my hands and I slam her on the ground before anyone can stop me. Like a pussy, she goes for my face with fingers that are bent like claws. I duck my head and bring my fist up hard into her chin, feeling a satisfying crunch even as pain explodes in my knuckles.

Her nails scratch at my face. I bat them away with one hand while the other punches her again, this time in the nose that everyone knows she had done the summer before freshman year.

There is a satisfying spray of blood as her nose bursts like a ripe tomato.

Sophia screeches like a wounded cat, and then someone is pulling me off her. I don’t need to look to know it’s Vin —no one else would dare put their hands on me just to break up a fight.

I kick out behind me in the hopes he’ll let me go, hitting something soft. He grunts in pain, but doesn’t release me. He has me completely off my feet with one hand wrapped around my waist and the other keeping my pinwheeling arms at bay.

Vin drags me out of the cafeteria to the sound of Sophia screaming that I’m going to be sorry if her face doesn’t heal right.

Like that bitch needs another excuse to hit up a plastic surgeon.

Metal doors crash open, and then we’re outside the school building. He doesn’t put me down until we’ve crossed the parking lot and stop beside his Maserati.

“Get in,” he snaps.

I spit at him. “Fuck you.”

“Your mood is a bit violent for my tastes. Maybe later.”

Opening the driver’s side door, he forces me inside and easily dodges when I try to kick him in the crotch. I’m not playing games here — if I get half the chance, then I just might try to actually kill him. The gear shift pokes painfully into my hip as I tumble backward across the seats. Vin keeps shoving only until he has enough room to climb in behind me.

By the time I make it to the other side and reach for the passenger door, the car is already screeching backward out of the parking space.

“What are you doing?” I screech, reaching for the seatbelt as he takes the turn out of the school parking lot at breakneck speed.

“You wanted to talk, so talk.”

“Here?”

“I figured you won’t try to kill me if we’re doing eighty down the highway, unless you’re hoping to die with me.”

Until today, I wouldn’t have considered myself a particularly violent person. But beating the absolute shit out of him sounds like heaven right now. “God forbid, you just talk to me when I asked you, like a normal person. I’m sure Sophia is already sobbing in Principal Schneider’s office. Thanks for getting me suspended.”

---