Page 38 of Chaos at Westbrook High

I don’t like his tone or his hand on my neck, but I still don’t look at him. “I don’t know.”

“Did you see their faces?” Elijah asks, and I shake my head.

“No.”

“Didn’t you catch them?” Kai asks his dad.

I shiver again when his fingers tighten around me. I’ve still got my hood over my head, but I can feel the warmth of his touch through the fabric.

“No,” Elijah answers. “They got away.”

“Why would you let them get away?” Kai bites out.

“Because I can’t shoot a man in the back in the middle of the street, Kai,” Elijah growls.

An awkward silence follows, and I risk a sideways glance at Kai, the inked hand on his thigh clenching into a tight fist. The tattoo there is a black and white skull, the creepy rows of teeth taking up most of the back of his hand, the black nose creeping up over the knuckle of his forefinger. I wonder what it looks like when he wraps that hand around my throat.

“Why did you call our dad?”

I look up to find Wren watching me and his brother, his own hood pulled over his head as he leans back on the couch next to Levi.

“What makes you think I called him?”

Damon lets out an aggravated breath and walks over to me, my spine straightening as he tosses a phone onto my lap. Elijah’s phone starts ringing in his pocket, and I look down, quickly ending the outgoing call when I realize it’s my phone he tossed at me, not his own.

“Where did you get my phone?”

“You dropped it in the lobby.”

“And you just happened to guess my passcode?” It’s Derek’s birthdate. Fuck.

He glares at me again, and I glare right back, swinging my head around to Kai when it hits me. That look he shared with Damon in the elevator… The bastard held my head against him while his brother was snooping through my phone behind my back. And I’m the dumbass who thought he was just holding me to hold me.

Fucking figures.

“Hailey.”

“Don’t even,” I mutter to Kai, dropping back against the couch and keeping my eyes forward, refusing to let him see how mortified I am over my own actions.

While his father’s having a quiet conversation with James in the corner, Kai takes the opportunity to move even closer to me, his fingers kneading the back of my neck as he turns his body to face me. My back arches before I can stop it, and I look up to find his siblings watching us again.

“Will you stop touching me?” I whisper.

He leans over to speak in my ear. “That’s not what you said when you were crawling all over me just now.”

My nostrils flare, and I finally turn my head to look him in the eye, so close our mouths are almost touching. “You’re an asshole.”

He grins and drops his attention to my lips.

Most guys would be offended, maybe even give me a list of reasons why they’re not an asshole, but not Kai. He doesn’t defend himself because he doesn’t give a shit. He is an asshole and he knows it. He’s not ashamed of it at all, and it only makes me hate him more.

“You should watch the way you speak to me.”

“Maybe you should stop speaking altogether,” I fire back. “You talk too much.”

He laughs at that, tilting my head back to run his soft lips over my cheek. “Brat.”

I shove him away, and Elijah looks over at us, once again bouncing his eyes between me and his son. Kai smirks as he leans back on the couch, his knee touching mine as he spreads his legs out wide.

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