Page 89 of Chaos at Westbrook High

I let out a breath, wrapping my arms around her neck and pulling her into my chest. “I was so fucking worried about you. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she grumbles against me, hiding her face in my hoodie, but she doesn’t hug me back. “What are you doing here?”

Holding her to me, I scan her apartment over her head, sneering at the broken glass on the floor in the entryway, the toppled kitchen chairs, the broken picture frames. The two guys who did this aren’t here anymore, probably having been carried away by our dad’s guards. If I ever get my hands on them, I’m going to bury them in the fucking ground. But until then…

“I’m taking you home.”

Hailey looks up at me. “This is my home.”

“Not anymore.” Releasing her, I tip my head at her bedroom door. “Pack your shit.”

“No.”

“Callie, pack her shit.”

Callie heads toward the bedroom, and Levi follows her, his eyes on Derek as if he’s daring him to look at her. Derek doesn’t. Still sipping from the vodka bottle, he continues to stare me down.

“You’re not taking her,” he says, but he makes no move to come for me, not with my brothers standing either side of me.

I smirk at him over his sister’s shoulder, taking her waist in my hands. “Watch me, bitch.”

His nostrils flare, but again, he makes no move.

Just to be a dick, I dip my head into the crook of Hailey’s neck. She snatches my jaw before I can kiss her there, digging her fingers into my cheeks as she pulls my eyes back to hers. She looks like she wants to punch me, which would make me laugh if I wasn’t just as pissed off as she is.

Still holding my face away from hers, she looks at Wren on my left, then Damon on my right, her eyes filled with unshed tears as she drags them back to me. They’re angry tears. She’s furious with me.

Fuck. She doesn’t want this.

But I’m selfish enough to take her anyway. I’ll carry her out of here kicking and screaming if I have to.

As if she can read my mind, she panics. Releasing my jaw, she tries to back away from me, digging her nails into my wrists when I refuse to let her go.

“Get off me!”

I don’t.

When Callie and Levi return with a duffel bag slung over Callie’s shoulder, I subtly tip my head at the picture on the shelf in the corner—the one Hailey wouldn’t let me look at this morning. Callie picks it up, and Hailey takes a threatening step toward her, gritting her teeth when I pull her back to my chest. When she turns and tries to take a swing at me, I sigh.

Kicking and screaming it is.

Picking her up by her waist, I toss her over my shoulder, holding on tight as she thrashes her little body around like a lunatic.

“Kai!” she yells, hysterical. “This isn’t funny!”

“I’m not laughing, baby girl,” I say quietly.

After carefully placing the photo into the duffel bag, Callie zips it up and walks over to Damon, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Derek since the second we walked in here. She leans back into him, resting her head on his chest while we all look down at Derek Kingston. He’s looking right back up at us from his spot on the couch, looking so pathetic and defeated that I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

Hailey stops trying to fight her way down when she realizes we’re all staring at her brother, going completely still in my arms. “Kai…”

I run my hand over the back of her thigh in an attempt to calm her nerves.

“Are you done with him?” Wren asks the doctor, who nods and packs up her things.

“Think you can stop him from drinking that?” she asks. “The boy never listens to me.”

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