Page 91 of Chaos at Westbrook High

The stubborn little shit doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look at me. She just stares straight ahead at Wren’s taillights with her arms folded tightly across her chest. My hands clench around the steering wheel. I catch her wiping a tear from her face when she thinks I’m not looking, and I feel like the biggest asshole on the planet.

“Shit,” I whisper.

Flashing my lights, I pull over on the side of the road and hit the brakes. Damon and Wren stop in front of me, but they don’t get out of their cars.

I unclip mine and Hailey’s seatbelts and pull her over to my lap. She curls herself into me, hiding her face in the crook of my neck the same way she did the last time she was almost fucking kidnapped.

There are so many things I want to ask her, so many things I want to make her tell me, but I don’t. I just wrap my arms around her, hold the back of her head, and let her cry it out.

Chapter 29

HAILEY

I hate this.

I think it’d be more fun to set myself on fire and yeet myself off the balcony than to be up here in this penthouse.

Kai, Damon, Callie, Wren, Levi, Derek, and I are all sitting around the huge marble kitchen island, waiting for Elijah to return from wherever he went. Most eyes are on Derek as he lazily slouches back in his seat, looking anywhere but at them as he peers around the place, probably remembering all the time he spent here before he and his cousins disowned each other four years ago.

Minutes pass by painfully slow. Damon won’t stop glaring at my brother. Levi keeps glancing between him and Derek as if he thinks Damon’s about to attack him any second now. Wren and Callie are having a whispered argument over by the coffee machine. And Kai’s watching me out of the corner of his eye, his hand in mine on my lap where it’s hidden beneath the counter.

After Wren and Callie get done fighting over a can of whipped cream, Callie walks over to me and Kai with two drinks in her hands and sets them down in front of us. “Iced caramel lattes.”

I look up at her in surprise, and she grins proudly, knowing it’s my favorite—and now Kai’s too.

“There’s not enough caramel in them,” Wren grumbles, tipping his head back to squirt some whipped cream into his mouth.

“There’s enough.” Callie nods at me before she climbs up onto Damon’s lap.

My brows pinch as I stare at the caramel sauce dripping over the sides of my glass.

Did they…?

“That's why they stopped at the store on the way home. They bought all the stuff they needed to make them,” Kai says quietly, answering my unspoken question. “For you.”

“They did not.”

He grins at me. “They did.”

I narrow my eyes at him, unamused.

He laughs. “Relax, Hails. It’s just coffee.”

“It’s not just—” I huff, swallowing when my brother cuts his eyes to mine.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Don’t.”

“You let him call you Hails?” he asks, shaking his head with an angry, disgusted laugh. “Jesus Christ. Does he know about the daisies too?”

Furious, I grit my teeth at him. “Say another word, Derek. I dare you.”

He doesn’t. He drops back into his seat and silently fumes. When I risk a glance at Kai, he looks fucking thrilled, because of course he does. Ignoring him, I pick up my iced coffee and take a sip. There’s too much caramel in it, but I still drink it with a secret smile on my face.

Wren takes a seat between Levi and Derek, giving me a secret smile of his own as he takes a sip of his coffee. Derek glances between me and the rest of them, his jaw ticking as he settles his eyes on the gold wedding ring on Wren’s left hand.

“You got married,” he says, screwing the cap off the water Wren puts in front of him.

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