Page 21 of Homecoming

The comment is so out of the blue that we all just look at him like he has lost his mind and wait for him to explain himself.

He is too busy sipping his coffee and looking around to realize that we are all staring at him.

Finally noticing that it's silent, he says, “What?”

“Who is like a dog?” Cash asks with his eyebrow raised.

“Oh, Jensen,” Riot replies and then explains, “he gets too excited and needs to exercise so that he doesn’t misbehave in the car.”

We all burst out laughing while Jensen tries and fails to look indignant at the comparison.

“Dude, I take offense,” he exclaims.

Riot chuckles, “No, you don’t.”

“You’re right I don’t,” Jensen agrees with a shrug and then looks at me and starts bouncing on his toes, “can we go and get our Ever now?”

Our Ever.

That has a nice ring to it.

“Yeah, come on,” I reply with a smile.

I have to tell Jensen to stop running and drawing attention to us at least twice, but finally, we are on the road again.

An idea occurs to me, “Message one of our people, someone that we trust and see what they can tell us about her. Don’t mention her by name; just say that you heard there is a new girl, and we want info.”

“Good idea,” Cash replies as he pulls out his phone and starts typing.

“I miss Trev. I can’t believe he didn’t come back to school after the summer,” Jensen mutters.

“Me too, man. We wouldn’t have even had to ask; he would have already texted us the information. We most likely would have gotten it quicker than we did from the moms.” Luc chuckles.

“Exactly,” I agree with a smile. “I get it though, his mom needed better treatment than we have available here, so they had to move to the city.”

“I understand why he moved,” Jensen replies, “I just miss him, and not just because he is awesome at information gathering.”

“Our guy has texted me back,” Cash says, his eyes flashing with anger.

“Why do you look like you are about to murder someone?” Riot asks.

Instead of replying, Cash reads out the text, “He said: Yeah, there’s a new girl, and she is fucking smoking hot . . .”

He is interrupted by sounds of anger that come from the rest of us, apparently, we aren’t very fond of that and are a tad bit possessive. Who would have thought?

Cash smirks, knowing that we have reacted exactly the same way as he did. He continues to read, “She is hanging around with Rylie. Ralph tried to hit on her, and she handed him his ass; it was fucking epic.”

I grin, saying proudly, “That’s our girl.”

“Rylie?” Rafe frowns, trying to place the name.

“Wait, Rylie, that helped when we had that whole Ryan thing?” Luc asks, “She helped the girls and got them to write statements. Then, she got the statements to us, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Cash smiles. “Rylie is good people. Ever is safe with her.”

“Good, I liked her,” Jensen adds.

Cash looks down at his phone again and frowns, “Just got another text through. He says that the girl that has deluded herself into thinking that she means something to you, Trick, seems to have it out for her, Ever isn’t backing down at all.”

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