Page 62 of My Brother's Best Friend

Maddie glanced up at me and chewed on the inside of her lip. “It’s the only way, Alec.”

I didn’t want Poison involved at all, but we had no other choice. Still, she needed to understand what she was getting into and how much they charged. Poison didn’t do shit for free unless there was something in it for them.

“I don’t want them fucking with us more.”

She placed her hands on my chest. “It’s our only option. And, come on, it’s not like our parents will notice a couple thousand dollars missing.”

“I heard they forced Jace Harbor to pay two million dollars for a job,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “Two million?!”

“Yep.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “I know Imani, their … girlfriend. She’s in my Biology class, and we hung out a few times after Vera’s incident at school a while ago. I can try to talk to her about it. The least we can do is try to ask Kai. If he asks for too much, then we’ll find someone else. Deal?”

“Deal.”

CHAPTER38

MADDIE

Heart thumping, I gulped. “Do you think there are more videos?”

“I’m not sure,” he said honestly, jaw clenching. “There could be.”

“Do you think … Sandra did it?”

“Sandra?” he asked, brows raised. “Sandra’s a bitch, but she didn’t do this.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” Alec said tensely, “she didn’t.”

I sat back and furrowed my brow at him, reading him like a damn book. He was hiding something from me, something about his ex-girlfriend that he didn’t want me to know about, something damn important.

“Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Then, what aren’t you telling me?”

My chest tightened, and I was afraid of his answer. I feared that all those remarks from Sandra—that I wasn’t suited for Alec—hadn’t just come out of anywhere. She still liked him, and what if he liked her too?

“How do you know she didn’t do this?” I asked, scrambling off his lap.

He went to hold my hips down against his, but I pushed myself away and sat in the passenger seat. Anger and fury rushed through me, and I wanted so desperately to cry my eyes out. This wasn’t fair. My day had already been fucked up. I didn’t want this to make it worse, but deep down, I knew that it would.

Alec rubbed his hand over his face. “It’s not my place to tell you.”

“I’m your girlfriend,” I said between gritted teeth as I crossed my arms over my chest in an attempt to hold myself together. “Or at least … that’s what you told me you wanted me to be to you. I deserve to know.”

“Because, Maddie …” he said after a long sigh.

“Because why?”

“Because she was at my house by the time we left the locker room. I got a notification from our security system. My house is thirty minutes from the school. She never would’ve made it there.”

I gritted my teeth, hurt rushing through me. “And why the fuck was she at your house?”

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