Page 125 of My Brother's Best Friend

And a little crazy too—which I loved about her, but it’d get her hurt one of these days.

“Where’s Kai?” I asked. “Blaise?”

“Kai’s at home, working on figuring out who shot at the girls,” Landon said. “Blaise is …”

“At the hospital,” Jace said, leaning against Mr. Avery’s closed door. With a football in his hands, he tossed it back and forth. “He texted the group this morning and said that he was staying with Vera today.”

“The group?” I asked, brow furrowed. “What group?”

“The group chat,” Landon said.

“What group chat?”

“The one we added you to last night,” João said. “Come on. Stop being fucking stupid.”

After pulling out my phone, which I had turned off to ignore Mom’s nonstop texts about the dinner that she was making for me and Dad tonight, I turned it on and saw a bunch of texts from unknown numbers in a group chat calledNo Girls.

I rubbed my forehead.Damn, these guys are trying hard to get themselves in trouble with their girlfriends, huh?Because if any of the girls saw a group chat labeledNo Girls, they’d immediately become god-tier hackers to get into their phones and figure out what we didn’t want them to know.

“Don’t listen to him,” Landon said, following João into Mr. Avery’s room. “He’s just pissed off about what happened to Imani.”

Mr. Avery looked up from his desk, where he sat with Sakura, eating lunch, and grimaced at us. After wrapping Sakura’s grinder, he stuffed it into a brown bag and handed it to her. “Why don’t you eat lunch with the girls in the cafeteria?”

While Sakura couldn’t be more than a few months pregnant, her belly had already grown so much since the last time I had seen her.

After setting down the grinder on his desk, she glanced back at us and pulled on an oversize sweatshirt to hide her stomach, then grabbed her belongings. “I will see you after school.”

Mr. Avery kissed her on the lips, guided her toward the door, then locked it behind her.

João whistled. “Baby mama doesn’t want anyone knowing that you’re the father?”

“Doubt that Imani would ever want anyone to know thatyouwere the father of her baby if she had one either,” Landon said.

And I mean, I didn’t disagree with him because João was so explicit and hard to get along with.

“What do you want, Rocha?” Mr. Avery said, heading back to his desk.

“Information,” Jace said.

Mr. Avery leaned against the desk and crossed his arms, brow arched as he looked between Poison and then at Jace and me. “Has Poison finally accepted new members into their little clique?”

“Fuck no,” João growled. “But this has to do with all of us. Even you.”

“Me?” Mr. Avery said, shaking his head. “I’m not getting involved with this shit anymore. I have Sakura to protect and a baby on the way. If anyone realizes that I’ve left the mob to work with Poison, they’ll be in danger.”

“Well, the girls got shot yesterday, and Sakura could’ve been one of them,” Landon said.

Mr. Avery drew his tongue across his teeth, his gaze faltering for a moment. “What is it?”

João handed Mr. Avery a slip of paper. “Do you know any of these guys?”

Mr. Avery sat down at his desk and kicked his right ankle up onto his knee, scanning the sheet. “Are these the guys who did it? Because … they don’t look familiar to me. I can ask around to find out who they are, but no promises that I’ll come up with anything.”

“You’d fucking better find something or?—”

“Or else what, João?” Mr. Avery asked, looking up at him. “You’ll kill me? No. You won’t do that. You only kill people if you’re getting paid for it.” He forced out a breath. “I’ll do what I can, but nothing more.”

João lunged at Mr. Avery, but Landon caught him and threw him back so hard into the desks that three of them tumbled to the ground on top of João. “Step the fuck back and settle your ass down, Rocha.”

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