Page 47 of The Venom We Bleed

Gio nudges me, bringing me back to myself and reminding me why I’d had the thought in the first place. “There goes your girl,” he murmurs, eyes locked on the space in the treeline where Juliet had gone not but thirty seconds before.

Nolan tips back his beer and glares at the dark forest that surrounds the dilapidated old farmhouse where the students of Silverwood Public have gathered to escape the reality ofour lives. “We’re going to have to take care of those two,” he murmurs, no small amount of rage burning in his eyes.

Gio and I exchange a look. He’s not talking about Juliet, but the guys we’d watched disappear into the trees a few minutes before she’d made her way after them. Thrusting his bottle up, he drains it in a split second before tossing the now empty container to the lawn and leveraging away from the hood of G’s Firebird.

“I’ll take care of them.” Nolan freezes as the words leave my lips and both Gio and Nolan slowly turn to face me. Nolan narrows his gaze.

“You never care about shit like this,” he snaps, and I have to remind myself that it’s not me he’s mad at—it’s the two shit stains that are currently leading one of Silverwood Public’s cheerleaders into the forest to do to her what we’ve heard they’ve done to so many others.

The girl is a nameless, faceless nobody to me. To Nolan, though, she’s someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s best friend, and if we don’t do something she’ll likely end up raped and intimidated into silence before the end of the night.

Perhaps it makes me a bad person—though, I’ve always known that I'm not exactly morally in sync with everyone else—but he’s right. Idon’tgive a shit abouther. Why should I? She’s never done anything for me. Not like Juliet has. Juliet saved my life. If not for her, I would have been under my father’s roof the night he decided to kill my mother and himself. He would have killed me too. I owe hereverything.

But Nolan is my brother—not by the blood in my veins, but by the blood on our hands—and if he wants to save some future teen mom some trauma then I’ll do it. I’ll do it for him, and for the fact that if I don’t, Juliet might end up wandering into the path of those two asswipes and paint an even bigger target on her back.

“Because you want it to stop,” I say, answering Nolan’s comment, though it hadn’t been a question. “Because this is the first time we’ve ever been close enough to get proof of their actions. You want them done for? I’ll make it happen.”

Nolan eyes me as if he’s not sure whether or not I can be trusted. The longer we stand here, however, the longer Juliet is in the woods with those two, and I highly doubt the cheerleader is going to help her out if they get into a scrape.

After a beat, Nolan curses. “I want Josh and Rich out of here,” he states. “When you’re done with them, send them towards the road—not the party.”

Josh and Rich have been smart until now. Their actions have only ever been spoken of in whispers. No one has ever been able to catch them and none of the girls are willing to speak up—not to friends and certainly not to anyone fucking else. Nolan’s expression makes his intention clear. He’s out for blood.

I glance at Gio who tosses his glass bottle onto the lawn and heads around the side of the Firebird. “You’ll be there?” I guess.

“I’llbe there,” Nolan corrects before jerking his chin at Gio. “You—go with him.”

“You don’t think I can handle it myself?” A scowl overtakes my face. He should know better.

Nolan’s dark eyes find mine. “Around her?” he prompts with a shake of his head. “No. Take G as backup—dickheads like Rich and Josh would rather run than get caught. I won’t let them run off only to deny their actions later. Bring them out towards the road and we’ll finish their asses tonight.”

Gio tosses Nolan his keys. “Mile marker twenty-two,” is all he says before Nolan turns away and slides around the Firebird to the driver’s side door.

Slapping a hand to my chest and pushing me back, Gio diverts my attention as he nudges me out of the way of the car. Nolan quickly backs it up and swivels towards the dirt path thatleads back to the road. Annoyance lingers in my blood, heating my veins.

“I can handle this,” I insist, turning the emotion on G.

Gio simply shrugs and starts moving. “Of course you can, man,” he says. “Don’t mean you need to.”

“But you don’t even care about her,” I snap, throwing Nolan’s earlier words out into the open.

G pauses with his back to me. A second passes and then he turns, giving me his profile. “You think I give a fuck who’s out there with Rich and Josh?” his sneer curls his full mouth. Shadows cling to the hidden side of his face, creating an almost inhuman skeletal mask over one half of his features. “Juliet Donovan might be a pariah, but we both know what that dumbass was doing when she followed them into the woods.”

Almost as soon as the words are out of his lips, a familiar figure appears at the treeline. I jerk and gape as Cara Macey comes stumbling from the woods, huffing out breath after breath as she pivots towards the hill and begins to make her way up to the farmhouse. Gio must notice my expression because he swivels back to the woods. Then he, too, watches as the girl makes her way back to the party.

A beat passes and then another and another. Juliet doesn’t return. Neither do Rich or Josh.

A low growl erupts from my throat and I practically sprint forward. Josh Michaelson and Richard Glean are going to regret ever putting their hands on the girls of Silverwood Public, but if they put their hands on what’s mine, they’ll regret their very fucking lives.

“Fuck.” Gio’s curse echoes at my back, but he doesn’t tell me to slow down or to wait up. Instead, he simply hurries to catch up and our legs eat up the distance to the trees and shadows.

I crash through the trees, ducking beneath a branch as the light from the bonfire and party instantly dims. Darkness surrounds me.

Violence is what built us. Violence is what made us choose this path. And though we’ll eventually leave Silverwood, violence is in our blood and we crave it.

Tonight, Josh and Rich will see some of that violence and if they know what’s good for them, they’ll disappear afterward. If they know what’s good for them, they won’t force us tomakethem disappear.

20

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