Page 17 of Science Project

“They all do,” I murmured to myself, glaring out my passenger window.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Akio clenched, then unclenched his fist a few moments later. Then, as if all that … anger—if that was what it was—disappeared, he put the car into drive and headed back to my house. Too quietly.

He parked at the curb and offered me a small smile. “I’ll see you at school.”

I narrowed my eyes at his sudden change of emotions, then gathered my belongings and exited the car. “I’ll see you later, Akio.” Before I shut the door, I leaned down and looked into his car. “Remember what I told you?”

His smile didn’t falter. “Don’t worry.”

“Okay …” I said suspiciously, shutting the door and heading up the walkway.

Before I slipped into the house, I glanced back at him. The car lurched forward erratically. As if Akio wasn’t planning on an easy ride back to his house. And by the looks of it, he wasn’t heading that way either.

CHAPTER

TEN

AKIO

I repeatedly flashed my high beams at Joe Santos from behind him in the darkness.

Joe Santos had been driving around Redwood for two hours, talking on his phone, probably to his buddies about fucking a barely legal academy student and the police chief’s daughter. And I had been following him for that long at a distance, waiting for him to pull over.

But I was fucking done trying to be subtle.

The longer I stared at this scumbag through my windshield, the more I fucking loathed him, the harder I dug my fingers into the steering wheel, and the heavier my foot pressed on the accelerator.

After glancing in the rearview mirror and spotting my car behind him, he turned onto a more discreet road that led to the Overlook. I followed behind him, turning on my high beams for good and hoping that it blinded that asshole.

A few moments later, he parked on the side of the Overlook. I slammed on my brakes behind him, threw the car into park, and stormed out of it just as he was opening his car door. My hands shook with rage, and I … I … I couldn’t help myself.

“Akio, if I had known that it was you?—”

Before he could say another word, I ripped him out of the driver’s seat and hurled him toward the rocks so hard that he fell backward down the first few of them, knocking his head on his way down and landing on one near the water.

There was nothing between Nicole and me. Absolutely nothing.

She had made it clear that I wasn’t her type, that she didn’t like me, and that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. But I didn’t care. Because when she’d slipped into my car, it wasn’t anger etched into her face.

It was fear.

Fear of something I couldn’t quite decipher then, but I could now.

After Nicole had whispered that they all hurt her, that he hurt her, it was clear that she hadn’t really wanted it. Or maybe she did, but he had taken it too far. And I wasn’t going to let any of Mom’s scummy men hurt the one girl I had liked since elementary school.

“Akio, what are you?—”

I slammed my foot into his side.

He reached for his gun, but I pulled out the one that Mom forced me to carry around with me and shot off his hand before the gun could make it out of his waistband.

Screaming out in pain, he grasped his wound with his empty hand. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

“You hurt her.”

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