Page 88 of Runaways

"I do." I smile and take a drink of my own. "Just a little."

He leans forward and, with a finger under my chin, turns my head until our eyes meet. "You're happy, though—I can tell. Maybe the happiest I've ever seen you. And I don't mean in this bar, I mean…this." He inclines his head toward Silas. "You like this."

To be honest, I try to spend as little time as possible thinking about what we've been doing because if I did, I'd be forced to process things I'd rather not deal with.

Like how this isn't normal. Or that while I told myself in the beginning that this was fine because we're all friends, so I'm safe, it doesn't feel like just friends to me anymore.

And what do we do when we go back to school in a couple of weeks? Does this just stop? Does Silas go back to dating cheerleaders, and Tate go back to being a fuckboy?

And if it doesn't stop, then it's still kind of fucked up, and Mia is going to kill me when she finds out. I broke one of our rules. What will people at school think?

This. This is why I don't think about it.

"I closed your tab," one of the bartenders says, setting a receipt down on the table. "Please pay your bill, and then the three of you need to leave."

"Why?" Tate asks. "What did we do?"

"You know why," she says, crossing her arms in front of her before focusing her gaze on me. "And you're disgusting."

"Hey, fuck you," Tate says as she walks away. "Let's go."

He throws some cash downon the table, and I follow him toward the back door.

"Don't listen to her," Silas says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. "She's just jealous."

"Yeah, right. Why would she be jealous of me?"

"Because you're so pretty," he says. "And you've got two boyfriends."

Do I? Do I have two boyfriends?

"And your boyfriends are boyfriends," Tate says over his shoulder as we walk through the door and into the alley.

"Hey, how much for a turn with your whore?"

Silas and I look over our shoulders at the same time. A middle-aged man stumbles toward us, clearly belligerent, with a drink still in his hand.

"Fuck off," Silas says.

"Just ignore him," Tate tells us.

But he's still following, closing the space between us, and I'm scared. I cling a little tighter to Silas, and he kisses the top of my head. "It's okay," he whispers.

I'm glad it's dark so he can't see my eyes watering.

"Come on, everything's got a price," he says, close enough now that I can smell the liquor on him. "Hey, I'm talking to you!"

Then, just before we turn the corner, he grabs my ass, and I scream.

"What the fuck did you just do?" Silas asks, this time turning and getting right up in the shorter man's face. "Did you just fucking touch her?"

"Pfft, what do you care?" the man asks, swaying on unsteady legs as he points to Tate. "You let that guytouch her."

"Hey," Tate says. "Let's go. It's just you and your hand tonight again, you fucking loser. If you can even get it up."

"Why don't you come over here and say that to my face?" the man shouts back to Tate.

"Not when I can smell your breath from all the way over here, stinky. No one's going to fuck you like that."

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