Page 29 of Stop and Seek
Alyssa tapped Theo’s shoulder, and he stepped back.
Weaving through the parking lot, she was still talking.
“You’re beingsuperweird. You suck with people. So what? We all do.”
Theo ran his hands over his face, fingers dragging hard. He kept pushing against his eyeballs until his vision blistered white and black—then red—then the pain came. Dull. Blunt. Enough to keep it all inside for a while longer.
“I really hate it here.” His voice came out flat, dead. He’d said it so many times, it didn’t mean anything anymore.
“Okay, and?” Alyssa stopped at her beat-to-hell red car, tugging at the rusted handle until it gave in with a groan. “Leave.”
“Ican’t. Think about it. What would that kind of money do to your life?”
“So fix the attitude, Theo,” she said, her voice muffled as she leaned halfway into the car, practically swallowed by a mound of crushed fast food bags and half-drunk sodas. The interior smelled like ketchup packets and fruity perfume. “Max is nice, like big-time nice. Plus she ismegahot and loaded. If you blow my chance with her—” She popped back up, cheeks flushed, and shoved a baggie against his chest. “—I will end you.”
“Max—Maxine?”
How many times would someone remind him of her name before he remembered it?
“Yeah, Max. I think she’ll bitch slap you if you call her Maxine, though.”
Alyssa tucked her leg against the steering wheel. “It kinda goes with the whole, tomboy-aristocrat thing she’s got going for her. Man, she isdreamy.”
Honestly? Theo hadn’t noticed anything except for her voice and the ridiculous amount of gold jewelry she wore. He’d been too preoccupied with more important shit.
Likebreathing.
“Dreamy,huh?” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder to where Max was gesturing at Decker.
There was no way in hell.
Decker was a coked-up lab rat in a crop-top.
Noah was fuckingnuts—plain and simple.
The chances of Max being a decent human being? Slim to none.
“I’m telling you, she’s the whole package. Oh!” Alyssa slapped his knee and he looked back at the too-bright grin on her face. “She’s got like, a yacht? Or something. Like, girl,what? Shewas going on and on about these nude beaches she goes to in frickin’Greece. Greece, Theo. She like, hops on a plane and goes to Europe on a Tuesday.What?”
Theo shoved the baggie deep in the hoodie pocket, pressing it flat against his ribs like he could absorb the drugs through osmosis. He held up two fingers. “I swear, I won’t have a meltdown in front of Ms. Perfect.”
“You better be serious, Sir Asshole.”
Alyssa adjusted her fishnets as she got out of the car. Then her pigtails. Primping in the cracked side mirror.
“Go get, like, totally fucked up. Butdo notdrive on that. Go home,thentake them.”
“You want cash?” he asked.
She fixed her lipstick and gave Theo one more look.
“Nope.” She popped her lips. “Not tonight. You get a freebie because I’m—obviously—the nicest person on the planet.”
Theo settled into his car, sinking into the worn seat. The cracked vinyl stuck to the backs of his thighs through his jeans. He cranked the seat back until it clicked, head tilted enough to stare up at the sagging fabric overhead.
The stuff was peeling away from the ceiling in clumps, glue dried out and brittle. What the hell did Ethan call it?
A head… board?
