Page 118 of Fraternizing with the Enemy
“Could you be more annoying?” Jade threw back, scowling. She glanced over at me. “I said I wanted to do my thing tonight.”
“Too bad I don’t care.”
His response had been so quick, so juvenile, that Jade only rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’re almost there. Don’t let her leave.”
“Duh.” The one word twisted disdainfully, and then the phone beeped with the ended call.
The silence was thick, but only for a moment. “Lacey?” I echoed, half afraid to ask. “What’s going on with Lacey?”
“Ashton has something to talk to her about.”
I waited, but she didn’t go on. “With you?”
Jade pulled into Ashton’s full driveway, finding a parking space that’d been left open near the front. Perfectly reserved for the Top Tier. “I always get the front row seat.”
The realization was another weight on my shoulders. They were going to do something to her. That was why Ashton was impatient—because he’d been waiting forJade to arrive to get started. “Jade,” I whispered, brow crumpling.
Her eyes traced me in the dim lighting, and she reached out, smoothing her hands down my hair like she always did. The action was not lulling, nor comforting, nor soothing. It took everything in me not to jerk away from her touch.
“Why do we have to do this?”
“This?”
“This.” I scanned the face of my best friend, trying to find a glimmer of the girl I knew in her dark eyes. “Connor, Maisie, whatever’s going on inside. Why can’t we just have fun in high school and leave everyone be?”
“I am having fun.” Jade pushed my hair over my shoulder, fingers trailing along the skin of my neck before pulling back. She had to see the tears in my eyes, but she didn’t care. Then again, sitting in the passenger seat, I wasn’t sure she ever did. “Aren’t you?”
And then she hopped out of the car.
I sat in the darkness of Jade’s car for a long, long time, unmoving. Even from here, I could hear the slam of the music in the walls of Ashton’s house, and knew that it was probably filled with people inside, if the driveway was any indication. People smiling, laughing, having fun, oblivious to the cheer co-captain having an existential crisis in an SUV outside.
But somewhere in there was Lacey, about to be cornered by Ashton and Jade for who knew why. She was unsuspecting, with no one to warn her. No one but me.
My phone began vibrating in my grip, and I looked down at the caller ID.
“Madison,” Logan said when the call connected,tone stressed. “I texted, but you weren’t answering. Is everything okay?—”
“If someone you weren’t close with was going to have something happen to them, what would you do?” I asked, staring at Ashton’s three-story house with a sense of dread.
“Madison.” The urgency in Logan’s voice renewed. “Are you at the party?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the address?”
“You can’t come here.” Because everything would surely fall apart then. “If you knew something was going to happen to someone, what would you do?”
I knew what Logan was about to say. He’d stop it. He wouldn’t let anyone be picked on, no matter if they were his best friend or his enemy. He’d throw himself in front of the fire if it meant shielding someone else. That was Logan. Kindhearted. Steady. Brave in all the ways I wasn’t. Everything I wanted to be.
There was a pause, and I could almost hear him breathing on the other end. Then, finally—quietly: “Don’t ask me that.” The words sounded like they hurt. Like he hated saying them. I closed my eyes, letting the weight of his voice settle over me. Inexplicably, the urge to cry rose again, burning the back of my throat. “What I’d do doesn’t matter.”
At first, I thought that was his way of deflecting another serious question.
“Don’t ask yourself what you shoulddo,” Logan went on in a murmur, and it was like his words slipped underneath my skin and straight to my heart. “Ask yourself what you can live with.”
Ask yourself what you can live with. Could I livewith knowing that Ashton and Jade were teaming up against Lacey, and doing nothing to stop it? Could I live with letting another person be hurt by the Top Tier? Could I live with myself if I sat by?
I opened my eyes, and strangely, Ashton’s house almost seemedbrighter. “I’m glad you were dared to tour Brentwood,” I told him, reaching to unclasp my seatbelt. “I’m glad I met you, Logan.”
