Page 151 of Fight or Flight
He rolls his eyes. “Egotistical much? Someone bumped into me, and I bumped into you. I wasn’t overwhelmed by anything.”
“Of course not.”
“It was an accident,” he insists.
“Of course it was.”
The line moves forward, and we step up to the door at the same time.
I make a big show of motioning for him to go ahead. “After you.”
He rolls his eyes, but slips out of the room ahead of me, and doesn’t look back as he strides down the hall and catches up with Paxton and a few of his friends.
“Still want to go into town for a bit?” Xave asks as he comes to stand with me.
“Yup.” I tear my gaze from Shane’s retreating form.
“Hell yeah.” He grins and pulls his keys out of his pocket. “Time to raise a little hell.” He tosses me a little smirk. “Or a lot, depending on your mood.”
“Bring it,” I say as we head down the hall in the opposite direction that Shane went. “Because I’m definitely in a mood.”
27
SHANE
“Hey,I was just looking for you,” Dan says as I close the door to my room.
“What’s up?” I ask, trying to look chill and calm and not like I’m about to piss my pants from fear.
“I’ve been trying to figure out if I should say something about this.” He glances around nervously.
“What?” I really don’t have the bandwidth to deal with this right now, but I can’t exactly tell him to fuck off without raising suspicions.
“Is there something going on between you and Jace?”
My heart skips a few beats for entirely new reasons, and quickly I look around the empty hall as I shove my door back open and usher him inside.
“What do you mean?” I ask when my door is closed and we’re away from prying eyes and ears.
“I saw him coming out of your room the morning after he brought you home when you got fucked up at The Crypt,” he says hesitantly. “I wouldn’t have said anything if it was just that, but I also saw him coming out of your room later that day whenyou were hanging out with Paxton, and you guys aren’t exactly friends, so that seemed weird to me.” He bites his lip nervously.
“You saw him leave my room when I wasn’t here?” I ask, just to be sure I heard him correctly.
He nods. “It’s not my business what you guys are doing or not doing, but with your history and all, it just seemed weird. And I know I probably should have said something sooner, but I wasn’t sure how. But then I overheard him and Jax talking earlier and…”
“And?” I press when he falls silent.
“And I heard him say some stuff about you that wasn’t exactly flattering.”
“Like what?” I ask, my voice as cold as the rest of me suddenly feels.
“Like how easy it was to get you to hand your ass over to him—his words,” he adds quickly. “And something about how gullible you are and how easy it was for him to get his hands on the thumb drive.”
I blink at him as that bombshell hits like a grenade to the face. “Are those the exact words he used?” I manage to scrape out.
“Yeah. I take it that means something to you?”
I nod, still trying to process everything he just dropped on me.
