Page 20 of Poison (Bad Boys of Redwood Academy 2)

LANDON

With my face burning from the force of Imani’s slap, I watched her storm down the hall and around the corner. I brushed my fingers against my cheek and clenched my jaw, chest tightening slightly at her anger and pain.

João and Kai, who had been silent up until now, burst out into a fit of laughter.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” I growled and shoved João into the red lockers.

“The fuck did you do to her?” he asked.

Kai glanced back down the hall in her direction, cracking a small smile that I rarely saw anymore after his mom died. “I haven’t ever seen her that angry before. She’s usually a quiet little thing.” Kai drew his tongue across his bottom lip, then turned in my direction. “What happened?”

I swung my backpack off my shoulder and pulled out a lighter. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

After lighting up another cigarette, I blew out some smoke and stared out one of the open windows and into the parking lot down below. “What happened with Jace Harbor last night?”

“You’d know if you hadn’t left when you saw Imani,” João said.

“What’s your problem?” I snapped.

“You want to get your dick wet too fucking badly.”

“I’ve been talking to her for a year,” I said, teeth gritted together.

“I don’t want you to catch feelings for her,” João said, taking the pack of cigarettes off my hands and snapping on the lighter. “She’s to be used to destroy this town, nothing more, so don’t get your feelings involved.”

“They’re not.” I looked over at Kai. “You don’t have shit to say about this?”

Kai shrugged. “She straightened her hair today,” he said. And when we both looked back at him in question, he put a blunt to his lips, lit it, and leaned back against the cold red locker. “I like it better natural.”

“Oh my fuck.” João rubbed a hand across his face and collapsed on a windowsill next to me, shaking his head. “You’re both fucking head over heels, and it hasn’t even been a fucking day yet.”

Principal Vaughn paused at the end of our hallway, stared directly at us, then kept walking, as if nothing was happening in his school. As strict as that man was, he knew best not to fuck with us. But there was something up with him; he had secrets that he obviously didn’t want us looking into. But I was sure they’d come out someday.

Kai gently closed his eyes and slumped his shoulders forward. “You slept with her?”

I inhaled the smoke and watched a couple leaves fall off branches outside. “What’s it to you?”

João glanced over. “She good in bed?”

“She was a virgin.”

“I thought you said she cams,” João said.

“She does, and she has a filthy fucking mouth, too, but she was a virgin.”

“I figured she was,” Kai said. “Nobody at Redwood has touched her.”

“What do you do, stalk her?” João asked Kai.

Kai stayed quiet.

“She’s going out to dinner with her parents and Akio tonight,” I interrupted, directing the conversation elsewhere. “If we want to fuck with her, then tonight’s the time. But if I see Akio with her, I’m going to fucking lose it.”

Kai paused and glanced over at João, who looked pissed at the mere mention of Akio’s name. “What are we going to do about him?” Kai asked João, setting the blunt on the windowsill. The bell rang, but none of us moved. “We have to do something, or Ana will—”

“I fucking know,” João said through clenched teeth. “But if Akio loses his fucking job, we’re out, and it’s over.” He rubbed a hand over his face and kicked himself off the windowsill. “I’ll figure something out. Meet at my place at seven. We have Imani to play with tonight.”

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