“Come on, Leah,” Mark whispered. His eyes were dark. He was there, when the other boys were inside the house with Molly and had forgotten me. He leaned closer to kiss me. I might have let him, except that he was squeezing my arm so hard.

The driver’s door opened. Mark yanked my knee for a handhold as he was dragged out. He hit the cab of the next truck and bounced off with his fist already coming around, barely missing Grayson, who slammed him in the jaw. Boys in the surrounding trucks yelled and scrambled toward the fight.

“Hey!” I squealed, clambering across the seat. I didn’t want these boys to beat each other up. Then there would be nobody left to employ me. “Grayson, Mark didn’t mean any harm. He was just—”

“Get out of the truck, Leah,” Grayson commanded me without looking around at me. He watched Mark. His hand was balled in a white, bloodless fist. “Go back to the house.”

“Fuck off, Hall,” Mark yelled, wiping blood from his mouth with one hand. “Leah, you stay right there.”

Running footsteps sounded behind the truck. “Grayson!” Alec called from a distance.

Grayson didn’t turn around for Alec either, but a second later, Alec and Patrick burst into the ring of boys that had formed to watch the fight. They dashed between Grayson and Mark. Alec caught Grayson from behind by both arms, spun him around, and shoved him in the direction of the house. The ring of boys parted to let Grayson through. Patrick put one hand on Mark, who slouched unsteadily against the cab.

Now that Grayson was gone, Mark leaned around Patrick and told Alec to f**k off instead. Alec stood there with his muscular arms crossed on his chest. He didn’t look like a pretty boy anymore. Patrick had called him that and I had silently agreed… but in the face of Mark calling him every filthy name he could think of, Alec looked grim and didn’t back down.

Alec turned to me and said sternly, “Go after Grayson. Make sure he gets to the car and waits for me there. You should know better than this. You have to keep him out of this type of thing or we’ll all end up in jail. I’ll fight Mark if I have to, but Grayson will kill him.”

thirteen

Alec shouldn’t have worried. Grayson was standing behind Mark’s truck with his hands on his hips, breathing hard. The instant he saw me, he stepped toward me like he’d been waiting for me. He grabbed my arm to pull me away from the fracas.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Hey,” I said.

I didn’t have to explain why. As soon as I exclaimed, he realized he was grabbing me in exactly the same place Mark had grabbed me. Patrick must have told Grayson what happened. Patrick might even have gone to get him from the party. Grayson let me go immediately and spread his fingers as if consciously not making a fist. But he said, “Keep walking.”

By the time we reached Alec’s car, Alec was right behind us.

“Did you take care of it?” Grayson asked.

“Patrick talked him down.” Alec turned to me. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” I’d been rubbing my arm unconsciously. I put my hand down.

Alec ran his fingers back through his hair, messing it up for the only time I’d seen, other than yesterday when he took the hose to it in the hangar sink. “Why were you talking to Mark?” He sounded exasperated with me, another first.

“I didn’t want to come to this party,” I said in my defense. “Y’all knew it. Molly knew it. She told you. You brought me anyway. The girl who lives here told me I wasn’t welcome. I asked Molly if we could leave and she told me to go outside.”

The boys exchanged a look over my head. “I’ll go get her,” Grayson said, obviously wanting me to have some alone time with Alec, my hero who had saved me, sort of, after Grayson saved me first. Grayson took a step toward the house.

Alec put his hand on Grayson’s shoulder to stop him. “I’ll get her. You’re too mad.”

As Alec walked toward the mansion, some boys ambled up the driveway from the direction of Mark’s truck. They stared pointedly at me. Grayson crossed his arms and glared at them until they looked away.

Still watching them, he opened the front passenger door of Alec’s car. “Get in.”

He closed the door behind me and got into the backseat. The hot night had been cooled by the stormy breeze, but the car was like a sauna. Down the driveway toward Mark’s truck, a radio blasted rap music and then quieted.

“Are you drunk?” Grayson asked.

“No,” I said haughtily. “That, among other things, is a condition of my employment.”

“Stoned?”

“No.”

“Then why did you get within a hundred feet of Mark?”

“I didn’t know he was out there,” I said. “And I can’t imagine why he’s still after me.” The massive front door of the mansion opened. Alec and Molly stepped out. The way they tossed sentences at each other and jerked their heads away, they looked like they were arguing. I wondered what Molly and Alec had to argue about.

“Have you seen yourself in those shorts?” Grayson asked me. “I’m beginning to think you really don’t know.”

I leaned around the headrest to face him in the backseat. “Know what, Grayson? That nobody will hire me just as a pilot? That all my flying jobs come with a side order of sexy times? Yeah, I’m beginning to figure that out. Not that you’re to blame.”

“God!” Molly was saying to Alec as she got into the backseat and he sat down in the front. But as soon as Alec started the engine and rolled down the windows to let the heat escape, Francie skittered out of the mansion with her minions behind her, pointing toward the car.

“Go, Alec,” Grayson said quietly.

Francie’s long, straight, glossy locks bounced around her shoulders as she stopped by my door and screamed through the open window at me. “What are you trying to do, start a fight and bring the cops to my party? This is why I don’t invite trash.” She peered past me into the car. “Molly, this is why I don’t invite your trashy friend. Do not bring her near me again.” She called across me to Alec, “You’d better be careful. You’ll definitely catch something.”

Her friends behind her laughed. More and more people were streaming out of the mansion to hear what Francie would say to me: all the girls who were actively mean to me in the hall and the bathroom and PE, the whole reason I never ventured to the lunchroom, and now a lot of other people too, who had never given me a second glance but were realizing now who the trashy girl was that everybody had been talking about. I’d felt safe at school when those girls and certain boys weren’t around. Now I wouldn’t be safe anywhere.

As my world crumbled around me, I opened my mouth to insult Francie back. I had no idea what would have come out. Through long years of practice, I was pretty good in these situations, though there was no way I could hurt her as badly as she’d hurt me. Making fun of a girl for being rich didn’t have the same zing as bullying her for being poor.

Before I could say anything, Molly exclaimed “Francie!” in a truly shocked tone.

But Alec drowned her out. “That is a nasty thing to say.” His voice was louder than I’d ever heard it when he wasn’t trying to talk over engine noise. “This town has gone to seed since I left.” He hit the button to close all the windows. As a glass barrier rolled up to protect me from Francie, he threw the car into reverse to back out, then jerked it forward.

I watched Francie in the side mirror. She posed on her lawn, gaping in shock, half the school behind her. Her dear friend Molly couldn’t shut her up, but an adorable boy from a different town had been able to make her see herself for what she was. Or, more likely, he’d just embarrassed her into silence temporarily.

As he turned from the driveway onto the main road, he bit out, “What did you bring Leah here for, Molly?”

“I warned y’all Leah didn’t want to come!” Molly said. “I told you that’s why she was dressed that way, and you didn’t seem to mind then.”

“You didn’t tell us that girl would come after her,” Alec said.

“I’ve never seen Francie act that way!” Molly protested. “I knew she didn’t like Leah, but I thought that was because Leah can be kind of brusque, in case you haven’t noticed. Did Leah tell you what she said to Francie’s friend inside earlier? It was a doozy.”

“That’s because Francie followed Leah.” Grayson was speaking for the first time. “I told you that before. It was obvious they were waiting to corner her. That’s why I sent you after them.”

“Well, what do you expect?” Molly snapped. “Did you think Francie would welcome Leah to the party and compliment her on her cute outfit? Leah’s dressed like a hooker.”

“Hey,” Alec said disapprovingly. At the same time, Grayson said, “I think she looks nice.”

I turned around in my seat and glared at Grayson, furious with him for manipulating me and getting me into this whole ill-fated date in the first place. “I hope you’re enjoying this.”

He stared back at me, lips parted, brows raised, looking almost apologetic.

I shifted my go-to-hell look to Molly. “And I’m sorry you’re not enjoying it. You told Grayson and Alec last night that you decided to be my friend instead of sticking with Ryan because I’m so fun and brazen for a poor girl. Now you’re saying you don’t want me to dress like a whore and stick up for myself when you drag me to a party thrown by your bitch friend who hates me and calls me trash to my face every time she sees me. You need to make up your mind, girlfriend, how you like your charity case.”

Delicate brows pulled low in a scowl, Molly took a long breath. She was going to tell me I was right. She didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. My heart was breaking already, but I wasn’t going to be used as anybody’s emotional punching bag—not Francie’s, not Molly’s.

Only Grayson’s. And only while he made me.

Instead, Molly slapped her hands over her face and burst into tears. Her sobs were loud at first. She tried to contain them, holding her breath, and ended up with a case of the hiccups.

Grayson could have slipped an arm around her to comfort her. I didn’t want him to, but that would have been humane. He chose the low road: “This is so awkward. You’re still coming to work tomorrow, right, Molly? I told you, no drinking this week, and no drama.”

“Really?” I shouted at him. “I’m about to lose my best friend and it’s still about work for you?”

“Yes, it’s about work for me,” he said. “I’m your boss.”

At the same time, Molly wailed, “You’re not about to lose your—” She hiccupped. “Please, Leah, you’re not about to lose your—”

“Molly, you would deserve it if you did,” Alec muttered. I could tell from the way he was looking in the rearview mirror that he was watching her.

“And what about you, Leah?” Grayson accused me. “You didn’t tell us Mark Simon would be at the party.” I felt his hand on my shoulder. “You promised me he wouldn’t come after Alec.”

I turned around again and frowned at Grayson. “I promised you no such thing. I told you Mark wasn’t dangerous.”

“He came after you, and Alec and I had to save your ass. In effect, he came after Alec.”

“Alec and you did not exactly have to save my ass,” I muttered at the same time Alec said with uncharacteristic bitterness, “Shut up, Grayson.”

We rode in silence for several minutes, except for the country music on the radio, and Molly hiccupping.

“I don’t know what you girls have going on with each other,” Grayson said quietly. “I think it would help if we all were more honest with each other.”

Molly snorted.

I glared at her, terrified all over again that Grayson would guess I’d told her about seducing Alec. Grayson glared at her too, and Alec continued to stare hard at her in the rearview mirror.

“Pardon me,” she grumbled.

The closer we got to her house, the more I worried. I still believed I was her charity case. But whatever her motivation for calling me a friend, I called her a friend because I was more myself around her. I relaxed more, laughed more. I wasn’t willing to throw that away over one party. Our relationship was a delicate balance. I shouldn’t have tipped the scales by telling her how I really felt.

At her house, she got out and slammed the car door without a word. I got out too and reached for her hand. She didn’t swing it playfully as we walked to her front door, but she didn’t pull away, either. On the porch, I closed the distance between us and hugged her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said so somberly that I believed her. “I honestly didn’t think Francie would do that. And even if she did, I had no idea you cared.”

Fair enough. Molly was so popular that girls never told her to leave their parties. She probably hadn’t been trying to be mean to me. She simply had no clue what my life felt like, and she never would.

“I’m drunk,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She backed up and put her hand on the doorknob. “I will have regained some of my IQ points by tomorrow, and we’ll talk.”

“Deal.” I laughed, so relieved that the Molly I loved was coming back. But as I gently closed the door behind her and walked to Alec’s idling car, I knew everything was all wrong. We’d never had an argument like this before, not since we became friends in the first place. Something had come between us. It had to do with the boys. And we’d broken the most important unspoken rule of our bond. We shouldn’t have told each other we were sorry.