Wrath

“Are you just going to wallow here forever?” Kane asked in disgust. “Doesn’t sound like the Grace I know and love.”

“As if,” she snorted. “I meant, I’ve got better things to do than play guest of honor at your little pity party.”

“Like what?” Kaia asked skeptically.

“Like getting ready for my date,” Harper lied. She rolled her eyes. “Did you really think I was going to spend Saturday night in bed? Or at least, in my bed? Please.” She shook her head as if pitying their poor reasoning skills. “I’m just resting up for the main event.”

“Now that’s more like it,” Kane said, his smirk widening into a grin. Kaia just narrowed her eyes, unconvinced.

“So I mean it. Get out,” Harper told them. “Or I’ll be late.”

“Whatever you say, Grace,” Kane agreed, grabbing Kaia and backing out of the room. “Who am I to stand in the path of true lust?”

Harper sighed, and waited for the door to close so she could crawl back into bed, blissfully undisturbed. On second thought-

“Kane?” she called, just as he was about to disappear down the hall. He popped his head back in, and Harper forced herself to smile. “Leave the vodka.”

“I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she reads this,” Miranda Stevens crowed, putting the finishing touches on their masterpiece. “She’ll be out for blood.”

“Too bad she already sucked us dry,” Beth Manning pointed out. She laughed bitterly.

The flyer had been Miranda’s idea. She’d been thirsty for revenge against Harper. Beth still had no idea why Miranda was so eager to take down her former best friend, and she didn’t really care-Beth had more than enough reasons of her own to go after Haven High’s reigning bitch.

And Harper was only the first name on a long list of enemies.

There was Adam Morgan, who was supposed to be the love of her life. Too bad he’d turned out to be a lying hypocrite, accusing her of cheating when he was the one who’d slept with another girl.

Then there was Kaia Sellers… the other girl.

Last-and least-there was Kane Geary, whose lies she’d been dumb enough to believe and whose kisses she’d been weak enough to accept.

Sweet, innocent Beth, who rescued spiders and cried at the sappy reunions in long-distance commercials, now hated them all, and none more than Harper Grace, the one pulling the strings.

“All they care about is what people think of them,” Miranda had pointed out, “so we flush their reputations and that’s it-they’re finished.”

“Any chance you want to tell me why you’re doing this?” Beth asked now.

“Now why would I do that,” Miranda replied, pulling her chair up to the computer, “when I could tell you about the time in eighth grade when Harper laughed so hard at the movies, she wet her pants?” Miranda shook her head, almost fondly, and began to type. “I had to call her mother on a pay phone to tell her to bring a new pair of underwear when she picked us up. And meanwhile…” Miranda’s voice trailed off as she concentrated on typing up the story.

“Meanwhile what?” Beth urged her, choking back laughter.

“Meanwhile, Harper was inside the theater, crawling around on the floor so that the usher wouldn’t spot her and throw her out. Eventually I had to fake an asthma attack-you know, create a diversion so she could get out without anyone spotting her.”

“Lucky for her you were there,” Beth marveled.

“Yeah?” The fond smile faded from Miranda s face. She turned away from Beth and stared at the screen, her fingers clattering loudly against the keyboard. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

Cool.

Reed Sawyer hung up the phone and kicked his feet up on the rickety coffee table-really a row of old milk crates held together with superglue and chewing gum. He brought the joint to his lips and drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes as the searing sensation filled his lungs.

She couldn’t stay away from him, that was clear.

Very cool.

“Dude, who was it?” his drummer asked, leaning his head back against the threadbare couch. “You look weird.”

“Blissed out,” the bass player agreed, taking the joint from Reed’s outstretched fingertips. “Who’s the chick?”

“No one,” Reed mumbled.

“It was her,’ the drummer guessed, eyes gaping, and now he leaned forward on the couch. “Wasn’t it? The rich bitch?”

“Don’t call her that,” Reed snapped, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

Damn.

Now they would all know.

“What are you doing with her, dude?” the bass player asked, shaking his head. “Girl like that? She’s out of your league.”

Let’s see: silky jet-black hair, long lashes, designer clothes perfectly tailored to her willowy physique, the smoothest skin he’d ever touched… yeah, as if he needed a reminder that she was out of his league.

“What the hell do you know?” Reed asked, his voice lazy and resigned. It wasn’t just the foggy halo clouding his mind or the buzz still tingling in his fingers that kept his anger at bay It was the fact that the guys were right. As if it wasn’t obvious that a grungy high school dropout-to-be and the pretty East Coast princess didn’t belong together. Not to mention the fact that she was a bitch. She treated him like he was scum and obviously thought his friends were a waste of oxygen. But still-

They fit.

“Whatever,” he said, standing up. Slowly. “I’m out of here.”

“We’ve got rehearsal,” the bass player reminded him.

“Do it without me,” Reed said shortly, knowing it didn’t matter. Every week, they got together to “rehearse.” And every week, their instruments remained piled in the corner, untouched.

Reed had resolved that tonight, they would actually play a set. But that was hours ago, before things got fuzzy-and before she had called. He threaded his way through the ramshackle living room the guys had set up, filled with furniture snagged from the town dump and empty pizza boxes no one could be bothered to throw out.

“Just forget her, dude!” one of the guys called after him. “She’ll mess you up!”

Reed just shrugged. Everything in his life was a mess; this thing with Kaia, whatever it was, would fit right in.

“I never…” Kaia paused, trying to come up with something suitably exotic. That was the problem with this game. Once you’d done everything, there was nothing left to say. “I never got arrested.”

She wasn’t surprised when Reed took a drink. That was the rule: If you’d done it, drink up. And of course he’d been arrested. He was that kind of guy.

“For what?” she asked, leaning toward him.

They were perched on the back of his father’s tow truck, at the fringe of a deserted mining complex. It was the place they’d come on their first date… if you could call it that.

Reed just pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

He shook his head again. Big surprise. He didn’t talk much. In fact, he didn’t seem to do much of anything besides smoke up, hang out with his grease monkey friends, and stare at Kaia with an intense gaze that stole her breath.

He was beneath her-just like the rest of this town, this hellhole she’d been exiled to for the year. He was nothing. Dull. Deadbeat. Disposable. Or at least he should have been.

They rarely talked. Sometimes they kissed. Often, they just sat together in the dark, breathing each other in.

It was crazy.