Wrath

“You took the photos,” Kaia said. It wasn’t a question.

“No point in lying now, is there?”

“And the car.”

“Mea culpa.”

“You planted the spray paint in Reed’s locker,” she realized, the pieces all falling into place.

“A master stroke,” Powell preened. “And yet you waltz in here ready to toss me away anyway, still loyal to that piece of scum no matter what he does. ‘Stand by my man’ really doesn’t become you, dear.”

“You’re going to fix it-you know that, right?” She couldn’t let them throw Reed out of school, especially now. The memory of pushing him away the day before rose in her like bile. “You’re going to get him out of trouble.”

“Or what?”

It was funny. Yesterday, when she’d thought she’d learned the truth about Reed, she’d felt empowered. But now, confronting the real threat, it was all she could do to force herself not to flee. “Or I sic my father on you. At school, it may be your word against mine, but if Daddy Dearest finds out that some perv has laid a finger on his darling daughter, what do you think he’ll do?”

“Come at me with a baseball bat?” Powell sneered. “I’m trembling.”

“Come at you with a team of lawyers,” Kaia corrected haughtily. “Get you fired, deported, jailed-he’ll get whatever he wants. He’s just like me that way.”

“Is he really ready to drag his baby girl’s name through the mud?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. Though I doubt he’ll have to, once his team figures out how you ended up in Nowheresville, USA, in the first place. We all know it wasn’t by choice. What are you willing to do to keep that skeleton safely hidden in the back of your closet?”

Powell flinched, and Kaia suppressed a smile. Her hunches were never wrong. Jack Powell had obviously stuck his hands somewhere they didn’t belong-and gotten burned.

“You really care about this loser so much?” he asked.

“I think the real question is, do you?” Kaia stood up. “Are you willing to risk it all, just to screw with him?”

“I’d rather screw with you,” Powell said. “It would be a much more pleasant way to handle this.You stay here with me now, and in the morning, I’ll smooth things over for your little playmate.”

Kaia darted her eyes toward the bedroom. “You’re suggesting…?”

“Don’t play coy, mon amour. You know exactly what I’m suggesting. Just think of it as-what’s that they say here? ‘One more for the road.’”

It would be nothing she hadn’t done before… and it would be a much easier way of getting Reed out of trouble than involving her father, who was sure to make a huge deal out of everything, but-

Even the thought of touching Powell again filled her with revulsion. She couldn’t whore herself out like that, even for Reed.

“Thanks, anyway, but I’ll pass.” She grabbed her purse from the couch, but he curled his fingers around it as well, suddenly yanking it toward him and pulling her off balance. His other hand clamped down on her wrist and pulled her back down to the futon, onto his lap.

He leaned over and kissed her, mashing their lips together and thrusting his tongue against her teeth, which were gritted together so hard, she thought they might snap.

“I told you to be nice to me,” he growled, his breath sour and hot on her cheek. “I gave you every opportunity.”

They wrestled for a moment, Kaia squirming and pulling, Powell’s hands locked tight on their prey, his muscles-the ones she’d so admired, compact, but like steel-forcing her down on her back, knocking the back of her head against the metal bar of the futon, pinning her arms behind her head.

“One more for the road,” he repeated as an unfamiliar sensation swept through her. Panic. “I think I deserve that much.”

Adam did his best to behave himself at basketball practice-but once practice ended, he was ready to step out of bounds. Forget trying to earn back a certain someone’s trust-he was done with women.

Correction: done with relationships. They’d done nothing but cause him pain, and all because he’d been thinking of other people when he should have been thinking about himself. He’d been slow to learn his lesson, but he’d learned it well.

Look out for number one-and right now, number one wanted some fun. Lucky for him, practice had been pushed back two hours since half the team was stuck in detention all afternoon. That meant missing dinner-but it also meant sharing the court with the cheerleaders. And now that he was back on the market, he was already their top priority.

Time to make someone’s day, Adam thought. The inner voice, cocky and cruel, didn’t sound like him. It sounded like… Kane. So much the better, Adam resolved. Kane was happy. Kane didn’t lie awake nights cursing the way his life had turned out. And Kane, his only previous competition, was mysteriously absent from practice.

More for me.

As the coach blew the final whistle, Adam scooped up the ball and dribbled it down toward the bouncy bimbos, who had just finished their last tumbling routine. He heard a few hoots of encouragement from the guys before they headed into the locker room.

“Adam, you were playing so great out there today!” one of the new cheerleaders gushed. She was cute, with an almost frighteningly wide grin, and seemed vaguely familiar.

“Totally awesome!” another chimed in. She, too, seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place her. “We almost screwed up our cheers because we were so busy watching you. Oh-” Her face turned red, and she burst into giggles. “I mean… we were watching the team.”

It was the “we” that gave it away. Individually, they had cute but totally forgettable faces. Together, Adam would know them anywhere as the joined-at-the-hip sophomores who’d been following Harper around all year, worshipping at the feet of their goddess of cool. Harper claimed to detest them, and refused to learn their names, instead, dubbing them Mini-Me and Mini-She. Adam had always suspected that she loved the attention they lavished on her, vapid and giggly as it might be. They were her clones, her property-

They were perfect.

“Glad you liked the show,” Adam said. Smile, he instructed himself, struggling to dig up the flirting skills he’d once had, before Beth. His mother had always told him he was a charmer-though she’d never made it sound like a good thing. He’d put that part of him up on a shelf somewhere for two years, but now it was time to dust it off, get back in on the action. “But you know, it’s a team effort.”

“Oh, the team would be nothing without you!” Mini-Me gushed. (Or was it Mini-She?)

“You’re the star.”

Adam sighed. Something about this felt wrong. You’re just out of practice, he assured himself. After all, he’d thrived on this kind of attention for years before meeting Beth; there was no reason he couldn’t turn back the clock and enjoy some meaningless fun. Or, at the very least, there was no reason he couldn’t go through the motions and pretend he was enjoying himself-sooner or later, it would have to turn into the real thing, right?

“So… I guess since you girls go to all the games, you must see all our mistakes,” he said, flashing a modest smile.

“No way!” Mini-She protested.

“You guys rock!” Mini-Me swung her pom-poms in the air, as if that should decisively settle the point.

“Still, I bet you could give me some pointers-you know, as objective observers,” Adam said. “How ’bout I treat you both to some pizza and you can tell me what you think?”

“Us?” the Minis gaped at each other.

“You want to take us out?”

“You want to hear what we think?”

“Now?”

“Both of us?”

Adam nodded. Two girls-double your pleasure, double your fun, right?

(This isn’t you, a small voice inside him pointed out. Shut