Back at the house, Jared hovered on the front step while Adam took down the security system. When Chris’s ostentatious pink Caddy rolled up, he ushered the big man and Mia, who still seemed fragile, inside.
“Where’s Clare?” Jared asked as the four of them stood in the cavernous entrance hall of the Hemlock house. He’d been wondering where Ryder’s supposed friend was, and he’d been building up the guts to call her out.
“Who the fuck knows,” Chris said, sounding annoyed. “I’ve been trying to get hold of that bitch for hours.”
“How did you find out before us?” Adam demanded.
“Ear to the ground, homie,” Chris said. “You gotta know who you need to know, you know?”
“Cut the crap, Wallace.”
Chris shrugged. “I was her last dialed number. Yesterday, at lunch.”
“How did she get to the hospital? Did anyone take her in?” Jared asked. Adam let his hand fall on Jared’s lower back, apparently not caring what Chris and Mia saw or thought.
“No,” Mia said. “Whoever it was made a 911 call from a pay phone, then took off. The ambulance found her collapsed on the front step of her parent’s place.”
“Shit,” Adam drawled. “We’re never going to see that girl again. Her parents will yank her out of school and take her someplace else.”
“That’s if she even gets out of the hospital.”
“She’ll be fine,” Chris said. “Bitch has more spine than half the assholes at the Academy. She’ll get through this.”
“Her heart, though,” Mia said plaintively.
“Call Clare again,” Adam said to Chris. “See if she’s got anything yet.”
Chris speed-dialed Clare, then shook his head. “Engaged,” he said. “Has been all night.”
“You can crash here tonight,” Adam said. “It’ll be easier if we’re all in one place in case we need to go back to the hospital.”
Chris nodded and led Mia up the main staircase, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. It was a brotherly sort of hug, not anything sexual, and Jared realized that despite all the bitching and backstabbing that went on, these guys were really, really tight.
Since Adam looked pretty fragile too, Jared took his hand and led him to the kitchen, then up the back stairs to his bedroom. The sheets on the bed were rumpled from earlier, when they’d almost….
He couldn’t think of that now.
“Fucking hell,” Adam said, sinking down onto the edge of the bed, dropping his head to his hands.
Jared knelt in front of him and removed one sneaker, then the other, tossing them in the general direction of the closet. Saying nothing, he tugged at Adam’s jeans until they were stripped from his body, then pulled off his own outer layers before crawling into bed.
“Turn the light off,” Jared said softly.
The gulf between them felt unnaturally wide. In the past few weeks Jared had gotten used to sleeping with someone next to him from time to time. He stayed over more than either of them liked to think about. Not once had Jared stayed in one of the guest rooms. Not once had Adam asked him to.
Tonight things seemed different. The ache in his head was reflected in the twisting knot in his stomach, making him feel sick and something else, something he didn’t want to put a name to.
Fear, a little voice in the back of his head whispered. You’re afraid.
Sometimes the best response to fear was courage.
With each passing moment, the silence and space between them seemed to grow, and Jared didn’t want that. They were close, so fucking close to taking things to another level, one that he’d not anticipated when Clare offered him that stupid bet.
It wasn’t the time to deal with that right now, though. Adam needed something far more basic.
He rolled over on the bed, hesitating for only a moment before neatly tucking himself around Adam. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought Adam was going to throw him off, then he took Jared’s hand and pulled it to his chest.
Letting out a heavy breath, Jared shuffled forward and let himself both hold and be held.
It wasn’t a night for overthinking this. He wanted to give and take in equal measures, and Adam offered him that comfort.
After dropping a soft kiss to the curve of Adam’s shoulder, Jared let himself sleep.
By Monday, the news had spread around most of the school that Ryder Gorden had OD’d on E.
Crossing one of Clare’s number-one girlfriends wasn’t a good idea at the best of times, but Clare still hadn’t reappeared from the weekend. She wasn’t answering her phone, and when Chris had driven over, her house had been empty. It was weird. Jared couldn’t help but wonder if, or how, Ryder’s collapse was related to Clare’s sudden disappearance.
When they walked into school that morning, Jared was shoulder to shoulder with Adam, Mia on his other side, Chris next to Adam with his hand on Mia’s butt. They were solid. A team. In a strange way, Jared had been enveloped into the beating heart of this school.
In the middle of lunch period, Ryder’s parents arrived at the school and were quickly ushered into Principal Saunders’s office. Ryder’s mother, hunched and crying, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers over and over; her father, strong and tall, his arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulders.
“Bullshit,” Mia muttered once they’d passed. She was leaning against her locker, one foot kicked over the other, arms folded, eyes hard. “They don’t give a fuck about Ryder. They were off on their cozy little trip, leaving her alone, for fuck’s sake.”
“What about their brother?” Jared asked. He got a weird look in return. “Tyler, right?”
“How do you know about Tyler?” Mia demanded.
Jared shrugged. “Dylan told me. When he was tutoring me.”
Mia gave him a long, even glare, as if trying to figure out whether or not he was lying. “No one talks about Tyler,” she said eventually. “He’s the forgotten kid.”
“That’s really sad,” Jared said. “I don’t think that’s true, though. Dylan adores him.”
With a huff of annoyance, Mia turned to her locker and started rifling through it.
