Chapter 211

Chapter 211JovianRian was already at the corner table when I walked into the rec room, and he didn’t look up.That was new. Every other day he looked up the second I came through the door, like he’d been counting the minutes. Today he was bent over a sheet of paper with a stubby pencil, drawing something with his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, and he didn’t notice me at all.I stood there longer than I needed to. Then I felt stupid for standing there, and I walked over and sat down across from him.“Hey,” I said.“Oh. Hey.” He glanced up and smiled, easy, like he’d forgotten I existed until that exact second. “Sorry, I’m almost done with this. Give me one minute.”“What is it?”“You’ll see.”I waited. He drew. He didn’t cheat at cards with me or make fun of my pudding or bump my knee. He just drew, humming something under his breath, and I sat there feeling weirdly left out of my own table.“Okay,” he said finally, and turned the paper around.It was the old man from

Chapter 212

Chapter 212AidenI stood in the doorway of my dorm room and stared at the hoodie on my pillow for a long time.Black. Soft. Tags still on. Folded exactly like the one I found on my bed the first week of school, the morning I asked the whole room who left it. Jovian said not me. Ethan said not me. Chris sat by the window typing with his headphones on like he couldn’t hear a thing, and I stood there and thanked the goddess out loud like an idiot.I didn’t need anybody to explain this one.Jovian was locked in a psych ward. He’d called me three nights ago on a stranger’s phone and got caught after three minutes. Ethan was stuck somewhere with Reyes and couldn’t even answer a text. That left one person who knew my size, knew my room, had cash to throw around, and had shown up every single time I got into trouble this year like he had a map.I shoved the hoodie in my bag and walked back out.Chris’s building had a doorman now. That was new. He looked at me, my duffel bag, my sweaty face,

Chapter 213

Chapter 213 Aiden Chris got up without answering and came back from his bedroom with an ugly little flip phone, the kind my grandpa used to have. He set it next to the envelope.“This is how I know most things,” he said.He opened it. There was only one contact. It said E.“Ethan,” I said.He nodded.“Ethan’s okay?”“Alive. Okay is a strong word. He called me once from Reyes’s landline and sounded bad, and someone walked in before he could say much. So I paid Reyes’s housekeeper three hundred dollars to slip this into Ethan’s laundry.”“Why didn’t you tell me?”“Because you’d have wanted to go get him, and the last person who tried to take something from Reyes ended up dead.”The flip phone buzzed. Chris read it and his jaw went tight. He turned it so I could see.Jerry called R this morning. Said the tutor was sitting on the curb outside his house yesterday. Said the tutor is the problem, not his son. R believed him. R is looking for Aiden now.I read it twice.“He saw me,” I said.

Chapter 214

Chapter 214AidenChris showed up at my dorm the next morning at eight with two coffees and the look of someone who hadn’t slept at all.“You look terrible,” I said, letting him in.“Good morning to you too.” He handed me a cup and sat on the edge of Jovian’s old bed, the one with no sheets on it anymore. “Ethan texted at three.”My stomach tightened. “And?”He pulled out the ugly flip phone and turned the screen toward me. At the top it just said Ethan.Mr. Jerry called last night. Told Reyes he was wrong about Aiden. Reyes told his guys to back off. For now.I read it twice. “For now.”“For now is better than yesterday.”“You sound like a fortune cookie.”“I sound like somebody who stayed up all night so you could sleep.” He took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “This is terrible. Why is campus coffee so bad?”“Because it’s free and made by people who hate us.” I sat down on my own bed across from him. “Okay. Now tell me why.”“Why what?”“Why any of this. Why three grown men wi

Chapter 215

Chapter 215AidenThe driveway was longer than it looked from the gate.By the time I reached the front steps, my shirt was stuck to my back and my legs felt like I’d climbed a mountain. The front door opened before I could knock, and Reyes was standing there himself. No butler. No housekeeper. Just him, in a gray sweater and slippers, holding a cup of tea like I was a neighbor who’d come to borrow sugar.“You walked,” he said. “From the bus stop. In this heat.”“I don’t have a car.”“No. You wouldn’t.” He stepped aside. “Come in before you faint on my porch. I’d hate for anyone to see that.”I came in.The house was cold inside, the kind of cold that costs money. Everything was white. The floors, the walls, the couches nobody ever sat on. He led me into a big room with glass on three sides and plants everywhere, and he sat down in a wicker chair and crossed his legs.He didn’t offer me a seat. I didn’t take one.“Where’s Ethan?” I said.He raised an eyebrow. “Ethan?”“Ethan. My roomm

Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 211 - Chapitre 215

Chapter 211

Chapter 212

Chapter 213

Chapter 214

Chapter 215