He jerked his head in a nod. His body stiffened underneath me.

"Mason."

With gentle hands, he deposited me back onto the bed but didn't move away. I was relieved. Instead, he held my hand and rested his arms on his legs. "Heather brought the food over. She'd been here two seconds before he showed up. He went berserk when he saw her and me together. We weren't even on the same couch or anything. She was in the kitchen and I was in the living room, but he saw me in her home and connected the wrong dots together."

"She told me that he goes to Roussou. It's because of that, isn't it? I know you guys hate that school."

"There's more to it than that, but yeah, he's from Roussou. He doesn't run with the same crew as the Broudou brothers, but he knows my history with them. I'm sure that's part of it."

"The Broudou brothers?"

Mason nodded. His shoulders had filled again with tension. "Yeah, there are three of them. Two are seniors this year, twins, and they have a third little brother in your grade. But all of them hate me."

"Why you?" Other than the normal high school football rivalry, I meant. I remembered the first night I saw them and knew I'd be moving in with them. Two cars had pulled up and an instant fight exploded, then they lit their cars on fire.

"Those three hate me because of their sister."

Blank.

Uh, what?

"Huh?"

He chuckled at my reaction. "Don't worry. Nothing happened with me and her, but that's not what she's told them."

"So what do they think?"

"That I met her at a party, slept with her, and never called her back. They think I treated her like trash."

I blinked again, startled. Mason wasn't always the nicest to girls, but he wasn't known to sleep around. But I knew he hadn't been a monk. "Did you?"

"No!"

I held up my hands in surrender at his glare. "I'm sorry. I had to know for sure."

His eyes narrowed. Instead of the tension leaving him, it increased. "I would never touch a girl like that. She tried to seduce Nate first, but he threw her aside. Then she tried Logan. Even he didn't want anything to do with her. We all knew who she was."

"When did this happen?"

"Two years ago. Logan had broken up with Tate, and because that had just happened, I swore off girls. I didn't have a great view of her gender already and then Broudou started saying that I slept with her and dropped her. Her brothers demanded that I do right and date her, but like hell I was going to do that. I wasn't going to do a goddamn thing anyone told me to do. I was sick and tired of people trying to manipulate me."

Oh god. My forehead fell against his arm. I already knew how he must've handled that. "You didn't kill anyone, did you?"

He chuckled. The sound of it sounded foreign from the tension in his body. "No, but I wanted to. I wanted to kill her. I'll be honest. After Tate, then her, I had a piss poor opinion of girls."

I sighed. "What happened after that?"

"Nothing. She still claims the same story. Her brothers hate me, have hated me ever since. And you know the rest. Things aren't exactly friendly whenever we have any interaction with someone from Roussou."

And that was the reason for Channing's reaction downstairs.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" He looked down at me. The anger was still brimming within him, but it had softened. "You had nothing to do with that."

"Yeah, but I always thought you guys were jerks before. I didn't know the history with Roussou, but I judged you before I even knew you."

A grin curved up from the corners of his mouth. Then he shifted so he could pull me back into his lap. He smiled at me. "Well, you said it before. I am an ass**le."

"But not that time, not with her."

He shrugged. "I'm not going to let some shady bitch affect me."

I could've pointed out that she had, but I held my tongue. Mason didn't think of it that way, and I knew if he did, I would have reason to fear what he would do because that girl, whatever her name was, had changed things for him and Logan. I didn't know all of the ramifications, but I had a feeling they went deeper than even he realized.

"What's her name?"

"Why?" He shot me a look.

I smiled at him, to show that I didn't have an agenda. "No reason, but if I run into her, I'll know to go the other way."

"Oh." He frowned, but then replied, "Shannon Broudou."

I didn't need to commit that name to memory. It was already seared in, permanently, but I had lied to him. I very much had an agenda, and if I ever met her, there was no way I was going to go the other way. For the first time in a long time, I knew that was a confrontation that I didn't want to avoid. That was one that I wanted. She had hurt my family.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

That night set a pattern for the rest of my break. I ran in the mornings for Coach Grath and worked at Manny's in the evenings. I didn't run as much as I had that first time, but when I reported my time and distance the next day, he blinked. It wasn't much of a reaction, but as I started to get to know my coach over the next week, I realized that had been a huge reaction for him. He pushed me to beat my times each day until I told him that I was on my feet the rest of the day at my job. So, then he told me to beat my times on the days I didn't work, which I planned to do anyways. I was already salivating for my next day off.

"Hey, baby girl."

Heather broke my reverie, and I jerked the dishwasher head so it sprayed all over me. "Ah!" I dropped it and jumped back. As it twisted from the cord, it sprayed her in the window and she yelped. "Turn it off, turn it off!"

I scrambled for the faucet and rotated it to the side. The water stopped, but the damage was done. Both of us were wet from head to toe. Great. I had to work in these clothes for the rest of the night, seven hours left to go.

Laughing, Heather jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I'll grab you some clothes. This will suck when the rush comes."

"Thanks."

Lily glanced in, and she grinned from ear to ear. "It's a good look. Those Roussou guys will enjoy it."

My eyes went wide. Roussou?

Heather froze for a moment. "Oh, uh…" Then she turned to me. There was a warning there.