Path of Destruction (7 page)

“
She
is my business, Pretty Boy. And I distinctly remember telling you to back off. Not to mention I just heard her telling you to let her go loud and clear. So what I can’t figure out is how I could hear it from ten feet away but you couldn’t.”

“Coop,” Ella Jane said softly from beside him. “I’m fine.”

“You,” a male voice rang out. “Office. Now.”

Coop turned to see a teacher pointing at him. A crowd had formed. Great. Pretty Boy was two seconds from assaulting EJ, but of course he’d be the one to get nailed.

“Go,” he said quietly to Ella Jane, knowing he was blocking her from the man’s line of sight.

She nodded and walked to the driver’s side of her truck.

“That’s the last time I tell you to stay away from her with words,” he said evenly, hoping Prescott got the message as he released him.

He offered a pointed smirk at the teacher on his way.

Day one and his ass was already in trouble. He was pretty sure that was a record. And that his dad was going to kill him.

“Y
ou’re not serious. I barely touched him.” Cooper gaped at the woman sitting across from him. She was an attractive, auburn-haired woman, probably in her forties, but still.

The vice principal adjusted her glasses and frowned at him. “It’s the first day of school, Mr. Cooper. I’m not sure how they did things at Hope’s Grove, but here at Summit Bluffs, we have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to fighting.”

He sighed. “I wouldn’t call it
fighting
exactly. More like adamantly disagreeing.”

“Your transcripts show that you are a good student, Mr. Cooper. I can’t understand why you’d have conflict with a Summit Bluffs student you barely know on your first day. Especially Mr. Prescott. He, too, is an exemplary student.”

Of course he had the faculty brainwashed, too.

“I do know him,” Coop said under his breath. “Unfortunately.”

He knew more about Hayden and his corrupt family than he wished he did. All the way down to the fact that his mother dumped Prescott’s dad after high school and chose a life with a real man—his father. Now, his parents were terrified that Kevin Prescott was going to use his recent inheritance to grind an ax on. Which reminded him—he had work to do after school.

“I can’t do a week of detention.”

“Well, I hate to inconvenience you, Mr. Cooper. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you put your hands on another student.”

He was about to tell her that if Pretty Boy could keep
his hands
off a certain student, then he wouldn’t have had to put his hand on him. But that might’ve led to Ella Jane getting dragged in here, and he was pretty certain she’d ditched more than one class that day.

Swallowing his pride, he gave her a pleading half smile. “My family’s farm was trashed by the storm. My parents are doing everything they can to secure the funds to rebuild and repair the damage. I have two younger brothers and I have to be home after school.” Admitting how bad things were to a complete stranger in his least favorite place on Earth was pretty much the last thing he wanted to be doing. Begging sucked. “Is there anything else I can do? Some other way I can work off my sentence?”

“There is, actually.” Mrs. Gleeson sighed. “We need help on the social committee. With the decorations and heavy lifting and such. The event planning team meets on the third Thursday of the month. In the media center during sixth-period senior study hall.”

“For how long?”

“Well, four Thursdays plus any events that fall in that time frame. And you’d commit to helping with prom. I figure that balances out the detentions pretty evenly.”

Spreads it out was more like it. But what choice did he have?

“Y
ou’re here!” Raquel’s voice reached an ungodly decibel as Cami walked through the media center door and into the social committee meeting. It was as loud as her hair and makeup that day.

Cami used to get excited about blowing her hair out and donning a smoky eye at school, but these days, she was barely able to muster the bare minimum—lip gloss and a comb through.

The room consisted of four tables and two dozen chairs. It looked more like a conference center than a high school library. Notes about the dance were already scribbled on the white board in the front of the room.

It took everything she had left in her to be there. It was one of those stupid, seemingly pointless things she used to live for. Homecoming committee, student council, and all the other bullshit that looked good on a college application.

College.

Just the thought made her want to cry. She should have been excited about college. She should have been getting ready to move to OSU next fall and be with Kyle. He should have been down there right now. Playing football. She’d had plans of visiting each other on the weekends. Spending the weeknights on the phone talking about how much they missed each other.

But Kyle had changed his mind, and she’d acted like the exact person her mother had raised her to be. Thinking for one second that he wasn’t good enough for her had cost her everything. Now, he was gone. Forever.

Two weeks had passed since she’d found out that he was dead. She’d thrown herself into the arms of the one person that she knew wouldn’t judge her or ask questions. Hayden had started to ask her what her deal was, but she’d begged him not to. Instead, he offered her a nod of understanding and a look that told her if and when she was ready to talk he’d be there.

Cami didn’t know if she’d ever be ready to talk about it. What was she going to say? “I fell in love, acted like the selfish bitch I was raised to be, and now he’s gone.” Not to mention the fact that no one even knew that she’d had known Kyle. Raquel was liable to generate a rumor saying Cami was making the entire thing up for attention, which was the last thing she wanted. So, instead, she painted on a face of contentment and went to school every day like nothing had ever happened. It was after school, when she was alone, that she would allow herself to feel the loss. The pain. The regret. Just like her memories of Kyle, she was keeping her grief to herself.

“I’m here,” she murmured, settling into her usual seat at the head of the front table.

Don’t forget to smile.

Not only was she on all of the committees, she was the head of all of the committees. She was trying her best to fit back into the society she was ready to leave behind before the storm. Now it was the only thing she had, so she’d been focusing her attention where she thought it should be. She dropped her planning binder on the tabletop with a heavy thud. Several months’ worth of order forms, fabric samples, playlists, and fundraising schedules hit the table, summoning everyone to take their seat.

“Let’s get started.”

More like let’s get this over with.

“Actually,” Raquel said as she leaned over, resting her hands on the surface, separating them. “I’ve been running the meetings. You missed a couple,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, I was in a medically induced coma,” she said flatly. She knew Raquel was chomping at the bit to replace in her in many aspects, but this was new low even for her.

“I know. And don’t think that we all didn’t wish you a speedy recovery, because we totes did. But we had some major decisions that had to be made. We couldn’t wait around forever,” she added with such a feigned tone of concern that Cami felt the bile rise in her throat.

“I. Was. In. A. Coma.”

“Come on, hon. Don’t get all uppity about it. It’s not a big deal. I was the vice chair anyway.” Raquel placed her hand on Cami’s shoulder, appearing to comfort her to the outside world, but Cami could feel the urgency in her fingertips as if it were telling her to get out of her seat.

“Whatever,” Cami finally said in defeat.

She didn’t have the energy to fight with her. Everything else had already been taken away from her. She might as well give this up too. It was a bad idea anyway. She thought for a moment that maybe being involved in something—like planning her senior prom—would help keep her from wondering to the dark corners of her mind. The corners where she wanted to curl up and disappear and just be done with it all.

She grabbed her binder and shuffled to the back of the classroom. Raquel could have all this bullshit. The rest of her minions all gathered around the front of the room as Raquel started rattling off all the decisions she’d made in Cami’s absence.

“Okay, everyone. We’ve decided on the prom color scheme. Coral and cream.” Raquel smiled as if she’d announced that she’d discovered the cure for cancer.

Ugh.

Cami rolled her eyes at Raquel’s shit-for-taste selections and shook her head.

“Not a fan of those I take it?” a deep, gravelly voice called out from beside her.

She turned her head to see Brantley Cooper’s solid, farm-boy frame leaned back in the chair two down from her. She didn’t miss the way his shirt inched up around his waistband revealing his toned stomach and sun-kissed skin. Whatever anyone thought about farmers’ tans was dead wrong. He drummed his pencil on the top of the table as if he’d rather be anywhere than where he was right now. She knew the feeling.

“Are you a fan of the color spectrum of vomit?” she replied.

He laughed loud enough to garner a look from Raquel and the rest of the committee. Cami felt her lips tug up as she fought back a smile. Apparently, she was still able to crack a joke.

“Not so much,” he agreed.

“It was supposed to be black and white. The theme was ‘An Elegant Affair.’ But I was apparently voted off the island.”

“Yeah, I arrived just in time for the coup d’état,” he told her.

His ability to use the term “coup d’état” correctly threw her for a loop. Her surprise must have been apparent on her face.

“I took French,” he said, flashing her a boyish grin. It was a far cry from the looks she’d seen him give Hayden in the hallway.

Whatever had happened over the summer had the two of them staring each other down on a daily basis. She felt bad for not asking Hayden more about it, but they’d both had other things on their minds.

“Our little school wasn’t completely worthless. Before the storm, anyway. Now, it’s just a pile of bricks.”

Cami knew it hadn’t been worthless. Kyle had gone there and he was smart. He’d taken French, too. She pictured Kyle and Brantley sitting side by side in the classroom, reciting phrases back to their teacher in their adorable drawls. Then she thought about being his “Belle” and how she’d never hear him say it again. She shook it off, not wanting to cry in front of this guy she barely knew. He was looking like the only person in the room interested in holding a conversation with her. She might need a friend if she was going to stick out this committee thing.

“I know it’s not. Was not,” she corrected.

A moment passed between them, and she wondered what he was thinking. He wasn’t looking at her like everyone else did. There was something strangely familiar about him, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Maybe it was the fact that she knew he’d probably known Kyle—at least on some level. If they hadn’t had French class together, then surely in some other way. She’d seen him with Kyle’s younger sister and Hope’s Grove wasn’t all that big.

“So, what are you doing in here?” she asked before she let her curiosity get the best of her and brought up Kyle’s name. She still hadn’t talked about him to anyone. Talking about him in the past tense would make it all so much more real. “Pardon me for stating the obvious, but you don’t seem much like the social committee type.”

“I was forced into this as punishment because I can’t serve detention after school. I was planning to keep my mouth shut and stick to the heavy lifting, but now, I’m realizing just how badly I need to cast my vote on the color scheme.” He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to get everyone’s attention.

“Don’t,” she said on a laugh, reaching over to grab his hand and pull it down. “It’s not worth it.”

Not that he couldn’t handle it, but getting on the shit list of the popular kids would make his time here even more intolerable. She knew. She used to be the head bitch in charge.

He stared at her hand on his, and a strange, unwelcome tingle shot through her skin before she pulled back.

“You sure? I’m happy to cause a scene if you want.”

“Nah.” She shook her head. “I appreciate the gesture though.”

“You looked like you needed to smile,” he confessed.

Her heart swelled at his words. Aside from Hayden—who’d been supportive but as distant as the day was long—he was the first person to do something for her. And for no apparent reason.

“Why?”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “You’re gorgeous and always dressed like you’re two seconds from jet-setting off to your next modeling gig. You seem to have pretty good taste,” he said, once again sending warmth throughout her body that she’d thought she’d been incapable of feeling. He’d just told her that she was gorgeous. But it was short-lived. “In most things,” he added.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your choice of boyfriend could use a little work,” he huffed out gruffly.

She scowled. She barely knew this guy and she’d known Hayden her whole life. Brantley Cooper didn’t know shit. “You don’t know him. He’s had a rough summer and—”