This is insane. I’m overwhelmed and in need of a little blue pill pronto. Even as I think it, I know how weak I sound, because how pathetic are my worries compared to theirs?

I want to run, but I sense her eyes on me once more and he said she knows who I am, so he must have shared my name, if nothing else, so, for him, I swallow the overwhelming emotion threatening to consume me.

I turn to Sienna, holding my breath when her lips part and she speaks.

“How do you put up with him?” she teases, her tone soft yet holding a hint of a rasp and she lifts her right arm up a few inches, pointing his way.

My heart pounds wildly in my chest, and her lips curl as her brother’s did. It’s subtler, a little less even, but it’s there, and I can’t help the airy laugh that follows.

I swallow and realize this is what she wants, to sit and be the little sister of the boy who brought a girl to meet her. Everything else forgotten, as it should be.

So, I smile wider, a smile that comes easy as I widen my eyes playfully. “Oh, it’s not easy.” I joke back with her, and in my peripheral, Ransom’s shoulders ease creating a warmth deep in my chest. “Did he tell you what he did to me the first day we met?”

Her lips twitch and she gives the slightest shake of her head.

I cross my legs and start from the beginning.

Chapter 26

As we walk up the school steps Tuesday morning, Cali comes bursting through the doors, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“Jameson!” She spots me.

My nerves tighten as she moves toward me.

“Jameson! Oh my god, I’ve called you three times!” she sobs.

I slip from under Ransom’s arm, meeting her in the middle of the hall.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jules!” she cries. “She didn’t answer her phone or the door this morning, so I thought she was playing hooky with Dax, but then I got here and he was here and she never showed, so I called her mom. Her mom was mad, but she went home to check and she... she found her in a pile of her own vomit. Jameson, she’s in the hospital getting her stomach pumped.”

“Alcohol poisoning?”

Cali nods, her arms wrapping around me.

“We need to go.”

“My driver is picking my brother up from the airport,” she shares. “And the others left already, but I had to come find you.”

“Shit, I didn’t drive either, I...”

My eyes fly to Ransom, and whether he realizes it or not, he’s backing away, a lost look in his eyes.

Alcohol and the hospital.

Damn it.

I turn back. “We’ll Uber.”

“No.”

Both our heads snap to Ransom.

He frowns down the hall. “We got you.”