B00AAOCX2E EBOK by Jaycee DeLorenzo Read Free Book Online

Ryan in the hospital. No one cared to remember that it had been a congenital heart defect that caused Tim to collapse at that precise moment. It didn’t make a juicy enough story.
    The truth was far less dramatic. A Friday afternoon football team’s charge from the locker room had caused Ian and Tim to collide. Tim shoved Ian for having the audacity to get in his way. Any other day Ian would have ducked his head and moved on, but his stepdad had been on a particularly mean streak that week, and Ian’s tolerance for being pushed around was at an all-time low. Ian shoved Tim back and received a punch for his efforts. So, Ian clocked him - a good hard strike, but nothing really powerful enough to knock him down. Still, Tim had dropped like a two ton stone. Someone called 911 and he was rushed to the hospital, where the heart defect was discovered, and the emergency surgery that saved his life was performed.
    Ian was suspended for a week. By the time he came back to school, the story had been so grossly exaggerated that it no longer resembled the actual event. Rumor said that he had beaten Tim to a bloody pulp, that he had stabbed him with his blade, and – my personal favorite – that he’d been the one to rush Tim, because he’d heard the dick smacked his cheerleader girlfriend.
    Ian’s reputation was made. Tim ruled by intimidation and fear, throwing his weight around and tormenting the weak. The guys at school congratulated Ian for “standing up to that jackass,” and began giving him a wide berth.
    As for the ladies… Well, with the victor comes the spoils. He was considered some kind of white knight for defending poor Avery Tilney’s honor. The fact that he had never said so much as two words to Avery in his life hadn’t mattered. Overnight, he’d gone from “trailer-trash loser” to “sexy bad boy” that every girl, including the illustrious Miss Tilney herself, wanted a piece of.
    Ian had never done anything to perpetuate the rumors, but he hadn’t tried to dispel them, either. It kept idiots like Tim from messing with him. Plus, I knew he liked the small slice of power that it gave him, and I wasn’t about to deny him that, especially when he was so powerless in every other area of his life.
    “You know,” I said, tilting my head to soak up the sun’s warm rays, “someday, one of these guys is going to call your bluff, and you’re going to have to put up or shut up.”
    He made a scoffing noise, then nodded his head after Graydon. “What did that assclown want?”
    I snickered at his intentional use of the word. “Down boy. He was just handing out invites to a party.” I waved the flyer in my hand as proof. No need to mention the flirting. I wasn’t interested in the guy.
    Ian snatched the flyer up and gave it a cursory inspection before crumpling it in his fist and tossing it to the ground.
    I pulled my sunglasses down and shot him an annoyed look. “Um,
hello
, I believe that was mine.”
    “What’s the big deal? It’s not like you’re going.”
    I bristled. That sounded awfully close to a command. “I’m not?”
    “No. Why would you want to?”
    I didn’t want to. Or I hadn’t until Ian’s inner-caveman made an appearance. “I wasn’t planning on it, but
now
….”
    Ian sighed. “Come on, Ivy, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not telling you what to do.”
    My eyes narrowed. “Sure the hell sounded like it to me.”
    He rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I’m just strongly advising you not to go.”
    “Noted.” I reached for the crumpled flyer and put it into my bag. There wasn’t a thing on this green earth that would stop me from going, now. Ian had to be reminded that decisions like that weren’t his to make. Plus, it was good for him to hear the word ‘no’ once in a while; Lord knew it wasn’t something he heard often enough.
    “What are you doing here so early, anyway?” I asked after noting the time on my phone. “I thought your class didn’t end for