Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (57 page)

“So you and Spencer are friends now?” Kelsie blurts out, looking to Parker expectantly.

Parker nods, giving her a sideways glance. “Yeah, people make new friends every day.”

She narrows her eyes, “Do you have to make new friends with Evan’s new friends?”

“Kels,” Derrick says, shooting her a disapproving look. “He’s one of us now. They both are. Let his past with Evan go. Evan obviously has.”

I wouldn’t exactly say that I’ve ‘let it go’ but it has been two years, and as far as the people at fault, that falls onto Adrienne and Tris more than it does Parker.

Everyone looks at me to confirm Derrick’s comment and after a moment I shrug my shoulders. “We’ve declared a truce,” I tell her.

“Why?” she asks, incredulously. “You might have forgotten how he beat you so bad that you still have scars on your face from it, but I didn’t. You might not be thinking about how he had you pinned up against a chain-linked fence, choking you until you nearly passed out, but I didn’t forget. And maybe two years ago is enough time for you to let bygones be bygones when someone sleeps with your girlfriend, but in my books there isn’t enough years to make that reality go away.”

“Gee, don’t hold back Kelsie, tell us how you really feel,” Parker deadpans.

“Maybe we should just go sit somewhere else,” Spencer suggests, starting to get up from his seat.

Parker shakes his head and motions for Spencer to sit down. He turns to Kelsie once again, his trademark obnoxious smirk making an appearance for the first time in a while. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?”

“Oh, shut up!” she snaps, not taking her eyes away from his for even a moment.

“I didn’t know you were so feisty, Kels,” Parker says, his grin now morphing into a flirtatious smile. “Mind if I call you Kels?”

“I mind,” Derrick interjects, shooting Parker a warning look. I think about how Derrick had said to me once that all the girls hate Parker until they love him. I wonder if he’s thinking that fact at this very moment?

Kelsie rolls her eyes at Parker. “You think you’re so charming,” she scoffs.

“Oh, I know I’m charming. How about you Spenc, do you think I’m charming?” he asks, winking at him.

Spencer laughs uneasily; noticing how Derrick doesn’t appear to be too amused by Parker’s lighthearted joking. “Yeah, you’re definitely charming.”

“See.” He turns back to Kelsie, smiling from ear to ear. “You can’t hate me forever. It’s inevitable. I’m charming, Spencer even confirmed it.”

She pushes her chair out from the table abruptly. “I’m going to the washroom,” she announces, looking incredibly flustered. It’s not often that someone pushes Kelsie to the breaking point and makes her walk away. I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of impressed right now.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, Derrick glares at Parker. “Hands off, Michelson,” he warns.

Parker laughs and not in a mocking way either. He finds it comical that Derrick is threatened by him and, to be honest, so do I. Derrick has nothing to worry about with Kelsie. She’s devoted to him and I know that he knows that. “Don’t worry, Derrick,” Parker says, “I only have eyes for one girl and it isn’t yours, no matter how cute she gets when she’s mad.”

“Better not,” Derrick replies and just as he says it, Adrienne strolls over to Spencer and Parker’s table, taking a seat next to Spencer.

“Hey boys,” she says, all smiles.

I frown. “What do you want Adrienne?” I’m annoyed by her constant presence in my life today. It’s beginning to drive me crazy.

“Just spending some time with my brother’s beau. Spencer and I go way back, you know.”

“I am aware, yes,” I say. I shoot Spencer a quizzical look, but all he does is shrug. Parker looks somewhat annoyed by her presence too but doesn’t say anything. Instead, he pulls out his phone and begins texting someone.

“Texting Skylar?” Adrienne asks with an overly exuberant smile. She’s so cheerful lately. Too cheerful. I don’t remember ever seeing her this way before. It’s strange and incredibly annoying. God, I hate her.

Parker looks up from his phone, and with one look into her big, innocent eyes, a smile slowly emerges on his face. “You’re too happy,” he says.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I say, in spite of myself.

“Last I checked happiness wasn’t a crime,” she returns with a laugh. “So, was that Skylar, or what?”

“Yeah, it was Skylar.”

I look to Derrick with raised eyebrows and he shakes his head warningly. He knows me way too well.

“Are they coming downstairs?” I ask, and I can see Adrienne look to Parker for his reply, apparently as interested in his answer as I am.

Parker shakes his head. “They’re talking things through.”

“Told you,” Derrick says to me.

I frown.

“Worried?” Parker asks coolly.

I shake my head, “Why would I be?”

“You gave her an ultimatum and now she has to choose. It’s a fifty-fifty chance that she doesn’t choose you.”

I grit my teeth. “You heard me on the bus?” I ask, but what I really want to tell him is to fuck off. I’m especially pissed that he’s bringing it up in front of Spencer and Adrienne.

“Yeah, I heard you,” he replies in an unimpressed mumble.

“I suppose you think it was wrong that I did,” I say, noticing the glare Spencer is giving me. He’s not too impressed by my ultimatum either.

Parker shrugs. “I told Skylar she should face what’s going on with Bree and deal with it.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

If Skylar would have just gotten another roommate, I would have never had to give Bree an ultimatum at all. She could have just accepted that it was over and we could have finally moved on.

“We can’t control it, Evan. It’s bigger than us. I don’t want Skylar choosing me because Bree cheated on her with you. That makes me the rebound and it’s a shitty foundation for a relationship, don’t you think? I want her to choose me because she wants to be with me, and you’d be stupid to not want the same.”

I look at Derrick and see that he’s looking down at his menu trying his best to pretend like this conversation isn’t going on. He doesn’t like to be brought into the middle of things, especially disagreements.

At the other table, across from Parker, Spencer and Adrienne are looking equally uncomfortable about where this conversation might be going.

“I’m stupid for wanting to keep my girlfriend mine?”

“She was Skylar’s first,” is his immediate comeback, and I hate him for it. I narrow my eyes, clench my fists tightly, and start to tell him exactly where he can shove his opinions.

Adrienne interrupts me. “Tris just walked in.”

Parker turns in his seat abruptly, and the minute his eyes catch Tris’ he’s out of his chair and walking toward him as calm and collected as humanly possible. I can’t, for the life of me, understand how he does that.

“He isn’t going to punch him right here is he?” Adrienne asks, eyes wide with awe.

Derrick shakes his head. “Doubtful. His aggression control is ridiculous.”

Adrienne chuckles. “Not all the time,” she says.

Kelsie rejoins us then, noticing that Parker’s no longer sitting with us, but that we’ve now gained Adrienne. “What’s is she doing here?”

We all shush her at the exact same time, straining to hear what it is that Parker’s saying to Tris.

“He said ‘fucking dead’ and ‘kill you’,” Adrienne says.

“I heard ‘this isn’t over,” Derrick counters next.

“He’s really pissed,” Adrienne returns.

“You think?” Kelsie snaps sarcastically.

Adrienne cocks her head to the side and looks at Spencer quizzically, ignoring Kelsie. In a whisper, she says to him. “Tris definitely told him that ‘he better watch his back’ and he said something about Ellie and Colt.”

Spencer’s eyes grow wide and he looks over to me to see if I heard her. Damn right I did! I push my chair from the table so fast that it knocks to the floor with a loud thump. I don’t bother picking it up, though, I just continue on over to where they are standing.

“You threatening my sister now?” I say, immediately giving Tris a shove.

Parker puts his hand out to hold me back as he pushes his other hand hard against Tris’ chest. “I got this, Daniels,” he says to me, not taking his glaring eyes off of Tris. “What Tris seems to forget here is that
I’m his boss
. But maybe another beating like the first will remind him.”

I take a step back, but I don’t return to my seat. I need to know what Tris said about Ellie.

“Beat me all you want. I don’t give a fuck what you do because, at the end of the day, you can’t kill me. That’s Dimitri’s call and you know it.”

“He’s given me a pass before, he can do it again,” Parker hisses.

Does that mean what I think it means?? I can’t be sure, but the way he says it makes a chill run down my spine.

I turn to look at everyone at the tables to see if they might have heard what I just heard, but no one seems to be struggling with the shocking information like I am. When I look back to Parker and Tris, their glaring eyes seem to be sharing a secret that I can’t quite decipher. Neither one of them says it, but there’s something they aren’t talking about that’s right on the surface of this confrontation, something unpleasant.

“Dimitri won’t keep cleaning up your shit,” Tris spits finally.

“Oh, that’s something coming from you! I’m constantly cleaning up the shit you cause so that he won’t kill you. And he’s sick and tired of your messes, by the way. And on top of that, I make him shitloads of money every fight that I take. That’s
my
worth to him. What’s your worth, you piece of shit?”

Tris doesn’t say anything as he continues to glare at Parker but I can tell by the shadowing of his eyes, and the way that his jaw goes slack slightly, that those words stung him more than he’d ever care to admit.

“All you had was me and now you don’t even have that anymore. And because of what? You’re jealous of Skylar? You’re fucking done, I promise you that. It’s only a matter of when.”

“Jealous of Skylar. I couldn’t be jealous of that fucking whore if I tried! Where is she anyway? Tell me that. Oh yeah, that’s right, locked away in a room with
his
girlfriend,” he says, pointing at me. “Wonder what they could be doing without their men to keep them satisfied.”

Asshole.

“I trust Skylar,” Parker returns, giving Tris a hard shove against the wall. “And if you call her a whore one more time, you won’t live to see another day. Fuck the consequences.”

“How about you, Evan? You trust your woman?”

“Fuck off, Tris.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I heard a lot of giggling up there when I passed by a few minutes ago.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Parker says to me, giving Tris one last shove. He starts back to our table and I follow closely behind.

“He’ll say what he knows is going to get under your skin.”

I know that he’s right. That’s what Tris does. But I can’t shake the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that he actually did hear them giggling in their room.

“Do you think it was the truth?”

Parker shrugs. “Laughing doesn’t mean anything. Even if it is the truth, it doesn’t mean something’s going on.”

He’s right, it doesn’t mean anything, but Bree loves her. I know this, Parker knows this, hell, the entire senior class of Markson Grove East knows this!

I need to know for myself.

We approach our tables just as our waitress begins taking everyone’s order. Parker takes his seat, and as he does so, I announce to anyone who’s listening that I’m going to the bathroom. No one seems too concerned about this announcement except for Parker. I see him look down at the table and shake his head, but I take off before he has a chance to say anything about it.

Maybe he doesn’t understand where I’m coming from, maybe what he has with Skylar is so untouchable that he has nothing to worry about, but I need to know, and that’s all there is to it.

Skylar

Bree’s lips push against mine, needing me to return the kiss, needing me to accept her reasons for choosing Evan’s love over our friendship, and for me to be ok with that. And after an initial moment of surprise, I grasp her hair into my clenched fists on either side of her head, and angrily push my lips just as forcefully onto hers. I need her to feel my pain because she’s letting me go and it’s breaking my heart!

I hate this…

So.

Fucking.

Much.

A knock sounds at our door and we pull away from each other abruptly. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand and I watch her do the same. Her eyes are all red and puffy from crying, her face flushed, and her lips are smeared with my dark red lipstick from our desperate farewell kiss. The way she looks at me makes my heart race. Why am I letting her do this? He’s not right for her.

Neither of us says anything to each other as we both look around the room in a panic, worried it might be one of our chaperones at the door. “Who is it?” I call out.

“Evan,” the person says back and for a moment, I don’t recognize the name. It isn’t until Bree darts to the door to open it, that I finally place who it is. Wow, alcohol really does slow down someone’s ability to think, doesn’t it? His voice should have had me seething!