Adler | The Aces of St.Sinclair BOOK 1.

Stranded | A TWENTY NINE

"To think that the great Stevie Powell got detention," started Liam with an overdramatic look of alarm. "What is this world coming to?"

Ashton cracked up at the act while I rolled my eyes.

"But to give out punishments for making a 'disrespectful look' is absolutely ridiculous. What the heck crawled up his arse?"

"Hell if I knew." I muttered.

An irrational man-child of a school teacher was the least of my concerns. Right now, I was channeling all focus on remaining calm. I needed to keep a calm pretense. Reviewing that neither of my friends had given me any sort of looks since meeting up, I was doing a good job. All I needed was time for the rage beneath to simmer down.

Hess had said a load of bull.

It had to be. No matter how intoxicated I was, I would never throw away my virginity with a complete stranger- much less him.
Then there was the fact of evidence. There would've been some evidence left if I had done it. Definitely. Finally, there was Garren.

The details were unclear, but I was certain I was with him throughout that time. He wouldn't leave me to go off with some guy alone at his own party.

Would he?

My stomach churned. I instinctively placed a hand on it, Ash and Liam too busy making gooey eyes at one another to notice it. I hated this.

I hated how I'd carelessly tampered with my own memory and caused this weakness to myself. Then I'd stupidly opened it to Hess. I shouldn't have panicked. Whether there was any fraction of that night I interacted with him, he could say whatever he liked and I couldn't call him out.

The only way to remove all doubt, was to get the truth. I had very few ideas on that. Even less on why the prick was tormenting me. What had I ever done to him? Or did this have to do with Shaun?

My head was growing dizzy. I carefully placed one foot in front of the other as the mass of students proceeded to the auditorium. I was glad our regular classes were being intervened for this speech segment by Ivanov. Perhaps I'd get some clues on what or who this target was and better yet, a suitable distraction from Hess' mind games.

The segment turned out to be for promoting an independent gala Ivanov and three other female students from Parr organised to fund a research lab purposed to improve the beneficiary in diets and natural nutrients for the human body.

Seemed a bit too precise to be just an excuse, so I had to acknowledge her ways of using this to her advantage.
I found the custom bands quite interesting too. They were the means of tickets to access entry to the Harmonia Gala, as it was called. Then also, the bands were built in monitors to track your pulse rate and for glamour, a pixilated avatar would flash on a screen to represent your stability.

It definitely hooked a large margin of the crowd, myself included but ultimately, it shed no light on who her target was.

"I am so definitely going to that gala." beamed Ashton. "Liam, clear your schedule because you're taking me."

He nodded. "No prob."

"I thought you found that stuff boring." I recalled. He'd usually beg Ashton or me to make up an excuse whenever his folks tried to drag him to one of their company relations events.

"I do but it sounds better than being forced to watch whatever movies my nagging girlfriend wants." He answered.

Ashton balled her hand to a fist to strike but Liam artfully caught it and secured it around his waist. Ashton instinctively leaned into his hold.
They were becoming casual about displaying their affection a lot more earlier than I'd anticipated. Not that it bothered me.