"Don't make promises you can't keep."
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Noah Reed is lost. Fed up with his constant attitude and need for self-destruction, his mother sends him to live out the rest of the year with his father in hop...
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"I thought I'd run into you here," I say casually as I kick myself off of the brick wall I'd been leaning against, crossing my arms over my chest as I approach the douche whose neck I'm itching to snap.
I glare at Mason Chase from where he stands a few feet away from me in the back schoolyard. I hardly know the guy, but I do enough about the creep to know that he's everything I despise about humanity. My veins pulse with hatred for the boy standing across from me, whose eyes are wide and expression is slack with shock and a little fear.
Studying Mason closely, I can easily spot the places I banged him up last Friday, after I caught him sexually harassing Blake—his ex-girlfriend. I'd found him abusing her a few minutes after I'd kissed Blake like a fool and run off. The second I'd turned my back on her, I know I had to find her and apologize. Not only for kissing her, but for running off after, as well. I'd needed Blake to know that I didn't plan on running away from her ever again, no matter how much everything I feel for her starts to scare me.
When I found her, she was cornered by Mason in an empty hallway in the house of the party we'd been attending. He'd abused her in a way no man should ever treat a woman. The only reason I'd even found Blake was because I'd heard her voice, sounding frail and desperate as she begged the boy in front of me now to let her go.
Just thinking about what I'd witnessed winds me up with anger, and it takes every ounce of my self-control to resist pounding Mason into the ground.
I recall the bruises that had been placed all over Blake's body. Her neck had been covered in dark purple spots where Mason's mouth had been too rough on her skin. Her thighs and wrists were peppered with angry red marks in the shapes of fingertips, and the bruises have only darkened by this point. I can still vividly remember the way Blake had trembled in my arms that night, crying and shaken up over what had happened.
Her tears had been wasted on the asshole before me, and I intend to make him pay for each and every one of them.
The right side of Mason's face is slightly purple, bruised from the few hits I'd managed to place upon him before Blake had pulled me off of him. I know she'd never admit it, but part of Blake will always be tied to this boy who seems to exist only to torment her. It'd been made clear Friday night that it doesn't matter how many times this jerk hurts her, Mason will always be the first boy Blake ever loved.
He doesn't deserve someone like Blake Rhodes loving him, I think to myself. Mason Chase deserves to rot in fucking hell.
"Were you trying to slip through the back door?" I ask Mason nonchalantly, gesturing to the door a few yards away from us. "What? Didn't want anyone to see your bruises? Didn't want people to question how you got them?"
I close in on Mason. He stumbles backward, as if I'm going to let him get away from me. Before he's able to run off, I lunge forward and grab him by the collar of his shirt, the cloth crumpling in my fist as I yank him forward.
