Page 114 of Losers, Part I

“No.” His voice was firm. “It’s not enough for you to be looking over your shoulder every time you walk somewhere. I’m not going to risk that guy catching you alone. He’s the reason I have a gun in the house, Jess. I need you to understand that.”

This was even worse than I’d thought. My fingers clenched on one of my pillows, and I dug my nails into the fluffy surface.

“It doesn’t make sense for you guys to drive me back and forth from the gym at 7 am every other day,” I said. “That’s too much.”

“I’ll talk to the others. For now, if you go anywhere besidesthe gym, tell me. Location and address. I know that sounds overbearing as fuck, but I’m serious. Do that for me, please?”

He sounded genuinely concerned, even fearful. The fact that he was so protective of me, when I shouldn’t have meant much of anything to him at all, made my growing fear lessen a bit. At least I didn’t have to deal with this alone. “Okay. Okay, I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise, sir.”

Finally, I heard a smile in his voice. “Good girl. All right, I’ll talk to you soon. L—” He cut off abruptly and cleared his throat, as if he’d stumbled over the word. “Later.”

41

Vincent

If there was ever something serious going down, we handled it together. I’d fucked up when I hadn’t told Manson about his dad right away; that was my bad. But I wasn’t going to make that mistake again, not now.

Not when things had already escalated.

We were all gathered in the living room after dinner, tired after another long day. Jojo had wedged herself between Manson and Lucas on the couch, her mouth hanging open as she slept. Little Bo was curled up on Jason’s lap, as usual, and as for me?

I had a big bag of weed.

“I find it concerning that you call for a meeting and then immediately start rolling joints,” Manson said, watching me with his arms folded. He didn’t smoke very often, but God, he was going to need it tonight. Talking about his dad was never any easy topic for him, but I had a feeling this would be worse.

When it came to Jess, Manson couldn’t keep his cool as well as he could in other situations. It was like she disarmed him, shaking the careful hold he had over his emotions.

“Everything’s better with a bag of weed, right?” I said, passing around the joints. Jason already knew why I wanted to have this discussion, but Lucas and Manson were in the dark.

Jason had been as upset as I was when I told him aboutReagan. “Who the fuck does he think he is, messing with our girl?” was the first thing he blurted, not even realizing what he’d said until it was already out. But he was right, for better or worse: Jess wasourgirl. Even if we called it a game, even if we weren’t playing for keeps — which I increasingly doubted — Jess was under our protection and we were going to look after her safety.

Everyone lit up, the sour herbaceous odor wafting through the room. The open windows let the cool night air seep in, and I waited until everyone was looking a little more relaxed before I said, “Jessica ran into Reagan today. He talked to her. He knew her name. I’m pretty sure he knows she’s spending time with all of us.”

Lucas’s face darkened with anger, and he shook his head as he took another hit. But Manson looked as if I’d said I saw zombies in the front yard.

“He talked to her?” he said, disgust in his voice.

“Yeah. He grabbed her, apparently. Seemed like he was aggressive, and he was on a public street.” I exhaled, the smoke clouding around my face. “He’s escalating things, and obviously not leaving.”

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do,” Jason said.

“We keep our heads down and mind our business,” Lucas said. “If he wants something, he can come knock on the door.”

“It’s not that simple.” Manson’s voice was riddled with tension. “We need to figure out how to keep him away from Jess.”

Lucas’s frown deepened and he looked away, glaring out the window. His mood had been even more unpredictable than usual lately — brooding in his thoughts all day but barely saying a word.

“I told Jess to tell us when she leaves the house,” I explained. “And send us the address for wherever she goes.”

“As if she’d agree to that,” Lucas said. “She probably laughed atyou.”

I shook my head. “She agreed. She was scared, dude. This is freaking her out.”

“All the more reason for her to cut her little vacation to the losers’ side of life short,” Lucas said. “A hundred bucks says she’ll have a tow truck over here by tomorrow to haul that damn BMW away to get it repaired somewhere else, after we’ve already bought the fucking engine —”