The Ruthless Boys (Adamson All-Boys Academy #2)

by C. M. Stunich

  And then I fall asleep and dream of his scent, that hyssop and cedar smell that makes my stomach tighten, my heart race, and my body heat up from within.

  I may never smell that scent again.

  The thought just kills me.

  The next morning, I don't even bother to get out of bed. What's the point? I have two days left of spring break, and nowhere to go, nothing to do. All I want is to find Spencer, but as the days pass, my hope gets less and less. If he were alive, he'd have texted us by now. If he were alive, we'd have seen him by now, wouldn't we?

  He's dead then.

  That's it.

  He's really and truly dead.

  Some part of me hoped that, like in a good book, his death was just a cliffhanger, some tease from the author that would resolve itself in due time. But this isn't a book, it's real life, and nothing is the way it's supposed to be. I don't get to reset the things I don't like, start over as if I'm living in a video game. No. I have to accept it.

  I have to accept that he's never coming back.

  Plugging in my headphones, I curl up on my bed and blast the saddest music I can find, as if listening to other people's problems will make mine go away. But no matter how much I cry, I can't seem to shed the sick melancholy inside of me. No matter how many sweaters and blankets I pile on top of myself, I can't seem to chase away the cold.

  The boys stop by, but their moods aren't much better. We end up sitting together in my room with some dumb movie playing. Tobias cracks the window and lights up a joint—probably one of Spencer's—and we all take turns exhaling through the screen so my dad won't smell it. Well, everyone but Church.

  He just sits quiet and contemplative in the rocking chair near the closet, but he doesn't rock. He sits still as the statue he looks so much like, his amber eyes gazing at nothing while he sips a coffee.

  “I'm guessing there'll be announcement on Monday?” Micah asks quietly, lounging on my bed. The twins have made themselves at home in a way that would be charming if I weren't so deep in mourning I feel like I might drown. They're sitting on either side of me, ankles crossed, hands steepled on their chests, identically posed. I wonder if it's just force of habit, like they had to practice their twin routine, or if they do it without even meaning to.

  “An announcement?” Tobias asks, scoffing, his red-orange hair disheveled, big purple circles under his eyes. He clearly hasn't been sleeping. Sleeping's the only thing that's gotten me through all this shit in the first place. “About the 'suicide'?” He makes quotes with his fingers. “It's not Spencer, I'm telling you.”

  “If it's not Spencer, then where is he, and why has he disappeared from social media completely? He's not answering texts or phone calls, and his parents won't respond to any of my messages.” Micah spits this back with a caustic bite to his voice that makes me cringe.

  “That doesn't mean anything. Spencer's Mom is impossible to get a hold of on the best of days, and his dad …” Ranger trails off and shrugs his shoulders. I don't know much about Spencer's father except that he owns a pharmaceutical company. Shit, I don't know much about Spencer himself, let alone his family. “And we all know Jack is a total waste of time.”

  Jack, huh? I’m guessing they’re talking about Spencer’s older brother, the infamous drug dealer of Adamson Academy fame. Sounds like a real stand-up guy.

  “I asked my mother to look into it,” Church begins with a sigh, “but she's in some sort of feud with Sheena, and can't get a hold of her. She did admit that there's some hush-hush gossip about the suicide, but she didn't catch a name. The parents want their child's identity withheld, so they can mourn.”

  I glance between Church and Ranger. I’m pretty sure Sheena is Spencer’s mom, but what do I know? That’s how little I actually knew … know the guy.

  “Not a lot of people would want their supposedly suicidal child's name dragged through the mud.” Ranger's voice is low, and a bit growly, like gravel rolling down a hill. He's understandably sensitive about the whole thing. His dark hair isn't as shiny as usual, sticking up at strange angles, like he hasn't showered in days. I can't blame him. Neither have I. Pretty sure I smell like B.O., but I don't care. It doesn't matter.

  “Mm.” Just one sound from Church, and then he stands up to refill his water glass from the pitcher on my desk. Dad brought it in here for us, and then he tried to leave the door cracked which just pissed me off. Like I'd be doing anything sexual after my friend just died. Asshole. Also, note to parents: cracking the door doesn't actually stop teenagers from having sex. We have sex. Get over it. Well, most of us do … I have yet to cross that threshold, but it's not because Dad is breathing down my neck. I made that decision for myself.

  “I can't believe tomorrow's Sunday,” I mumble, hating that the vacation's coming to such an abrupt end. Spring break is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be spent surfing and lying in the hot sun, drinking and smoking and dancing, hooking up, going to concerts on the beach. How did I end up here, spending it in a dreary old academy while it poured rain outside, and I cried my eyes out every night?

  I almost miss my shallow relationship with Cody. If he'd died, I'm sure I would've cried for like a day, but then Monica would've called, and we'd be out riding the waves again. Sounds callous, but … it's true. I don't think I ever cared about Cody the way I care about Spencer. Cared about Spencer?

  No.

  No, care is okay. Present tense is still okay.

  Until I'm standing at Spencer's funeral, laying flowers on his grave, I'm going to use present tense.

  “Did you guys get a chance to check the hole in Eugene's ceiling?” I ask, and Ranger shakes his head once.

  “There were cops all over the dorm. We were only allowed to hit the kitchen and go straight to our rooms or the bathroom. They looked like they might be clearing out before we left, so maybe tonight we could take a look. I'm still having trouble understanding why the assholes who attacked you would go to the trouble of sealing up that hole. I mean, it's just weird as fuck.” He sighs and stands up, stretching his arms over his head. “My head is killing me, and I swear, this weed is making me paranoid. I'm going back to my room to take a nap. Wake me up when this nightmare is over.”

  He heads out the door and Church stands up to follow without a word. Almost losing one best friend … and possibly losing another, it's fucked him up royally.

  “He's never going to get over this,” Micah says, and Tobias sneers. He doesn't like his twin talking about Spencer like it's already over and done with.

  “If Spencer's roommate moved overseas, why was he sharing with Ranger?” I ask, the boring, mundane aspect of that question soothing me, like everything is normal, like things are good again.

  “Church and Ranger are supposed to be roommates, but Church likes his space. He and Spencer switched rooms, but it's not official. They'll get written up if they're caught.” Tobias pauses.

  “Well, they would've been written up, if Spencer wasn't—”

  “Don't. Don't you dare.” Tobias turns over and glares at his brother across the width of my body. “If you do, I swear to god …”

  “You'll what? Give me another bloody nose? I'm not afraid of you.”

  “Maybe you should be,” Tobias snaps, but then I sit up suddenly, getting between them. I can't take anymore fighting.

  “Please,” I whisper, my eyes brimming with tears. My hands start to shake in my lap, and Tobias frowns, leaning over to put his forehead against my shoulder. A small laugh escapes me. Well, okay, half-sob and half-laugh. “Do I stink? You can be honest.”

  “Maybe just a little,” Tobias murmurs, and I can feel him smiling against my skin. “But it's okay. I don't mind. I like my girls a little musky.”

  “Gross,” I murmur, pushing him away from me. Micah stands up suddenly, like he's upset, and both Tobias and I pause to look at him.

  “How can you guys laugh and talk like that when you know he's gone? I don't … I don't understand …” He sits down heavily o
n the bench in front of my window, and gets the joint out of the old rusted tin Altoids container. He smokes a little bit and then leans his head back against the jamb of the window.

  “Because we still have hope. People live off crumbs of the stuff, you know.” Tobias sits up and leans back against the headboard, mimicking his twin’s pose. “And if he is gone, you know we have to go on, right? We don't just get to check out of life. We only get one, bro. We have to live it, regardless.” Tobias licks his lips and looks away, toward the closet door. “I wasn't going to say anything out of respect for Spencer, but I kind of have a crush on Charlotte. When he comes back, he might have to fight me for her affections.”

  “Oh, really?” I ask, forcing a smile through the tears. “I have a feeling he'd put up a good fight.”

  “Yeah, but you know I've been training for years to fight in the ring. I could totally kick his ass. I mean, he's pretty scrappy, but—”

  Micah stands up again, tossing the remainder of the joint out the window into the rain before storming off. Tobias sighs and looks back at me, green eyes half-lidded with fatigue.

  “Go with him. I don't want him to be alone,” I whisper, and Tobias nods. He hesitates for a second before leaning forward and capturing my lips with his. The kiss is bittersweet as hell, but tinged with this desperate, aching warmth, so much so that I end up clinging to his shirt without even realizing that I've moved.

  “I don't want to leave you alone either,” he whispers, pulling back slightly and looking me in the face. There's definitely a spark with the twins, too. I'm not sure how to process it, especially in the face of tragedy. My feelings for Spencer are clouding my judgment right now, like I can't think about Tobias or Micah when I'm so worried about him.

  “We'll revisit … this,” I whisper, pointing back and forth between us, “after we know.”

  “Fair enough,” Tobias whispers, and then he kisses me again, leaving the sweet taste of a high school crush along with the bitter sadness of a broken friend on my lips. It's too much. I stay calm until he leaves, and then I race into the bathroom and turn the water on scalding. It hurts like hell, but I climb in and let it wash over me as I plug the drain and let the shower fill the tub for me.

  I stay in the bath until my skin is pruned, but it doesn't make things easier.

  Grief sucks.

  It's like a little demon that dogs your every move, no matter how fast you run, how well you hide, how much you fight against it. It's there, ready to latch on at any moment.

  Wrapping my arms around my knees, I lean my forehead against my legs and close my eyes, letting the water drain until my body feels too heavy to hold up.

  When I get back to my room, I stare at my laptop screen for a long, long time, hoping and wishing and praying for those little dots from Spencer to tell me he's typing. My heart races at the thought, but no matter how long I stare, things don't change.

  My hope won't bring him back to life, will it?

  Finally, I get desperate and message Monica instead.

  Even though things went bad, I miss you. That's all I say. Because it's the truth. Losing Spencer is making me realize how many things in my life I've taken for granted. After a moment, I text my mother as well, but I know she won't be able to respond for a while. No phones allowed in rehab. At least, not the kind she goes to, these luxurious spa-like places that my dad pays for even though they've been divorced for years.

  Sleep finally takes me, but the Sandman must be seriously slacking as I wake up just a few hours later to the sound of rain pouring outside, thunder cracking in the distance.

  “Fucking shitty northeast weather,” I grumble as I climb out of bed, blinking through big, white circles as I try to force my sleepy eyes to focus on the brightness of my laptop.

  No messages from Spencer. Or Monica. Or my mom.

  Hope you're getting some sleep. That one from Tobias. Just that. And from only a few minutes ago. I tap out a quick reply, head to the bathroom, and pee while I wait for a response to my brief storm woke me up message.

  Me, too. Do you want to come over?

  I hesitate for a moment, and then type out a quick yes, pulling on a heavy rain jacket, boots, and grabbing my stupid emoji face umbrella that Monica got me. It's the cringing face, you know, the one with the teeth? Anyway, she says I make that face all the time, so it was only appropriate that I have a matching umbrella. Personally, I hate it, but it was a gift, so I accepted it graciously. And by graciously, I mean I made that exact cringing face.

  “Hey,” I whisper when I open the front door and find Tobias, all cute and soggy and wet from the walk up the hill. He's all alone which I don't like. Just because he's a dude doesn't mean he's any better off wandering around campus by himself. “You shouldn't have come up here alone.”

  “I didn't.” He nods, and I squint at a figure in the distance. It's Micah, with an umbrella decorated with cherries. He's standing near the bench in the curve of the road, leaving his brother to get soaked from the storm.

  Nice. Twin infighting.

  I step out, closing the door softly behind me, and hold my umbrella over Tobias' head. It's hard not to stare at him, with his red-orange hair bleeding into his face, his long lashes beaded with water from the rain. We link hands and start down the path, Micah moving ahead of us. I don't blame him. Everyone grieves in their own way.

  An eerie chill passes over me as we slip through the back door into the dorms. A flashlight sweeps down the hall and Micah pushes us back into an alcove, pausing as creepy Nathan the night watchman shines his light toward the open door and curses.

  He shuffles our way, keys jangling, boots scuffing against the floor.

  “Goddamn it,” Micah curses, digging in his pocket for a key. He opens the closet behind us, and we slip inside with our wet umbrellas. Hopefully Nathan won't notice the puddle on the floor. More than likely he won't because, let's be honest, he's a pretty shitty security guard.

  There's cursing about those stupid fucking kids, and then the sound of the door opening wider. Micah peeks out to see what's going on.

  “He's smoking a fucking cigarette just outside the door.”

  “Then let's just chill here until he leaves,” Tobias whispers back, and the door closes. It's an awfully tight space to be trapped with two towering dudes. The twins are tall as hell, and they smell good, like fresh rainwater mixed with tart cherries and vetiver. My heartbeat picks up speed, but it's just my body reacting to their nearness. I'm too broken and sad inside to actually get turned-on or truly appreciate the moment. Some wicked subconscious part of me files away these feelings for later. Note to self: consider being the juicy middle part of a twin sandwich, with two slices of hunk for bread.

  Eww.

  That was sort of a gross metaphor, huh?

  “You guys aren't going to pity fuck each other tonight, are you?” Micah whispers, and my head snaps up so quickly that I bump his chin and he curses just quietly enough that I hope derpy Nathan doesn't hear.

  “That's more your style, isn't it? The pity fuck?” Tobias snaps back in a hoarse whisper.

  “Yeah, well, I was gonna say, if you two aren't then maybe Charlotte and I should.”

  “You're assuming I even want to,” I growl back, hitting him in the chest with my palm. “I'm not interested.”

  “You'd sleep with that creep Cody, but not me?” Micah asks, sounding all butt hurt. Now that I think about it, he does sort of have the personality of someone who'd like to fuck his grief away … Good thing there aren't any other girls here. That thought hits me in the face like a rubber band, and I end up frowning so deeply that it feels like the expression is etched into my face.

  “I never slept with Cody.”

  “You dated him for two years, and you never slept with him?” Micah chokes out, like he's beyond surprised.

  “Bro, we already knew that,” Tobias retorts. “Now shut the fuck up before we get caught.”

  “If you weren’t sleeping with Cody all that
time, who were you sleeping with?” Micah asks, and I roll my eyes. It’s dark, so he can’t see me, but at least it makes me feel better. And then something dawns on him, something that makes me squirm and wish I could burst out of this closet and run like hell. But as much as creepy Nathan doesn't scare me, I don't want him to call my dad and wake him up. As not afraid as I am of Nathan, I'm ten times as terrified of my father. He'll send me to that Everly All-Girls Academy place. Or worse. Maybe he'll ship me off to some gross military boarding school in the desert, in some nightmare town like Lancaster or something.

  I shiver.

  “Can you look and see if he's still out there?” I grumble, trying to distract the bigger dickhead of the two McCarthy twins. How anyone could confuse Tobias with Micah is beyond me. Tobias has a much more generous nature than his jerk of a brother.

  “She's a virgin,” they say in unison, looking at each other over my head, and I swear to god, my entire body heats up five degrees with a self-righteous sort of anger.

  I take it back. Tobias doesn't even know the meaning of the word generosity. He's just a … well, he's an ass pig.

  “Condom face,” I growl, and the two boys grin so big that I can actually see the white of their teeth in the darkness. Finally, there's the sound of the heavy exterior door closing followed by the shuffling of feet. That's something that seriously bugs me about Nathan: he drags his feet. He's so lazy, he doesn't even bother to pick them up. Drives me nuts for some reason.

  “I might be a condom face,” Micah says as he kicks the door open and then leans back against it to hold it there. The smirk on his face is much crueler than I've ever seen, like his grief has stripped him raw of all his good parts and left only the bad stuff behind. “But you're a virgin, a pure, white little snowflake. No wonder Spencer was so interested; he can sniff that sort of thing out, you know.”

  “Micah, that's enough,” Tobias growls, stepping between me and his brother. “I know you're hurting; we all are. But don't take it out on Charlotte. You know damn well that Spencer wasn't a fucking cherry hound, so don't belittle him like that.”