Read Online Between These Lines (A Young Adult Novel) by Jennifer Murgia - Free Book Online

partner would have
appeared just the same, only . . . I felt like I was beginning to
hyperventilate. Working on a paper with Chase was different. It was amazing. He
was brilliant, his ideas so insightful and his train of thought dove-tailed
mine so perfectly.  
    Shane
wouldn’t have been able to hear my heart race while we were bent over a book
together. He wouldn’t. It was impossible—unless he witnessed how close I
lingered to the boy who was supposed to be nothing more than my study partner.
Too close. Unless he noticed how my eyes watched Chase, and how long it took
for me to look away.
    In
the pit of my stomach I knew that Shane was onto me. He had a gift for finding
out the truth about people and making them pay.
    I
walked across the kitchen, took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with
water from the dispenser on the fridge. Then I rummaged through a small
catch-all drawer for the bottle of aspirin my dad kept there, and handed them
both to Shane. His eyes were bloodshot.
    “I
had to go there anyway,” he said, taking the glass and letting me drop the
aspirin into his open hand. “I had to pick something up.”
    This
didn’t sound like him at all, but I played along. “What did you pick up?”
    I
watched as Shane tossed the two pills back as if they were invisible and
swallowed them without the water I had just handed to him. He made it look so
easy.
    “Ty
was finishing something up for me.”
    I
stared at him in disbelief.
    “You paid Ty to write a paper for you?”
    “Yeah,
it’s no big deal. Sometimes when the guys and I get bogged down, Ty comes
through for us.”
    “And
how much does he charge?”
    “I
made it worth his while,” he replied, avoiding my eyes.
    “Did
you pay him enough to clog his nose?”
    Shane
shot me a look. I wasn’t going to play dumb and act like I didn’t know Ty was a
druggie, or that he supplied a number of kids who went to go to our school.
After all, weren’t prep schools notorious for dealing and getting away with it?
There had to be other ways to play with daddy’s money, and this seemed to be
the good old standby.
    “You
know you just supported his habit even more.” I knew full well I was digging a
very deep hole for myself. “So I guess the whole role model approach you were
going for wore off for the night?”
    Nothing
prepared me for the loud thwack his hand made across my cheek, or the sting the
second the air touched it, or how appalled, how violated, I felt as his lips
roughly grazed across my skin to make up for it. My back scraped the cabinet
opposite the door as he pushed me to the floor. All I heard were incoherent
murmurs—how I owed him and how he needed me, and how this would make up
for it all.
    By
the time Shane rose to his feet and buttoned his jeans, I was shaking, caught
in the in-between when shock wears off and rage fills in the gaps. I couldn’t
speak, but hastily dressed myself in the cramped space behind the center
island.
    My
eye caught the clock, its tick the only audible sound in the house, and my
pulse thrummed in tune with it—reminding me how with each passing second
Shane was in control, always in control.
    He
reached for his keys on top of the counter and turned toward me. “I’d put ice
on that if I were you,” he motioned pitilessly toward the side of my face as I
pressed my hand to it. “Stay home tomorrow if it’s still there. I don’t want to
have to explain.”
    I
stared at him. Everything I could possibly say melted from my brain. He walked
around the island and opened the back door, then paused, “And tell that freak
of a study partner of yours I’ll see him at the party.”

 

 
 
 
    Chapter Eleven
    Chase

 
    It was
almost time for the first bell and Evie still wasn’t at her locker. I stood
across the hall and waited as Tara managed alone, ignoring me as usual while
she hung her jacket and gathered her books. Without Evie, Tara had an invisible
force field around her that was