I shouldn’t have considered this offer seriously. Not when he’d dragged me to his truck. But he was stoned. He didn’t realize he’d hurt me.

And the more I’d thought about Mr. Simon’s job over the past few days, the more I’d wondered whether Grayson had told me Mark had made it up just so Grayson could get me to work for him instead. When it was a matter of finding a cheap employee, I didn’t think Grayson would stoop to that level. Now that I knew Grayson needed my help to keep Alec in town, for whatever reason, I was sure Grayson would stoop to that level. Which might mean Mr. Simon’s job had been real all along.

“You can’t move back in with me,” I said. That had been the worst part of being with him. I wouldn’t have gotten so angry at him in the first place if there had been less of him.

“I won’t. I’m getting my own place.” He gripped my knee harder. “Just come by the hangar tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t do it tomorrow,” I said. “I’ve got another job.”

“Oh, right,” he said, “with those Hall assholes, over spring break. What kind of job is that, Leah? My uncle says they’ll last another week or two without the old guy around. My uncle will hire you permanently.”

He should have stopped when he was ahead. Now I was thinking about working for Mr. Simon permanently. Working with Mark. Being trained with Mark. Dating Mark under the constant threat of having my job taken away if I did something he didn’t like. I’d been ready to give his job another try as soon as I could get out of this tangle with Alec and Grayson, but now I was having second thoughts.

“Come on, Leah,” Mark whispered. His eyes were dark. He was there, when the other boys were inside the house with Molly and had forgotten me. He leaned closer to kiss me. I might have let him, except that he was squeezing my arm so hard.

The driver’s door opened. Mark yanked my knee for a handhold as he was dragged out. He hit the cab of the next truck and bounced off with his fist already coming around, barely missing Grayson, who slammed him in the jaw. Boys in the surrounding trucks yelled and scrambled toward the fight.

“Hey!” I squealed, clambering across the seat. I didn’t want these boys to beat each other up. Then there would be nobody left to employ me. “Grayson, Mark didn’t mean any harm. He was just—”

“Get out of the truck, Leah,” Grayson commanded me without looking around at me. He watched Mark. His hand was balled in a white, bloodless fist. “Go back to the house.”

“Fuck off, Hall,” Mark yelled, wiping blood from his mouth with one hand. “Leah, you stay right there.”

Running footsteps sounded behind the truck. “Grayson!” Alec called from a distance.

Grayson didn’t turn around for Alec either, but a second later, Alec and Patrick burst into the ring of boys that had formed to watch the fight. They dashed between Grayson and Mark. Alec caught Grayson from behind by both arms, spun him around, and shoved him in the direction of the house. The ring of boys parted to let Grayson through. Patrick put one hand on Mark, who slouched unsteadily against the cab.

Now that Grayson was gone, Mark leaned around Patrick and told Alec to fuck off instead. Alec stood there with his muscular arms crossed on his chest. He didn’t look like a pretty boy anymore. Patrick had called him that and I had silently agreed… but in the face of Mark calling him every filthy name he could think of, Alec looked grim and didn’t back down.

Alec turned to me and said sternly, “Go after Grayson. Make sure he gets to the car and waits for me there. You should know better than this. You have to keep him out of this type of thing or we’ll all end up in jail. I’ll fight Mark if I have to, but Grayson will kill him.”

thirteen

Alec shouldn’t have worried. Grayson was standing behind Mark’s truck with his hands on his hips, breathing hard. The instant he saw me, he stepped toward me like he’d been waiting for me. He grabbed my arm to pull me away from the fracas.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Hey,” I said.

I didn’t have to explain why. As soon as I exclaimed, he realized he was grabbing me in exactly the same place Mark had grabbed me. Patrick must have told Grayson what happened. Patrick might even have gone to get him from the party. Grayson let me go immediately and spread his fingers as if consciously not making a fist. But he said, “Keep walking.”

By the time we reached Alec’s car, Alec was right behind us.

“Did you take care of it?” Grayson asked.

“Patrick talked him down.” Alec turned to me. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” I’d been rubbing my arm unconsciously. I put my hand down.

Alec ran his fingers back through his hair, messing it up for the only time I’d seen, other than yesterday when he took the hose to it in the hangar sink. “Why were you talking to Mark?” He sounded exasperated with me, another first.

“I didn’t want to come to this party,” I said in my defense. “Y’all knew it. Molly knew it. She told you. You brought me anyway. The girl who lives here told me I wasn’t welcome. I asked Molly if we could leave and she told me to go outside.”

The boys exchanged a look over my head. “I’ll go get her,” Grayson said, obviously wanting me to have some alone time with Alec, my hero who had saved me, sort of, after Grayson saved me first. Grayson took a step toward the house.

Alec put his hand on Grayson’s shoulder to stop him. “I’ll get her. You’re too mad.”

As Alec walked toward the mansion, some boys ambled up the driveway from the direction of Mark’s truck. They stared pointedly at me. Grayson crossed his arms and glared at them until they looked away.

Still watching them, he opened the front passenger door of Alec’s car. “Get in.”

He closed the door behind me and got into the backseat. The hot night had been cooled by the stormy breeze, but the car was like a sauna. Down the driveway toward Mark’s truck, a radio blasted rap music and then quieted.

“Are you drunk?” Grayson asked.

“No,” I said haughtily. “That, among other things, is a condition of my employment.”

“Stoned?”

“No.”

“Then why did you get within a hundred feet of Mark?”

“I didn’t know he was out there,” I said. “And I can’t imagine why he’s still after me.” The massive front door of the mansion opened. Alec and Molly stepped out. The way they tossed sentences at each other and jerked their heads away, they looked like they were arguing. I wondered what Molly and Alec had to argue about.

“Have you seen yourself in those shorts?” Grayson asked me. “I’m beginning to think you really don’t know.”

I leaned around the headrest to face him in the backseat. “Know what, Grayson? That nobody will hire me just as a pilot? That all my flying jobs come with a side order of sexy times? Yeah, I’m beginning to figure that out. Not that you’re to blame.”

“God!” Molly was saying to Alec as she got into the backseat and he sat down in the front. But as soon as Alec started the engine and rolled down the windows to let the heat escape, Francie skittered out of the mansion with her minions behind her, pointing toward the car.

“Go, Alec,” Grayson said quietly.

Francie’s long, straight, glossy locks bounced around her shoulders as she stopped by my door and screamed through the open window at me. “What are you trying to do, start a fight and bring the cops to my party? This is why I don’t invite trash.” She peered past me into the car. “Molly, this is why I don’t invite your trashy friend. Do not bring her near me again.” She called across me to Alec, “You’d better be careful. You’ll definitely catch something.”

Her friends behind her laughed. More and more people were streaming out of the mansion to hear what Francie would say to me: all the girls who were actively mean to me in the hall and the bathroom and PE, the whole reason I never ventured to the lunchroom, and now a lot of other people too, who had never given me a second glance but were realizing now who the trashy girl was that everybody had been talking about. I’d felt safe at school when those girls and certain boys weren’t around. Now I wouldn’t be safe anywhere.