Chapter Twenty-Two

Ever

I am thrown back to the present, and my eyes widen in panic.

"Fuck!"

"What?" Ry asks, reading my panic.

"What are their names, Ry?" I softly ask, my eyes never leaving them.

Rafe pushes up to his height, realizing I'm putting it together.

"Rafe, Trick, Riot, Jensen, Luc, and Cash."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

They all start toward me, and I freak out.

"I'll explain, I promise but buy me some time to get away from them, please? I just need to get my stuff from the locker." I look at Rylie with wide eyes, and she just nods.

"I got you, girl; this I do need an explanation for though!" She winks.

"Fuck yes."

She starts toward the guys, and I kick my jog up to a run, sprinting past the ridiculous queen bitch still on a fucking warpath.

I can hear them yell behind me and all hell breaks loose as Rylie does whatever it is she decided to do to give me time to escape.

Jensen

R ylie heads over to us with a determined look on her face, and I instantly pause going after Ever.

“Rylie,” Trick starts to warn her.

“You don’t understand, it’s not what you think,” Cash adds.

Rylie shrugs, “It doesn’t really matter. I really like Ever, and she asked me to stall you, so that is what I’m going to do.”

“No offense, but how are you going to stop us?” Riot asks, and he makes a good point, but I think it would be a terrible idea to underestimate Rylie.

She has already proven herself capable and I have a feeling that she is about to do it again.

“Rats!” she yells, making her voice sound absolutely panicked even though her face is smiling. It is fucking impressive, and I would appreciate it a lot more if she hadn’t done it to allow Ever time to get away from us.

All hell breaks loose.

Everyone starts screaming and panicking, jumping up onto things to get away from the imaginary rats that Rylie screamed about. Just when it starts to calm down again, she starts everyone off.

“Oh my god, it’s huge,” she screams, pointing and screaming again.

It doesn’t escape my notice that she is pointing near Serena and her cronies and that they consequently freak the fuck out, which makes everyone else freak out even more.

“Ever,” Trick says as he spots her head out of the doors coming from the locker room and clearly making a break for it.

We rush through the crowd, ignoring everyone and plowing our way through them; I don’t even care at this point. I don’t understand why she is running. I really don’t want her to fear us, but I don’t think that is what this is; I think she is freaking out, but I’m not sure why.

Ever

N ot having the time to get dressed, I just grab my stuff from my gym locker. I fish out my bike keys and sprint toward my locker to get my helmet. I am not stupid. Just as I pull it out, I hear the doors behind me crash open.

"Everleigh," one of them growls, like legit growls, and it does things to me I am not going to admit right now, but damn.

"Sorry, I don't know who that is. Got to go!" I yell over my shoulder while sprinting down the hall toward the front doors and my bike.

One of them chuckles behind me, and I grin.

Cash

I can’t help but laugh at her words. There is the Ever that I knew, and I am happy to see that part of her. She is so fucking sassy and so full of confidence.

The thing none of us quite understand is why she is running from us. She clearly has a fight or flight response, the one that we have seen triggered was fight, and yet here she is running.

I really didn’t think that we were that scary, but she even sent Rylie over to us to try and distract us so that she could escape, not that Rylie could have stopped us, and she realized that pretty fucking quickly. I have to say I respect her for trying though, she knows what we are capable of, and yet she still stepped in between Ever and us because Ever asked her to, I can appreciate that especially since it’s only been a day that she has known Ever.

They have clearly bonded in that weird way that girls do, when they just instantly become best friends, I hear my own thoughts, and I roll my eyes. I pretty much just described what happened with us and Atlas, maybe it isn’t a thing that is specific to girls, maybe it’s just something that happens when you find your people.

Atlas is definitely one of our people, and I actually really wish that he was here right now, he would like Ever. I think they would understand each other more than either of them would expect.

We crash our way through the front doors of the school, following Ever, who can run fucking quickly.

I screech to a halt along with the others as my jaw drops and heat fills me.

The bike is hers and is a thousand times sexier now that I can see her straddling it. It suits her, and I am not surprised in the slightest that this bike is hers.

Not when I really think about it.

She always said that one day she was going to ride a motorcycle, and that she didn’t want to drive a car because, in her words, cars were boring and you ended up having to give lifts to people you didn’t like. That always made me chuckle.

She obviously finds our expressions amusing because she grins wickedly; that smile has us all reacting at the same time as we start to walk down the steps.

Ever obviously doesn’t want us to catch her though and showing extreme skill, she fishtails the bike around so that it is now facing the right way and the speeds off, popping a wheelie as she goes.

“Did she just . . .” Jensen starts and then trails off, unsure what just happened.

To be honest, I think we are all a bit dumbfounded.

“Come on, let’s head back to mom's. I bet that is where she is going,” Trick says, and we all run to the truck. We aren’t even going to pretend that we aren’t in a rush.

As we all pile in the truck, Jensen says, “I wish I had my bike. I bet I could fucking catch her.”

“Let’s go and get our Ever,” I say as Trick starts the car, and we drive quicker than we probably should.

It feels like this is the beginning of forever.

Continue Ever and the Guy’s story in Home (Finding My Home) Book 1

Read on for a preview!