Extra Credit (Fenton U Series), page 28
He was trying to fish me in. It was a waste of oxygen. I already knew why he’d gone to such irrational lengths.
“Couldn’t find a replacement?” The malice lashed from my tongue like a whip.
Some semblance of his manic smile dropped as I took a menacing step forward. I exchanged a brief look with Cali, hoping that she understood my silent promise to get her out of this mess.
My mess.
“You need to let her go,” I said, the demand bouncing off the concrete walls.
“I will,” my Claudio promised. “Once I finish what we’re here for.”
He flipped up the edge of his shirt. His thick fingers wrapped around the handle of the gun that was tucked into his waistband. The obsidian metal glinted under the bright lights hanging over the ring. All the warmth in my body evaporated.
Andrew grabbed hold of my shoulders, pulling me into him. My back collided with his chest as we both stumbled backwards. His whispered curse met my ear.
Claudio adjusted his hold on the base of the gun. Then he pointed the barrel at her. A jolt of electricity ran through my body. Every facet of my mind was screaming at her to run, but she was frozen in fear. Cali’s wild eyes flicked towards me in a noiseless cry for help.
My breathing accelerated. The way I was heaving in greedy gulps of air made it seem like I had run a mile. But I was just so fucking scared.
“She’s not the reason why I stepped away from the Pit,” I managed to get out, moving away from Andrew’s protective hold.
“Don’t lie to me, boy. I’m not a fucking idiot,” he scoffed.
“Please,” I pleaded, wondering if I would make things worse if I attempted to take another step forward. “Please don’t.”
Cali’s hands were up in surrender, and her lips trembled. On some deeper level, she knew he was perfectly capable of going through with this plan of his. This wasn’t some drug-induced stupor. This was who Claudio was at his rotting core, something that my mother had endured for years before our arrangement kept him at bay. It was that same fear that allowed it to go on for so long.
“Shut up,” Claudio muttered. He didn't so much as glance in my direction. His dark eyes were trained on Cali.
“I’ll come back,” I tried. My voice was firm, but there was a faint quiver.
“I don’t believe you,” he replied, finger still folded over the trigger. “But even if I did, it’s too late for that now. This ends tonight.”
The gun clinked in his hand. The sound echoed over the erratic beating of my heart. He was going to go through with this. Nothing I said or did would change his mind.
Nothing was going to stop him.
I wanted to shout at her to move, to get out of the way, but my throat was painfully dry. Instead, I propelled forward, coming to stand between them.
“You think I won’t?” Claudio challenged, an eyebrow raised.
I didn’t waver. “I know that if you kill me, you’re going to have to find someone else who’s okay with doing your dirty work.”
“You’re right,” Claudio muttered with pursed lips. “Guess I’m going to have to make a sacrifice.”
He was prepared to shoot me. Bile threatened its way back up.
Would he stop at Cali and me, or would he end up killing everyone here tonight? I hoped Andrew had enough sense to run. Take off and drag Harper along with him.
“This is your last chance to move out of the way,” Claudio ground out. I guessed killing me really hadn’t been a part of his original plan.
Cali whimpered from behind me.
“You’re a fucking coward—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my reply.
Claudio pulled the trigger.
The deafening bang rang out, drowning out Cali’s blood-curdling scream. Pain seared through my ankle and my leg—despite the valiant effort to keep me standing—buckled.
Claudio’s expression darkened, frown lines etched deeper into his stubbled face. “I told you to get the fuck out of my way.”
Then he shot again.
Cali’s scream ricocheted off the walls again, shattering what was left of my heart. Her face twisted in agony as she threw her hand over her left arm. Bright red blood began seeping through her fingers.
“Stop!” I cried, trying to push myself up from the grimy floor.
Claudio treaded closer, arm still extended, gun in his hand. But now, a slow, crazed grin began to spread across his face.
When his finger pressed down on the trigger a third time, nothing happened.
I held my breath. The gun had jammed.
“Cali,” I said, dragging myself closer to her hunched and shivering frame. “You need to run. You need to get up and run.”
Heavy tears glistened down her cheeks.
My fingers threaded into the cage behind her. “Please,” I begged, wrapping my other hand around her good arm and pulling her up with me. “Andrew’s over there. He’ll get you out. Run,” my voice grew louder as I heard the metal of the gun clanking behind me. “Run!”
With shaky legs, Cali darted in the direction I was pointing. I didn’t turn my head until she reached him, the two disappearing into the shadows.
I went to return my attention to the present danger. Claudio was adding more ammunition to his handgun when I finally spotted Harper. She had slunk along the grey walls, inches from where the gun-wielding madman stood. Claudio’s fiery gaze refocused on me. He hadn’t noticed the woman approaching him from behind.
The gun was repositioned in my direction once more. “I’m not going to stop until she’s dead,” Claudio promised, approaching. The yellow of his teeth flashed under the spotlights.
I swallowed, heaving as I fought to keep myself upright. The pain in my ankle was debilitating, radiating up my leg.
“I guess I’ll just have to get you out of the way first,” he taunted. “Then they’ll have no one to protect them; not Cali, not your mother, or Sadie.”
What happened next played out in seconds.
Harper grabbed hold of the barrel of the gun and gave it a firm twist. It dislodged from Claudio’s grasp, a misfire sounding as it clattered to the floor. Without hesitation, Harper kicked it across the empty room with the heel of her foot.
“Fuck!” Claudio roared, gripping his wrist with his other hand.
I didn’t hesitate. As soon as he was unarmed, I used the cage behind me and threw myself across the room, ignoring the agony in my ankle and landing a blow to the side of Claudio’s head. He tumbled to the floor, and I went down with him, creating a more equal playing field. Blow after blow, the sound of flesh hitting flesh reverberated throughout the Pit, along with the satisfied crunching of bone.
I don’t know how long I sat there, on top of him, before Andrew appeared next to me. He wrestled me away from my sperm donor’s limp body.
“Lincoln,” he called, breaking through my blind rage. “Lincoln, stop. I said stop!”
My chest rose and fell erratically as I allowed Andrew to drag me away from Claudio, who was now unconscious. The cold concrete seeped through my blood-soaked sweatpants as I tried to catch my breath.
“I should just kill him right here, right now,” I seethed, nostrils flaring as I considered what the weight of the gun would feel like in my hands.
Andrew crouched in front of me, blocking my view.
“You’re not going to do that,” he said, his voice a lighthouse in the middle of a turbulent sea. “You’re going to get up, and we’re going to go find Cali. She needs you. And she sure as hell doesn’t want you to end up in prison due to the hatred you have for the pathetic sack of shit behind me.”
Cali.
“Where is she?”
“Harper got her out. I told them to meet us by my car.”
Andrew held out a hand to me, and I took it. He hauled me up to my feet, snaking his arm around my back as I stumbled onto my good leg. The fight in me had sizzled out, leaving me with a mixed bag of emotions to unpack as we stumbled through the dark tunnels that led out of the basement. I could feel the heaviness of it all crashing down on me.
I guess Andrew could sense it, too.
“You should really lay off the protein shakes,” he said, grimacing under my weight.
Despite the events of the night and the throbbing pain, I exhaled a laugh as Andrew guided me out of the Pit one last time.
FORTY-FOUR
CALISTA
Working in a hospital, I’ve heard the stories about what people say it feels like before you die; life events flashing in front of your eyes, witnessing what’s happening as if your soul had already severed from your physical self. That's what I remember. An out-of-body experience. Blood rushed to my ears. The roaring drowned out the rest of the world around me, and all I could focus on was the barrel of the gun.
Thankfully, I didn’t remember many other details from that night. Nonetheless, everything I did remember still haunted me.
Running through a storm. Lincoln’s pleading voice. The searing pain as the bullet sliced through my skin.
But it was all a jumbled blur after Harper had helped me to Drew’s car. I was definitely in a state of shock, and I think the rest of the city was too.
The gunshots could be heard through the concrete walls of the Pit, bringing a heavy police presence to Fenton’s campus. The commotion caused too much curiosity from students and faculty. Twenty minutes after we had escaped, photographs of Claudio’s pummeled face were circulating around campus. In the picture Ella showed me, he was being escorted out through the Student Centre in handcuffs. His face was already beginning to swell, and a trail of fresh blood leaked from various gashes.
He looked every bit the villain that he was.
An addict who used his son as a pawn to feed his habits. Now that we were removed from the situation, I wish Lincoln had gotten a few more blows in. After all this time, he was the one who needed justice.
A week later, the buzz around the situation had not settled. Gossip around the underground fight club had gone viral. Whoever was getting paid off could no longer ignore what was happening below the university.
A full investigation was launched.
Thanks to Coach Whitmore, a case was already being established against Claudio. And, as weird as it was to say, this would be the event that finally put everything in motion. The scumbag was being charged for attempted first-degree murder with a firearm. Lincoln’s lawyer told us he was looking at a minimum sentence of five years. But they seemed to believe he would be put away for much longer than that.
Which is where the problems started.
In a last-ditch effort to lessen his sentence, Claudio did the unthinkable. He blew the doors wide open on the Pit. It wasn’t clear what his intentions were. Whether it was an attempt to lessen his sentence or a final attempt to punish Lincoln, no one could be sure.
But it worked.
I rubbed at my collarbone as anxiety continued to pool in my stomach. Sitting in my desk chair, I tried to soak in the vitamin D through the dorm room window. Maybe if I just paused for a minute, I could relax my mind enough to stop the vicious cycle of pacing I had been doing all morning.
I had urged both Ella and Harper that I was fine, that I could manage on my own while they attended classes. Up until the day prior, they had been taking turns on ‘Cali Duty’. Whenever one of them had to leave for whatever reason, the other would show up with some poorly disguised excuse. And while I loved them both for it, I didn’t want anyone to have to rearrange their schedules to care for me.
Physically, I was fine. And I knew that with some time and therapy sessions, I would be mentally as well.
I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath as I tried to focus on the warming weather. Spring was around the corner, and I hoped that meant a fresh start, not just for me, but for Lincoln as well.
The reason I had wanted to keep the happenings of the Pit a secret had come to fruition. It was the same reason why I had begged Drew to drive me to Amelia rather than going to the hospital. The same reason why I had Amelia stitch up my wound in the middle of her living room. I wanted to protect him.
In a turn of events, Lincoln had been named by his sperm donor as a bargaining chip, leaving him to face his own retribution.
The Dean of the university had reached out to Lincoln to discuss his academic standing. I swallowed thickly as I remembered the email he had shared with me one night when he came to visit. My eyes flicked to the time on my phone.
What’s taking so long?
When a knock sounded at my door, I launched myself forward, leaving my chair squeaking at the abrupt movement. The click of the lock sounded as I threw it open. Lincoln stood on the other side, a small smile playing on his pink lips. But the emotion didn’t reach his eyes.
“Hey,” I breathed, opening the door wider.
He stepped into my space, bending to place a delicate kiss on my forehead. I warmed at the little show of affection. “Hey.”
Lincoln’s gaze traveled to the fresh bandage wrapped around my upper arm, and guilt bloomed in his already subdued eyes. Did he forget that he was the one stuck in a boot and walking around with a crutch? I allowed the door to shut behind him, taking his hand to refocus the attention. The weight Lincoln carried from that night was heavy on his shoulders.
No matter what I said to him, he had made it clear that nothing I did or said could change that. But I refused to allow him to dwell on it.
“The weather looks beautiful today,” I chirped, leading him to my bed. “Want to sit in the quad with me later?”
I sat, and he followed my movements, resting his crutch against the frame and dwarfing the twin bed. Lincoln simply nodded his approval.
“So, what did they say?” As soon as the question left my lips, I realized I already knew the answer. Lincoln’s face was somber. There was a distant look in his eyes as he stared down at our intertwined fingers.
“I’ve been expelled,” Lincoln murmured. “Indefinitely.”
“No,” I whispered, twisting my body even more towards him. “He can’t do that.”
Lincoln let out a humorous puff of air. “He’s the Dean, California. Of course, he can do that.”
“How can he expel you after all the crap you’ve been through?”
“Fenton’s reputation is far too important to deal with this kind of press, apparently.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Where had the humanity in this world gone?
“Screw their reputation,” I sputtered. “Did you tell him everything? About how Claudio was blackmailing you?”
Lincoln rolled his bottom lip into his mouth, still refusing to make eye contact with me. “Yeah. I told him everything. He responded by saying that while he sympathizes with my situation, he can’t simply sweep this under the rug. All students and staff involved will be dealt with accordingly.”
I grunted. “That’s bullshit.”
The corner of Lincoln’s lips twitched at my use of a curse word.
“We need to fight this,” I started, “I’m sure if we brought this to the press—”
“He made it pretty clear that the only way they would be able to absolve me of any criminal charges was if I was removed from my program.”
“Criminal charges?” I echoed, standing up from my spot on my bed. His hand fell to his lap. “They can’t be serious. They’re going to pull this shit so close to graduation? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’ve come to learn that life isn’t fair, California.” Lincoln paused, tilting his head up to look at me. I could see the pain in his dark brown eyes. “I’m not going to lie to you. It fucking hurts to be put out like this so close to graduating, but I get it.”
“Of course it does. You put so much work into getting to this point.”
A sad smile broke out on Lincoln’s face. He glanced down at his dressiest sneakers, shaking his head. “I really didn’t. I didn’t put much effort into anything but boxing until you showed up.”
Something constricted around my heart.
His dark eyes latched onto mine. “You made me work for it, California. You gave me the hope that there was something more for me out there. And now there actually is.”
“But your degree,” I whispered.
Lincoln stood, bringing us closer again. I cocked my head, appreciating the scar nestled in his eyebrow.
“It means nothing if I have a criminal record. I’d rather not have that kind of stain following me around. I can always finish my degree somewhere else.”
I drew in a deep breath. Complaining about the situation wasn’t going to resolve anything. “So now what?”
“I live my life, free of the monster who made it hell for as long as I can remember,” Lincoln gathered me up in his arms.
I lay my head against his chest. The familiar beating of his heart eased the tension that had been building up all morning. “That sounds like a pretty good plan.”
“Almost perfect.”
“Almost?” I asked, moving to look at him again. “What would make it perfect?”
A close-lipped smile bloomed across his face. I couldn’t help but return it. “You.”
“I already told you, I’m all yours.”
“Are you sure you’re not just using me for extra credit?” he teased, brushing the tip of his nose against mine.
I giggled, my lashes fanning against my cheeks as he leaned in to kiss me. “No promises.”
FORTY-FIVE
LINCOLN
Ihad spent the entire morning scrolling through advertisements for jobs in town. Half of them I had already applied to—twice—and I grunted as I shut Cali’s laptop with a little more force than necessary. No matter where I went, there ended up being someone more qualified than me. My last interview was for a nearby grocery store that would have hired teenagers rather than pay someone else a livable wage.
The hard truth was that no one was interested in hiring the college dropout with no real work experience.
