“Screw that,” dad grumbles. “Your sister is going to be attending this school one day and I need to make sure that the teachers here will actually give a shit about her education.”
“You have years before you need to worry about that.”
“There you are,” Tully’s voice comes cutting through the conversation moments before she crashes into me with a hug of her own.
I wrap my arms around her. “Where have you been?” I question, looking up over her shoulder to see Noah walking up behind.
“Here. There. Everywhere,” she tells me. “I’m a very important person, you know.”
“Uh huh,” I laugh. “I bet you just got stuck behind all the little old grannies who came to watch their grandbabies graduate.” Tully rolls her eyes and while I could be wrong about the grannies, I’m definitely onto something.
Noah barges in and physically removes his sister from me before taking her place. “Congratulations,” he murmurs in my ear before discreetly pressing a kiss to my cheek as to not piss off my father with an over the top show of affection.
“You too,” I smile, not giving a damn about pissing dad off and drawing Noah right in for a showstopping smooch.
Dad clears his throat while Noah smiles against my lips and it’s not until dad grabs hold of Noah and pulls him away from me that our kiss is finally broken. “Knock it off, Henley,” dad scolds. “I know it’s your big day and all, but I have no issue handing you your ass in front of all your classmates.”
I sling my arm over my father’s shoulder and give him a smile I know he can’t resist. “You wouldn’t do that to your little, baby girl, would you?”
“Damn right, I would. You’re not a little girl anymore. Aria’s the new baby girl of the family. You’re a grown-ass woman and you know better than to mess with me. Where do you think you get your fiery attitude from?”
Damn it. He wasn’t joking around.
“Geez, I think today is the best day of my life,” Tully says. “Graduating and getting to see Henley being put in her place by her old man all on the same day. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
“Ha. Ha,” I grumble, dropping my arm off dad’s shoulder, only to make him stand a little taller knowing he still has the power to put me in my place. Though, something tells me that’s something that will never change.
I see a particular blonde cut through my vision and I turn to Noah, squeezing his hand. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him. “There’s something I need to do.”
Noah’s brows draw down as he watches me, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, but eventually nods and releases my hand.
I break off into the crowd, trying to work out where the girl went when I find her standing amongst a crowd of preppy cheerleaders. “Candice,” I say, calling her out.
Candice looks back over her shoulder just as the rest of the cheerleaders do and her eyes instantly go wide before a wariness settles over her. She turns to the girl beside her. “I’ll be right back,” she says, knowing the cheerleaders would most likely follow along had she not said anything.
She steps away from the group and I indicate with a nod of my head for her to follow me somewhere private. We walk down into the girls’ locker room and it doesn’t go unnoticed that this is the place where it all started on that very first day when I stole her black tank out of her locker.
I try to forget about it. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done that, but I was desperate and it’s not like I knew whose locker I was breaking into or what kind of drama would unfold because of it.
I spin around the locker room, taking it all in for the last time before turning back to face Candice. “What’s up?” she questions warily. “I’m not in the mood for one last showdown. It’s graduation and I just want to get out of here unscathed. Besides, I haven’t done anything to you.”
“I never said you did anything to me, I wanted to give you this back,” I tell her, digging into the pocket of my jeans beneath my graduation gown and pulling out the photo of her and Monica. Her eyes go wide and she greedily takes it from my hand. “I promised you that if you stuck to your side of the bargain, I’d give you this back after graduation.”
“Oh, thank fuck,” she cries in relief. “You have no idea how fucking daunting it is knowing someone has a photo like this of you.”
“I bet it felt something a little like someone having a video of the shit getting beaten out of you.”