No Second Chances by Marissa Farrar

reputation. With a growl, I lunged toward Ryan, my shoes crunching on the smashed crockery. Hands grabbed my arms from behind, holding me back. I shook them off, but the delay had given Ryan just enough time to turn and saunter from the building, the little bell above the door ringing as the door swung shut behind him. I could make out his figure walking into the night. A part of me—a massive part—wanted to race after him and smash his head into the sidewalk, but I knew I couldn’t. Going after him now would be viewed as assault, and it would put me right back behind bars.
    What the hell was he doing back here? As far as I was aware, Ryan had left town not long after I’d been incarcerated. I wondered if he’d seemed as surprised about seeing me as I’d been about him. Had the shock in his eyes matched my own, or had he been a little too confident about approaching me again for the first time in ten years?
    I didn’t know, but the last thing I needed right now was the likes of Ryan back in my life.

 
    Chapter Nine
     
     
    Gabi - Eleven Years Earlier
     
     
     
    Cole Devonport was walking down the school corridor, directly toward me. I ducked my head, holding my books closer to my chest, and kept going, hoping he’d somehow not notice me.
    But as he got closer, I realized he was the one trying not to catch my eye, and despite the way he walked, with his head down and his blond hair hanging over his face, it was impossible not to notice his black eye and split lip.
    Before I’d had the chance to think through what I was doing, I’d reached out and caught him by his forearm, pulling him to a stop.
    “Hey, Cole. What happened?”
    “Gabi,” he said, his gaze flicking to me. “Hey, how are you doing?”
    “I’m fine. What happened to you?”
    He gave his head a slight shake and glanced away again, his cheeks heating. “I got into a fight with my foster brother. It was stupid.”
    “Your foster brother? Does he come to Willowbrook High?”
    “Nah, he goes to Blackdown,” he said, mentioning another high school across town. “He’d already been going there for a few years before he moved in with our foster family, so they figured there was no point in moving him.”
    “And he did this to you?”
    “Would you believe me if I told you he came off worse?”
    I could hear a teasing tone to his voice, but I felt like he was using it to cover how he really felt. I couldn’t imagine having to live in a house that didn’t even belong to one of my parents, and then getting in a fight with someone I lived with—a fight so bad it left me with injuries every kid at school would surely notice and be gossiping about.
    “Did he?” I asked.
    Cole pushed his hair back from his face and grinned. “Nah, not really, but only because I knew I’d end up in more shit than he would. He’s younger and smaller than me, so handing him his ass wouldn’t exactly go down well with the couple who’ve taken me in.”
    My eyes widened. “So you let him hit you instead?”
    “I don’t know if let him is exactly the right way of putting it, but he definitely got in a couple of swings before I managed to pin him down.”
    “And why did he want to hit you in the first place?”
    “He took some stuff of mine, so I figured it was only fair I took some of his things in return.” He shrugged. “He wasn’t exactly happy about it.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “I guess not.”
    As we spoke, he gradually lost the slightly defeated atmosphere he’d had as he’d walked down the hall, the cocky attitude returning. Before I knew what was happening, he’d slung his arm around my shoulder and I discovered we were walking side by side down the corridor, him propelling me along.
    Other students cast us curious glances as we walked, people stopping chatting at their lockers to raise eyebrows at us. I’d always been someone who was quite happy to be invisible at high school, but all of a sudden I felt a little spark of excitement, of