Mint cocked his chin and raised his voice. “You got a problem, Smith?”
Charles smiled. It was a look of satisfaction, like he’d been fishing, and Mint had taken the bait. “Actually, now that you mention it, yeah. You sent Trevor to the emergency room. He’s eating through a tube tonight. Feel like a big man?”
The people orbiting Mint paused, stopped their conversations, and leaned in instinctively.
“Trevor talked a lot of shit,” Mint spat. “So I did everyone a favor and shut him up.”
Charles smirked. “Oh, Mark Minter, what a hero. Big man on campus. You know no one actually likes you, right? They kiss your ass because you’re rich and you pay for things.” His smile stretched wider. “I wonder what would happen if you suddenly lost all your money.”
Charles knew. Mint’s heart hammered.
Charles reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Will you look at this? My dad emailed me earlier. I guess he’s a Minter Group stock owner—a pretty pissed stock owner. He says your company’s in the trash and your family is dead broke. How many friends do you think you’ll have left when everyone finds out?”
The people gathered around them started whispering. No—this couldn’t be happening, not again.
Charles sensed blood in the water. He moved in, teeth bared. “Rumor is, your dad went AWOL. Let me guess: he ran off to the Caymans with all the money. Taking the coward’s way out, eh, Mint?”
It was like pulling a trigger. Mint shot forward, not caring who was watching or what it would mean, knowing only that he needed to smash Charles Smith’s face into the floor until it was a pulpy mess, until it could no longer utter a word about his dad.
But a small, dark-haired girl appeared out of nowhere, throwing herself in his path, hands braced. “Whoa, Mint! Charles! Stop. What are you doing?”
Caro. Dressed in white, with angels’ wings and a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. Yet another cupid in the night’s menagerie. The whole of them flashed through Mint’s mind: the lineup of pledges in their embarrassing cloth diapers; the paper cutout of the old, gray cupid, the one who’d sparked Charles’s joke; and now Caro herself, small and beautiful. So many angels.
He gripped his head, trying to clear the thoughts, to see through the red fog that told him, You are being destroyed; hurt someone else to make it stop.
Caro took one look at him and spun on Charles. “Chuck, what the hell? He’s my friend.”
The look Charles gave Caro was confusing to Mint. It was defiant, but also ashamed. Like he was actually worried what Caro thought of him.
“Your friend is an asshole,” Charles said bitterly. “Like I’ve told you a million times.”
“Get out of here.” Caro made a shooing gesture.
Charles recoiled like she’d slapped him. “You’re choosing him? But you’re my—”
Caro stopped him with a level look. “Walk it off, Chuck.”
Charles leaned in. “Fine. Get a girl to save you. Sounds about right.”
Mint lunged, but Caro’s arms, surprisingly strong, held him back. Charles escaped, swaggering to the back of the room, where a group of guys from the foyer—Trevor’s guys—gathered, shooting Mint icy looks.
Charles’s words haunted him. Taking the coward’s way out, eh, Mint? His dad was lying broken in the hospital, and all anyone could say about him was that he’d failed. His dad, who was supposed to be a giant of a man but didn’t have the backbone to stand up to his mother. He’d made the wrong investments, all the wrong choices. And then he’d chosen to end his life—to abandon Mint—rather than deal with the mess he’d made. If Mint didn’t rage, he was going to break. If he didn’t hurt someone, he was going to hurt worse than he ever had, and he didn’t know if he’d survive.
He spun from Caro. It was so claustrophobic in this basement. The walls were contracting, then retreating, like he was stuck inside a beating heart. He grabbed the whiskey bottle, upended it into his shot glass, took the shot, then again. He needed to feed the fire. The fire wasn’t weak.
“Mint, talk to me.” Caro rested a tentative hand on his arm, peering around his side to look at his face. “You’re scaring me.”
“Where’s Jessica?” he managed.
Caro frowned, casting an eye around the room. “I don’t know where anyone is. No one told me their plans, as usual. I invited Jess to get ready at the Kappa house, but she said she had something to do. I figured I’d find her here. But it’s almost time for the party to start. I don’t see her. Or Frankie, or Jack. Or Heather, for that matter. Where is everyone?”