Cross Fire (Book #2) GirlXGirl

Five

Things remained calm for the next two weeks. There was no word from Chapman on Victoria, which worried me, and no word from Melissa. She gave me distance, apart from our tactical training, but she even stayed silent during that too.

It somewhat made me happy, because that meant I could learn in peace even though there were still hard feelings leftover. But at least I didn't have her voice in my ear the entire time trying to explain herself. I figured she had lost all hope in doing so.

It wasn't until dinner onthe Sunday of our second week when something strange happened:

I had walked into the bustling cafeteria and spotted Paige picking at her dinner. She was alone and I was grateful. Honestly, she was the only one I ever talked to nowadays.

She looked up and spotted me. A quick wave signaled me over.

But as I stepped forward one guy stood abruptly from a table. Another mimicked his stance, getting a little too close to the other's face.

"You think I can't beat your ass, Grady?" one shouted.

"Justin, stop trying to compensate for wimping out in workouts," so-called Grady accused.

That's when Justin grabbed the front of Grady's shirt and threw him as far as he could. I stepped back just in time, but my dinner plate was knocked from my hands. My dinner flew in every direction.

Justin's hard fists pounded into the face of Grady, who seemed to have unleashed a wild animal. The cafeteria was in a quiet panic as we witnessed about twenty seconds of non-stop beating. That's when authorities pulled Justin from Grady's bruised and bloodied body.

I was too shocked to move.

It wasn't until I felt someone grabbing my shoulder that I snapped out of the shock.

"God. I can't believe that just happened." Paige led me away from the scene. "Are you okay?"

"I-I'm fine," I answered.

"Here." She offered me her food. "You can have the rest of mine."

"Thanks." But I was no longer hungry.

Paige looked towards the door where the two guys had been escorted away.

"It's weird... I know Justin. I have defense training with him," she confessed. "I never pinned him as a hot-head."

I shouldn't have been surprised this had happened. Emotions were high and stress now became one of the hardest things to tolerate. Two guys duking it out over something petty seemed almost predictable, but maybe Paige was onto something. Yet, dwelling over it didn't seem to have any benefit. Maybe Grady had been asking for it.

What did surprise me was that the next day, Justin, the guy who had nearly beat someone to death, was back in the cafeteria for breakfast. There was a logical part of me saying that this wasn't normal, that most people would be sent home, or maybe even to jail, but not this guy. Didn't he seem a bit dangerous and uncontrollable to be around the rest of us?

But things proceeded as if nothing happened.

Justin supposedly returned to his classes. Everyone talked about the fight in hushed tones and treated it like a big bad secret. And things went back to normal.

This bothered me, and I couldn't seem to let it go.

Then I started to notice things and overhear conversations that sounded odd.