WADE'S POV
The grip on my steering wheel felt like it was going to snap the plastic. I sat in my truck in the back corner of the school parking lot, watching the afternoon sun bounce off the windshields of five hundred cars I didn't care about. My focus was locked on the sidewalk.
There they were. The "Trio."
Adam Vance was walking with that stiff, freakish posture of his, looking like he'd been carved out of a single block of cold marble. Beside him, June was laughing—actually laughing—at something his brother, the weird art kid, was saying. She looked lighter than I'd seen her in years.
It felt like a physical weight in my chest, a dull, throbbing pressure that wouldn't let up. I'd known June Miller since the third grade. I was the one who pulled her out of the creek when she fell in during the 4th of July picnic. I was the one who sat behind her in every math class for three years, memorizing the way she'd chew on the end of her pencil when she was stuck on a problem.
I'd put in the time. I was the Sheriff's son. I was the varsity captain. I was the "Legacy" in this town. And then these two ridge-runners show up out of nowhere with their secret handshakes and their "homeschooled" mysteries, and suddenly, I'm invisible.
I watched Adam lean in closer to her. He didn't even touch her, but the way he looked at her—like he was trying to memorize her pulse—made my blood boil. It wasn't just that he had her attention; it was that he didn't even seem to try. He was just... there. Cold, quiet, and apparently fascinating.
"Look at them," a voice grunted from the passenger seat. It was Kent, my linebacker. "Freaks. My dad says the old Vance place hasn't had the power turned on in a decade, but you see the way the lights acted in the gym when you tackled him? Something's rigged."
"I don't care about the lights, Kent," I snapped, my voice sounding tight even to my own ears.
"You should care. June's going to the Lookout with him Friday. I heard her tell Sarah Jenkins at lunch. 'Observation,' she called it."
The word hit me like a blindside hit on the twenty-yard line. The Lookout. That was the spot. My spot. I'd been planning to ask her to go up there after the homecoming game. It was the unwritten rule of Oakhaven: you take a girl to the Lookout when you're ready to say something that matters.
And she was going there with him. A guy who talked like a search engine and moved like a programmed drone.
"He's dangerous, Wade," Kent continued, oblivious to the fact that I was about to punch the dashboard. "The way he moved in the gym... it wasn't human. You felt it. You said it yourself—it felt like you hit a brick wall that was plugged into a socket."
I remembered the sensation. The cold, buzzing vibration that had traveled up my arms when I tried to take him down. The way the air had seemed to thicken around him, making my lungs feel heavy. At the time, I'd been too embarrassed to think straight, but now, sitting in the heat of my truck, the logic was starting to settle.
Adam Vance wasn't just a "farm boy." There was a frequency to him—a hum that set my teeth on edge. It was like he was a predator masquerading as a statue. And June, smart as she was, was walking right into the middle of it.
"He's hiding something," I whispered, my fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the wheel. "Silas Vance didn't just 'homeschool' those boys. He buried them. And now they're out, and they're taking things that don't belong to them."
I thought about my father, Sheriff Brandt. He'd let them off with a warning because he didn't want the paperwork of a school fight, but I knew him. He hated variables. He hated things he couldn't put in a box and label. If I could just prove that Adam wasn't just "weird," but actually wrong...
"What are you gonna do?" Kent asked, sensing the shift in my mood.
"I'm going to go to the Lookout Friday night," I said, a slow, bitter heat spreading through my limbs. "I'm going to see exactly what they're 'observing.' And if Adam Vance so much as breathes on her wrong, I'm going to show this town what happens when a ridge-runner tries to play a hero."
I shifted the truck into gear, the tires chirping against the asphalt as I pulled out of the lot. I didn't look back at them. I didn't need to. I could still feel that buzzing in my bones, that "wrong" energy that followed the Vances like a shadow.
June Miller was the only thing in this town that felt like it belonged to my future. I'd be damned if I let some glitch in the system take her away while I watched from the sidelines.
Newton's Third Law. Adam had mentioned it in class.He'd taken her attention. That was the action. Friday night was going to be the reaction. And I was going to make sure it was exactly as "opposite" as he deserved.