Cassidy catches them on the walk home

After the heated arguments inside began to cool down, Tiffany called the end of the meeting, warning everyone to be careful, especially Mark and Jackson while around Dixon and his friends on the football team.

Heading out, Mark and Winter walked together at the back of the group, chatting with each other.

“This is a lot harder than I thought it’d be,” Winter admitted to Mark as they walked out together.

Mark nodded, agreeing with her comment, it was such a dysfunctional group that was now beginning to fall apart after Jackson’s antics on the weekend.

“It’s good to see you and Miranda getting along again,” he told her, a smile on his face.

She returned that smile, nodding.

“Can I ask what happened that night?”

She took a moment to figure out what she would tell him, “Well… we heard what you said out there about each of us…”

Both Mark and Tiffany figured that they would have been listening to his rant about how they needed to move on from this pettiness.

“And?” he pressed more.

“And… I guess it gave us a chance to talk things through, and I mean talk everything though. There’s also nothing else you can really do but talk when you’re locked in a storage cupboard together.”

Mark laughed, “That’s true I guess.”

“Then we met up the next day in my room and just left everything out there on the table.”

“So are you girls best friends again… or what?”

Winter screwed up her face, not willing to concede that they were best friends again and everything completely back to normal, “Look… I don’t know… I hope one day we can be the kind of best friends that we were back in high school but right now, let’s just work on the friend part.”

While they were talking, the two were caught off guard by a female voice.

“Where the hell have you lot been?”

The rest of the group didn’t hear the female voice behind them but Mark and Winter were at the back of the group and heard it loud and clear. They both turned to see Cassidy standing there, holding two text books in her arms.

“Cassidy? What are you doing out here?” Mark asked.

“I’ve been studying late… back at the library,” she told them, “I’ve never seen you seven ever study together, especially at this time of night.”

They both looked at each other, unsure whether to let Cassidy in on what was happening here. The brunette looked confused, raising one eyebrow as she stared at both Mark and Winter.

“What? Some sort of secret group…” she asked.

Winter turned to Mark, “Dixon even knows now, no reason why we can’t tell her.”

Mark hesitated at first, not because he didn’t trust Cassidy at all but just because he wasn’t sure what Tiffany would have done in this situation.

“Oh come on Mark,” Cassidy complained, “After everything we’ve been through, you can’t tell me a little secret?”

He sighed before taking a deep breath and explaining the entire situation. It was a lot to go through but with the help of Winter jumping in at times too, they were able to catch up Cassidy as much as they could.

“It doesn’t surprise me…” she said while shaking her head, “That monster tried to grab my tits when I was in there last, I wish we had have done something about this earlier.”

“Unfortunately there wasn’t much we could do,” Winter admitted, “We’re just students, we don’t have the power to remove him from campus or anything.”

“Well when’s your next meeting?” Cassidy asked them.

“Wait, you want in?” Winter asked her.

“Of course, no question.”

The brunette was being dead serious, she wanted to bring down Dixon as much as any of them.

“We’ve got a mid-semester break next week so we’re just going to keep and eye on him and his group until we get a chance to meet up again,” Mark explained to her.

“Great, hope I can help!”

Just like that, the group had increased from 7 to 8.