“I’ll get you all some drinks.” I shot up from my seat, but I wasn’t feeling it anymore. That goody-two-shoes act. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t good and I wasn’t nice, and tonight, I was going to fuck my sister’s ex-boyfriend. An angry fuck that would erase the last few days from my memory, even if for a moment or two.
As I passed Dean, he bumped his arm against my shoulder. Every hair on my body stood on end, goosebumps prickling my skin.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I want?” he hissed into my face, licking his full bottom lip, making it shiny, a forbidden glossy apple.
“I don’t care what you want, Dean. You’re getting water. As I said, you can self-destruct all you want, but not under my shift.”
“Point made. Let it be known, though, that you can do whatever you want on my shaft.”
“No drinking or smoking,” I repeated solemnly, giving him the stink eye.
I could hear the smile in his words as he said, “You fucking care,” watching my back as I scurried along.
Yes, I do, I thought, bitterly. Wishing I hadn’t. I really do.
Things were about to get messy.
Ruckus was going to live up to his name.
Ten Years Ago
School was over. So were Millie and I.
Jaime moved to Texas for college, taking a souvenir from home along with him—our lit teacher, Melody Greene. Trent had surgery on his leg and was bedbound for the rest of the summer. And Vicious…Vicious went fucking nuts, as if he was the one she had abandoned.
After Millie ran away, Rosie seemed to have been pissed off with the world. I wanted to be her punching bag. She wouldn’t let me.
There were other things I wanted, but it wasn’t the appropriate time to go after them. So I settled for being there for her, one fucked-up soul for another.
I wasn’t particularly mad at my ex-girlfriend for ditching my ass. As far as I knew, she left me for someone else. That should’ve made me go ballistic, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find that fucking frenzy Vicious was simmering with.
Rosie said I should stop coming to check in on her, but that was like telling me I couldn’t touch my dick. Entirely fucking impossible.
I came for her every day.
We would sit outside by the pool in complete silence.
I wanted to talk to her about the stars, but I didn’t.
I wanted to talk to her about our futures, but I didn’t.
I wanted to talk to her about us, but there was no us, and her creep-o-meter was probably dinging like mad with me coming for her every afternoon.
One day, I saw Vicious walking past his manicured lawn while I made my way across the stone path to the servants’ house. He stopped and stared at me, blinking like he’d just seen a ghost.
Approaching me in slow steps, he tucked his hands in his pockets, assessing me through cold, vigilant eyes, preparing for battle. I puffed my chest, fixing my fake smile on. He wanted war? He was going to get one.
“You really think you stand a chance with the mouthy one after what happened with Millie?” he gritted, unable to let the word fuck, a word he used so fucking much, leave his mouth. Because he knew. Vicious knew that I took Millie’s virginity—she asked me to. I had a feeling that it was more about getting rid of her V-card than it was about me—and this was the one thing he could never erase from the pages of history. Not even Baron Spencer could tamper with reality.
I scrubbed my chin. “I know my chances with Baby LeBlanc are about as fat as your chances with Millie. I’m here to make sure she’s okay. It’s a foreign concept to you, but sometimes people just want to be nice to other people. What crawled up your ass, anyway? You look…guilty.” I furrowed my brows. Everything about my stance was ready to pounce and rip him to shreds.
“Guilty?” He laughed, but it wasn’t his usual laughter. The looming, self-assured one. So the bastard did know something. Fuck if I had a clue what it was. “Now why would I feel guilty? You were the one who went after my girl.”
“Your girl,” I repeated, letting an incredulous chuckle escape. It felt oddly liberating to address the elephant in the room. The same elephant that had managed to crush and ruin every single fucking thing in our lives during senior year. “Hey, asshat, newsflash: Emilia LeBlanc was everyone’s favorite moving target until I slapped my name on her ass. I had a suspicion that you liked her, yeah. I had a feeling it was even something more, but from the outside?” I took a step toward him, and we were dangerously close to fucking up each other’s faces and rolling on the grass until one of us was bleeding to death. “You ruined her life. All you said was that she was a white-trash hillbilly. All you did was make her feel unwelcome. Did I want to tap it? Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’m a teenager with a working dick. But, more than anything, I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t hang herself on your account.”