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I’ve been kicked out of Clearwater University, and my dad doesn’t even want to speak to me—so what the hell is keeping me here? I’m not proud of it, but the answer to that question is simple. Revenge.
I’ve reserved the purest, most vicious hate in my soul for Trent. He’s the one who started all this, who turned the other two against me in high school and convinced them to come after me again in college.
Pride and rage made me declare this war, but my body doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that whatever was developing between me and those three men is over; it was burned to the ground before it ever really started. I don’t know what exactly existed between us, and I won’t let myself think about it.
I’ll struggle to the bitter end to hide the truth of what’s gone on between me, Trent, and the other two men, because if Dad ever found out, it would fucking kill him. And then he’d kill them. I can’t let him know how messed up things have gotten.
It’s the difference between fantasy and reality, and reality fucking hurts.
When she burst into the house I share with West and Reese and came after me tooth and nail, it made me hard. Yeah, you heard that right. The girl jumped on me like a fucking banshee, straddling me and whaling on me so hard she got a good enough hit in to cut my lip open. And I got a fucking semi just from having her that close to me. Jesus.
“Emma.” His voice is low and rough, and he’s looking at me like he’s just seen a ghost or something. Is that what you wanted, West? For me to be nothing more substantial than a ghost? For me to drift out of your life and never come back? Well, I feel fucking dead inside, so you’ve practically gotten your wish.
“Why do you always think I’m lying?” I scream. The words tear at my throat, summoned up from the very depths of my soul. They scratch like glass, and the sounds come out ragged and broken. “Why? That’s not what you do when you care about someone! When you care about someone, you think the best of them, not the worst! You don’t keep waiting for them to betray you. You don’t blame them for everything that goes wrong in your life. You believe in them! You believe them!”
“And the truth is, I didn’t tell your dad jack shit about anything. I didn’t want your parents to get divorced.” “Bullsh—” “The truth is, I introduced your mom to my dad because I had a fucking crush on you!”
“You’ve fucking ruined me. How did you do that?” She blinks at me, her chocolate brown eyes regaining focus for a second, as if her mind has clawed its way out of the haze of lust. And for just that brief second, a look like hatred passes across her features. It hits me like a knife to the heart, like a death sentence, like someone snuffed out my fucking soul.
“Yeah,” I mutter. Absently, I reach up to rub at my chest where my dead heart sits. “Yeah. I know.” This will never happen again. Of all the things Emma Holloway has ever said to me, I believe those five words the most.
I have never, ever come like that—so hard and so many times in a row. It was something beyond pleasure, beyond desire, an onslaught of sensation that’s left me feeling dazed and shaky. It was fire. It was pain. It was need. It was obsession.
I know Trent well enough to know that if he sleeps with that girl tonight, he’ll fucking regret it. But for once, I’m not gonna clean up his messes for him. If he wants to self-destruct, he can do it all on his own. I won’t have his back in this.
Maybe I am taken, whether I want to be or not. Emma Holloway fucking owns me. She may not want my heart, but it’s hers anyway.
Something hits me in the chest. A certainty like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I want to fix this. And by this, I don’t mean the mess between Trent, Emma, me, and West. I mean whatever exists between me and Emma. I mean Emma herself. I want to fix her. To take the broken pieces, the pieces my friends and I shattered, and put them back together.
“Don’t you fucking dare act like I’m the asshole here. Don’t look at me like that, you prick! Like I’ve wronged you in some way. I haven’t done shit to you yet. Don’t look at me like you’re all hurt or sorry! How the fuck am I supposed to believe you? You guys have yanked my emotions and lied to me over and over. That’s all we have between us, Reese! A pile of fucking lies.”
“I can’t stop.” His voice is soft, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I can’t. Believe me, I fucking tried, but I can’t stop thinking about you. And I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to pretend this never happened. I don’t want to pretend there’s nothing between us. I fucked up, Ems, and I want to make it better.”
Something cracks open in my chest, bleeding poison into my veins. I can feel it seeping through my body, and it feels like I’m turning to stone. Like I’m dying with every feeble beat of my heart. I waited for him to say those words. For months. For years. And now he says them?
We probably make quite a fucking sight, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk with a basket of laundry next to us, clothes spilled across the cement. But I don’t give a fuck what any late night partiers walking by might think. They can go fuck themselves for all I care. Emma is breaking apart in front of me, and I can’t let that happen.
“Fuck, Emma. It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it. I know you’re a good fucking person, and you would never mean that.”
“Your mom knew you loved her. I guarantee it. I don’t have to have known her to be sure of that. Anybody who’s lucky enough to know you knows what a fierce spirit you have. How passionate you are. And sometimes passion makes us say and do shit we wouldn’t normally do. Just because you had a fight with her, that doesn’t erase the love you guys had. Nothing could erase that.”
“You’re a good person, Ems. The fucking best. I’ve always been in awe of your huge heart, and even when the three of us were the biggest assholes in the world, even when we went out of our way to torment you, you didn’t let us break you. You didn’t let us make you hard or bitter. You kept your softness, your goodness, and I don’t know how the fuck you did it, but it makes you a better person than I can ever hope to be. The kind of person your mom would be proud of.”
Our relationship with someone isn’t defined by one single thing we say or do. It’s defined by how we are with them all the time, the entirety of how our lives intersect.”
Then she says softly, “If that’s true, what defines us?”
don’t know,” I say softly. “But whatever it is, I don’t think it’s too late to change it, Ems. I’m still here. You’re still here. The story isn’t over yet.”
I don’t know who moves first, me or her. I don’t know who closes the distance between us. All I know is that when my head drops and my lips find hers… I’m home.
“God, Ems. I missed you.” His words are a groan, and he spills them into my mouth as he keeps kissing me, slanting his lips against mine as though he’s afraid if either of us come up for air, we’ll lose each other forever.
“I’m gonna make everything better, Ems. I’m gonna fix this. All of it. I promise.”
Maybe the true insanity was in thinking I could ever escape this endless cycle of desire and fury, of sweetness and brutality.
This is the place Emma Holloway should’ve flourished. This should’ve been the springboard to the future she deserves. Instead, she got dragged down into the mud with three assholes too tormented by their own demons to protect the fucking angel in their midst.
“I don’t know what anyone else told you,” I say softly, my voice a low rasp. “But I won’t play that game with you anymore. I’m on your side. I’ll pick you from now on. I’ll fight for you.”
“I told you once that I would’ve treated you best, Ems,” I murmur. “And I meant it. I’ve wanted you since the first fucking moment I laid eyes on you, and I still want you. More than anything else in the whole damn world.”
Fury still burns hot in my veins, mixing with the kind of fierce arousal I felt the day I kissed him in that classroom at Amundsen High, back in my junior year. A need to possess and destroy. A need to tame. A need to fuse myself to the very thing that causes me pain, like a moth determined to extinguish itself in the flame.
“I want you,” he says, and there’s a raw truth in his words that makes goose bumps scatter across my skin. “I want to feel you wrapped around me. I want you to come on my cock until you go boneless in my arms. But the next time I fuck you, it’ll be because you know how I feel about you—and you believe it.”
“We need to stop Leslie,” Trent says. West nods. Well, look at that. For the first time in weeks, we’re all in agreement about something.
Somehow, Leslie has become the enemy here. And the Icons and I have become a we.
It strikes me suddenly that I want that. I want her stuff around the house, the little reminders that she’s been here. I want her here all the time.
I promised myself I wouldn’t touch her, but one of my hands leaves the counter, and I grab her smaller one, bringing it to my chest—right to the spot she’s been staring at. Where my heart is. I don’t know how to tell her that it beats for her. That every throb she feels under her palm is my heart trying to get closer to her, trying to punch its way out of my chest if necessary to get just a few fucking inches nearer to her.
“You liked it rough like that?” “Yes.” “You like it hard?” “Yes.” My cock throbs, and I step even closer to her, brushing my thick head against her clit, running it through her folds. She’s hot and wet and fucking perfect. “Good. Because when I fuck you, it’s gonna be harder and rougher than that. Can you take it?”
I have a vivid flashback of the first and only other time I fucked her—in the supply closet at Amundsen High. That same look flashed in her eyes then too. Something fierce. Something challenging. As if she knows she can take everything I have to give and still come back for more.
I’m not really in the mood for anything they have here. I was thinking maybe ice cream?” “Fuck, yeah.” West smiles at her, and his whole face relaxes when he does. Goddammit. If I wasn’t so dead set on claiming her for myself, I’d be happy for the cranky bastard. Emma’s the only person I’ve ever known who can crack through his facade like she does. She brings his walls down without even trying.
The guys and Emma and I banter back and forth as we wait, comparing favorite ice cream flavors. Somehow, it diverges to a discussion of what our favorite flavor says about how we are in bed, and my dick twitches again as Emma explains in a serious tone that just because she likes vanilla ice cream, it doesn’t make her vanilla in bed.
