Twisted Secrets (Bastards of Boulder Cove #3)

by Rachel Leigh

“Let me go, jerk!” I tug my arm, trying to free it to no avail. “You fucking slapped me, whore!” “I’m not a whore! Dickhead!” “You’re fucking my two best friends at the same time. I think whore is the appropriate title.” “My god,” Riley bellows, “would you two just fuck already and get it over with?”

“I. Will. Never. Not. Hate. You, Scar. Do you understand me?” I inhale his hot breath, my limbs quivering. “Nothing you do or say will ever change the sheer agony I feel in your presence. I despise you. Your touch repulses me. Your existence makes me sick. You are toxic. A poison I refuse to ingest. Crew and Jagger can drink it up, but not me. I’d die first.”

I lift a shoulder, my expression apathetic. “It’s a shame, really. I’d love nothing more than to watch you suffer a slow, agonizing death while my venom eats away at your dejected soul.” He calls me toxic—a poison he refuses to ingest—but he’s already dead inside, so what’s it matter? Nothing I say at this point will have any bearing on the way Neo feels about me, and right now, I don’t fucking care.

Pushing her away while keeping her close. It has to be this way. I’ve always known this to be true. So why is it getting harder? Why do I look at her with Crew and Jagger and want nothing more than to decapitate my own friends, just so they can’t look at her or taste her ever again? Why does the thought of any guy looking at her and undressing her with their eyes make me want to put her in a cage and keep her as my own little pet? I hate her. Everything about her repulses me. So why do I want her so fucking bad?

Sometimes we forget that those who act tough, are really the ones hurting the most inside.

“I want you to be mine, Scar. Let me protect you and your secrets. Only me. No one else.”

But when he leans forward, hands pressed to the mattress on either side of me, and a smile lifts his cheeks, I finally let out the long breath I’ve been holding in. He kisses my lips softly then says, “I want to be better, and it starts with you.”