June, age 18
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Ryker holds me close as we sway to the romantic song, his hand pressed into the arc of my back. His opposite hand holds mine in a loose grip, while his eyes search my face with a hint of worry.
The dance is almost over.
Prom night is dwindling to an end, and instead of feeling fantastic and free, I’m feeling like a horrible traitor.
A traitor for kissing a man I had no business kissing.
A traitor for slow-dancing with another boy after kissing that man.
I’m confused, disoriented, and terribly broken.
“I’m okay.” The lie is muffled into the baby blue corsage tickling my lips. “I don’t feel very good.”
Ryker stiffens a bit as his palm squeezes mine. “Do you… do you not want to go to the hotel with us tonight?”
The cautious disappointment in his tone is evident.
He was hoping to get lucky.
My friends and I all went in on a big hotel room for post-Prom fun, but it will be impossible for me to have any sort of fun now after what transpired tonight—after that dare gone devastatingly wrong.
Stupid dare.
Stupid Celeste.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I swallow, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, Ryker. I think I need to rest.”
He doesn’t reply, but his whole body tenses.
And maybe I should feel guilty for backing out of our plans, but I already have far worse things to feel guilty for.
What happened?
What the hell was that?
Brant’s face flashes to mind; the usual warmth of his earthy eyes blazing into fiery passion when he stared down at me, his fist tangled in my hair. My cherry lip gloss smeared across his mouth. The flush of his skin as he groaned with want.
My brother. My brother!
God, how could I? What on earth was I thinking?
And why… why did he respond like that?
It was only supposed to be a dare. A silly, immature dare. Instead, it became a death sentence that will hang over both our heads. Forever.
There’s no erasing the way our tongues ravished one another’s.
There’s no silencing those awful, lustful moans.
There’s no pretending he wasn’t painfully hard, and I wasn’t humiliatingly wet.
There’s no going back in time and taking it all back… and I’m sick—absolutely sick—that our beautiful, precious dynamic has been forever altered.
Tainted.
Hot tears blur my eyes as I nuzzle into Ryker’s suitcoat, searching for a comfort that doesn’t exist. He glides his hand up and down my back, unaware of my moral crisis. Oblivious to the destruction I’ve caused. Ignorant to the fact that I’m wishing it were Brant’s chest my face was buried against, while he soothes my ravaged heart and whispers into my ear that it would be okay.
We would be okay.
Sniffling, I force a smile, trying to shake away the sorrow. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…” My words trail off when I pop my head up, and my peripheral catches a glimpse of something over Ryker’s shoulder. Something alarming.
Brant.
His face.
He looks beaten. Brutalized.
Oh God, what happened?
I push away from Ryker, his queries of concern mere gibberish as my brain tries to process what I’m seeing.
Brant is hovering just inside the entrance of the ballroom, his jaw bruised, blood crusted on his skin. And I want to run to him, ask him what happened, tend to his wounds, but… but there’s something else.
His eyes.
His eyes are pinned on me, glistening with pain.
Rivers of tears have sliced through the dried blood smearing his cheeks, and I’m desperately confused, taking a slow step forward and shaking my head.
Brant starts walking toward me, his hand lifting, cupping his mouth.
He shakes his head right back at me.
His face morphs with anguish, and I know.
I know something is horribly, devastatingly wrong.
My skin prickles with dread as I watch him approach me, and only then do my eyes slide over to his left, landing on a familiar man in uniform.
But it’s not Theo.
It’s Kip—wearing that same painful expression.
It’s Kip.
Why is Kip here? Where is Theo?
Why is Brant walking over to me, tugging at his hair, still shaking his head with tears in his eyes, as if he’s trying to tell me something that’s too awful to be said with words?
The crowd seems to part as the two men approach me on the dance floor, while I just stand there, frozen like a statue.
Time stops.
Everything around me moves in slow motion.
A song is playing, something happy and upbeat.
And then it hits me.
It hits me.
My heart drops out of me, straight to the floor, and so do I.
I buckle.
I collapse before they reach me.
I collapse into a pile of horror, screaming with disbelief.
I’m screaming.
Brant races toward me, too late to catch me. But he still tries, sliding to his knees and wrapping his arms around me, holding me close as I disintegrate.
We sob and we shake, clutching each other while people gather around and the music cuts out, the happy song replaced by my horrible screams.
And it’s there on the dance floor, amid balloons and ballgowns, I have my first full-fledged asthma attack.
“I’m unsure which pain is worse—the shock of what happened, or the ache for what never will.” —Unknown
