“YOU CAN BORROW something from me,” I tell her.
She backs out of my room, the house still dark as only the faint hint of light pierces the clouds outside.
“I gotta brush my teeth and get my books.” She kisses me, both of us walking and holding each other. “And charge my phone and do my math homework before class and…”
I cover her lips, silencing her. She pulls away, smiling and laughing and looking playful as we jog down the stairs, but I’m not smiling. Everything hurts, and I don’t mean my body.
I’m falling. I hate seeing her leave, even though we’ll see each other in a couple of hours.
But I hold back as we walk past the living room to the front door. I don’t grab her again, even though my arms are screaming.
God, I got pathetic.
She stops, looking left, and I follow her gaze. Macon sits in the chair on the other side of the kitchen bar, his long legs in jeans, but he doesn’t wear a shirt, and his hair is mussed. His head rests in his hand as a stream of smoke drifts to the ceiling from the cigarette between his fingers.
He stares at us.
“Good morning,” she says.
I shoot a glance at her, seeing her approach him, and I try to stop her. “No, don’t.”
But she ignores me, and I wince like I’m bracing myself for a car wreck about to happen.
“I’m…uh,” Clay stammers, breathing hard as she stares at my oldest brother. “Um… About the…”
He blows out smoke, his eyebrows narrowed, and I’m caught between being amused at seeing Clay nervous, and being scared because no conversation between these two will end well. Macon is an ass.
Her mouth opens and closes, Macon eating her for breakfast without moving a muscle, and then she exhales and turns to me.
“Yeah, fuck this,” she says, kissing my lips once. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I smile tightly and nod. Yeah, I tried to tell you. “Bye.”
Clay leaves, and I lock the door behind her, turning and meeting my brother’s gaze. “She was just trying to apologize for being in your room during Night Tide.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I give up. There’s no talking to him. I head for the stairs.
“Olivia?” he calls.
I stop, not in the mood.
I enter the living room again. “We’re not supposed to smoke in the house.”
His rule.
He drops the butt into a leftover beer bottle, the little sizzle of the embers extinguishing filling the silence.
He turns his eyes on me. “Finish with her.”
My muscles tighten. “It’s none of your business.”
“She’s using you.”
My eyes immediately sting, and I shake my head.
“She will always think she can use you,” he explains.
No. I can understand why he would think that, because I thought it too, but he doesn’t see what goes on when it’s just us. It’s not like that.
“Because you’re less to her,” he says, rising from his chair. “And she’s more.”
He moves toward me, all the feelings and doubts and insecurities I had when I started this with her flooding back. I’m not attached. I like her. It feels good.
I’m not attached.
“She thinks she’s more, because she’ll never want what you have,” he continues. “Because she thinks you want what she has. Because she thinks everyone wants to be her.”
No.
He advances on me slowly. “She has the power, Liv. This is how they think.”
I swallow.
“You are giving her your power.”
“What do you know?” I bite out.
“I know.”
I shake my head absently, dropping my eyes to the floor. I’m in control. She’s not running the show. Is that what he thinks? “I’m not in love with her,” I tell him.
“Liv…”
I dart my eyes up, glaring at him. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know it will be over when she says, not you.”
My lungs empty, because I don’t want to believe that’s true, but I know it is. Everything relies on her. Where we show our faces. How we have to hide at school. The future. We get along in and out of the bedroom, and neither of us wants to be away from the other, but…
I’m out.
She’s not.
Everything comes down to what she’s going to do and how long it will take for her to own up.
But I don’t care. I’m not taking this relationship to college. I don’t know what Macon’s worried about. Yeah, I like her.
I don’t love her.
But my head swims the moment the words drift through my brain. I don’t love her.
Macon leaves, his words hanging in the air as he heads up the stairs, and after a moment, I follow. He disappears into his room, and I grab my doorknob, ready to escape into mine, but Iron’s bedroom door opens.
A redhead in ripped jeans and a pink cut-off T-shirt walks out, Dallas pulling on his jeans behind her, and Iron still passed out in the bed in the corner.
Amy pulls the door closed, but not before Dallas winks at me, a shit-eating grin on his face.
Ew, really? What the fuck? How did that happen? Goddammit. I guess things got more interesting after we left last night.
Amy adjusts her bra straps inside her shirt and looks up, freezing as she spots me.
Out-standing. This day started two minutes ago and sucks so badly already. Clay and I shouldn’t have left the bed.
Amy sighs, a blush crossing her cheeks as she makes her way over to me. I’m pissed, but I’m not exactly sure why.
Maybe because my brothers are sleeping their way through my teammates all of a sudden? Because Amy got off in this house? Because the Saints might be treating this house like a brothel? Take your pick.
She stops in front of me. “Can I please ask you to keep this quiet?”
What? The threesome you just had with two older men?
“And I’ll do the same about you and Clay?” she says matter-of-factly.
I narrow my eyes. She knows?
Fine, whatever. “Okay.”
Not like I’d gossip anyway. Amy having sex with my family members isn’t a bragging right for me.
But I hesitate. “Are you okay?” I ask, just making sure. They’re experienced. She’s not, and I don’t want her suddenly feeling guilty about whatever happened in there.
Not that I think Dallas and Iron would coerce her into a situation she wasn’t comfortable with, but it’s a lot.
But she simply breaks in a smile, zero regret evident. “Is Clay okay?” she teases.
I open my door and enter my room. “Fuck off, Amy.”
And I slam the door, happy to continue our silent hatred of each other.
• • •
“Do you ever feel like you’re living the same day over and over again?” Becks asks.
She tosses her carrot down on the lunch table, and I peel another string off my cheese stick, clicking out of the TikTok video.
“I used to,” I say.
To be honest, I never really considered it a bad thing, though. Just the waiting period I needed to go through before I got to college and started my real life.
“What changed?” she asks as Chloe takes a seat beside me with her tray. “I need advice.”
I smile to myself, but I keep Clay quiet. She’s what changed. I’m not bored, that’s for sure. I wish I could talk about her to someone.
“I’m getting out of here,” I tell her instead. “That’s what changed.”
“Dartmouth.” Chloe feigns a shiver. “It’s going to be cold.”
“Really?” I gasp. “Damn.”
People keep saying that as if I’m unaware I’ll see snow in New Hampshire.
“If you got into Dartmouth, you can get into Tulane,” Becks points out. “Come on.”
“Hmm…” I think, weighing the pros and cons in each hand. “Within driving distance to New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia, or more bugs the size of my fist and a hundred-degree humidity. Tough decision.”
Becks smiles, continuing to eat her carrot. I can always visit New Orleans. I’ve made my choice.
“I booked a limo for prom.” Chloe elbows my arm. “My treat.”
I glance at her, remembering. Prom. “Right.” I hesitate, searching for words. “I mean, in case we don’t have dates?”
In case I’m not going with Clay, and I know I’m not, because Macon is right, but it would be perfect to go with her. We still have a month. A lot can happen in a month.
“Absolutely,” she says. “You should wear purple.”
“I don’t…wear purple.”
“Red, then? With your black hair, it would look niiiiiiice.”
“Black,” I state.
But then she eyes me, her pink lips wet from licking the hummus off her cracker. “With red underneath?”
Her tone is soft and tantalizing, and awareness makes the hair on my arms rise. She’s flirting.
“Maybe.”
Chloe is pretty and she wouldn’t hide me. She would be easier.
I look over my shoulder, seeing Clay surrounded by her friends at a table, hovering over an assignment she’s trying to finish before class. Her eyes lift to mine, as if she already knew exactly where to find me, and all I can see anymore is her wet and on top of me in the shower. The perfect girl with her perfect hair, and her little secret.
Chloe would be much easier. But even if I’d met her before I started with Clay, I still wouldn’t have been able to resist Clay as soon as I saw her. As soon as she spoke, I would’ve craved nothing more than to make her only see me.
“I love this bracelet.” Chloe touches the metal symbol on my leather band. “An hourglass.”
I pull my arm away. “Yeah, it’s kind of a family thing.” I stand up, grabbing my materials and garbage. “I gotta go,” I tell her.
But as I drop everything into the trash bin, Chloe touches my arm, stopping me. I turn, seeing her standing in front of me. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asks.
Huh?
Jesus. Almost four years at this school, and now people want to make me feel liked and accepted?
“Sorry, I asked Ms. Martelle,” she says, “so I didn’t embarrass myself before I asked you out, and she said she didn’t think so. Will you go out with me sometime?”
I flash my eyes to Clay, seeing her watch us. The look in her eyes, like she’s not breathing, owns me. She owns me.
It takes a moment, but I meet Chloe’s gaze again. “I have a girlfriend,” I tell her gently.
I belong to someone.
“But you’re not going to prom with her?”
I fight not to look in Clay’s direction again. “Maybe.” I hope . “I’m sorry. It’s…”
“Complicated,” she finishes for me. “It’s okay. I think I knew. I mean, how could you not be taken, right?”
Yeah, right.
“See you this weekend,” I tell her.
I leave, heading to my locker and feeling a little badly. If Clay weren’t in play, I would’ve accepted. How nice would it be to have someone any time I want?
I stop at my locker and look down the hall, seeing Mark Calderon leaning into Sophia Herrera, the whispers between them and everything in his body language telling me they’re getting it on.
How nice would it be to be as close to Clay as I want, any time I want, and wherever I want like them?
I could have that with someone like Chloe or Megan. I can have that when I leave for college.
But I really like my crazy-as-fuck Barbie doll with a mouth that pisses me off one minute, and arms that hold me so tightly that I don’t care if I can breathe the next.
I open my locker, a paper dropping onto the floor from inside.
Bending down, I pick it up and unfold the half-sheet.
Fear grips me. It’s probably a hate letter. A threat. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I almost crumple it up, but I see the words and start reading.
It never looks like me, the person in the mirror , the black script reads.
She looks like everyone else.
I look around, not seeing anyone else in the hall, except for a few loiterers down by the doors to the lunch room.
I keep reading.
She’s like every woman on his arm—the same hair, the same clothes, the same smile, because to beat she has to compete, right?
I stood in front of the mirror this morning, a mouthful of toothpaste and my hair tangled by your fingers. You sucked my lips swollen last night, and I can still smell your kisses on my skin.
The world swims, how hard I’m used by you.
How all I have when you’re done with me is my bones.
I don’t care what I look like anymore as long as I look like yours.
Marked, raw, tangled, sore, and scented like you—I don’t care.
As long as I look like yours.
My eyes burn, a baseball lodged in my throat as I read it again and again. As long as I look like yours.
A tear spills down my cheek, and I hear a locker open. I look over my shoulder, down the hall, and see Clay watching me as she pulls out a book.
Even from this distance, I can see her eyes pooling too.
The hall floods with students, afternoon classes about to get under way, and I lose sight of her, but my body overheats under my skin, and I’m so hot.
I need her. I need her skin on mine like I need food. More than I need food.
I love Clay Collins.
A text rolls in, and I click it, seeing it’s from her.
As long as I look like yours .
I hover my fingers over the screen, nothing I want to say good enough. I just want to haul my ass over there and press my mouth to hers in front of this whole fucking hallway.
I can’t breathe.
Clay, I’m dying , I type. You’re killing me. Please stop .
A text rolls in a moment later. Can you?
