My pride has been ripped to shreds.
Pandora wraps her arms around my shoulders from behind and rests her head against my back. “Blaze is your best friend,” she says. “The guy who’s always been there for you. It makes sense he’d pay for all your stuff, too. He can’t really have a best friend who can’t afford to keep up with him.”
Best friend.
That’s not what I am to him. I’m his subordinate; he’d made that perfectly clear. All of this time, I’ve thought we were friends, that this was somehow genuine. I’ve thought so many things that clearly aren’t true, and I don’t know what to make of any of it.
But the idea of getting payback against Blaze is sounding better and better.
“No,” I say, my voice dull. “He can’t.”
“He’s so hot too,” Pandora says. “You agree, right? And can you imagine what he’d look like, tied down, writhing in pleasure? Completely at our mercy?”
“Didn’t you stab Declan for roofieing that chick?” I ask her, fighting back a hysterical laugh. “But it’s okay when it’s you, when it’s Blaze?”
“Is Blaze completely innocent?” She digs her nails into me. “We don’t need to roofie him. It’ll be just as hot if he’s fighting us the entire time. Screaming, crying, begging for us to stop, but who’s going to save him?You?”
Blaze had made it clear he doesn’t need me to protect him.
Not from anyone else… and not from me.
“He would destroy both of us,” I tell her unsteadily. Then again, he’s already devastated me — both in what he’s said and what Pandora has revealed to me. What’s a little more? I’m already going to be kicked out of Dyschord. I might as well get some sort of revenge before I end up back in New Valence.
Part of me knows that it’s stupid to want to get revenge on someone who’s made it possible for me to go places, to do things.
But fuck, it hurts to know I’ve been made a fool of, over and over again, and I want him to feel the pain and the shame, too.
Pandora moves off the bed to stand in front of me. She reaches up to stroke my jaw. “You’re with me, right, Asch? Because Blaze will get home any minute. We can give him the surprise of his life.”
I inhale slowly, shakily. I don’t know how she can want to do this to someone else, but then…
She did swear revenge.
Besides, he started it. It would only be fair.
Right?
“So this is your revenge on Blaze,” I tell her. “What’s your revenge on River? Onme? What do I have to look forward to next, Pandora?”
Pandora grins at me. “You’ll have to quiver in anticipation to find out.”
“No,” I say, grabbing her by the throat to pull her closer, and I have the sudden, most irrational urge to kiss her. “We do this, we’re even.”
Pandora’s pupils are wide, and her lips part in a silent moan. “Then you’d better make it very, very good, boyfriend.”
I squeeze tightly, then I can't help it: I lean in and crush my lips against hers in an urgent, deep kiss. I shouldn’t be entertaining this thought.
I shouldn’t be planning on doing this to my best friend.
But he fucked with my head.
The least I can do is fuck him right back.
10
BLAZE
I lock the door behind me as I enter the house. The first thing I notice is that Asch’s things are still on the kitchen counter.
