The door swung open as I rolled the bike closer to the curb, the girl on the back shifting her grip higher on my shoulders.
My teeth ground together, a moment in time where the world was calm until she stepped out.
Evie froze mid-step, a smile slipping off her face when her eyes landed on the stranger clinging to me. Her gaze narrowed, a slow simmer of rage I felt straight through my visor.
Perfect. This was exactly what I wanted. I tightened my grip on the throttle, trying to drown out the sharp twist in my gut. This was the plan—cut the thread before it strangled me, make her hate me enough to keep Rook from ever sniffing around for the truth. One public, ugly reminder she and I were never going to happen.
She didn’t look away. Not when her hands fisted at her sides. Not when her jaw locked like she was holding back the kind of scene that would have everyone in the parking lot watching.
Good. Let her stew. Let her decide exactly how to burn me down.
I had to make a decision, and since Evie made sure to remind me this was all a game—I would remind myself not to burn it all down for a woman who didn’t want me.
But my chest still betrayed me, thrumming with the same pull that had me memorizing the way her lips parted like she was about to speak, the way her shoulders rose with every tight breath. The hurt in her eyes was a blade. The fact that I’d put it there was the twist.
Her heel dug into the pavement, and she spun away, stalking toward Zack like she was plucking ideas right from my worst nightmare. He smiled at her—the cocky grin across his face driving me closer to insanity. She didn’t glance back, but I tracked every sharp, perfect line of her anyway.
I should have felt vindicated, in control again. Instead, my chest tightened with a sick twist I’d been trying to ignore since the moment I decided to do this. Evie would see through it in a second. She’d know this wasn’t about the girl behind me. It was about her. About me. About everything we weren’t allowed to have.
And when she realized I was cutting her off—publicly, deliberately—she’d hit back. She always did.
Her head tipped toward Zack, a small curve of her mouth growing as she spoke to him, low enough I couldn’t hear. My jaw locked. I could see her shift right into full flirty body language as she leaned into him. Then his head tilted, falling for every line and touch. Evie was already moving her next piece into play. No one else would notice, but I could read her—the stubborn set of her shoulders, the measured way she didn’t glance in my direction again. She wasn’t ignoring me.
She was baiting me.
I told myself not to bite.
But I was more concerned about the quiet voice adding ayetto the end of that thought.
I backed the bike up, angling myself better to take off, reminding myself I would now be one of those people. I would have to stop paying so much attention to her. This would be the night my obsession with Evie ends and her fascination with wrecking my life would be over.
Maybe if I told myself that enough times, it would make it true.
The entire pack moved to take off, everyone riding with a passenger tonight.
Rook and Regan pulled out of the parking lot, with Mason and Hero behind them.
Zack and I pulled out together, our bikes falling into an easy ride next to each other. While Zack was newer to our group, he was growing on me. But I didn’t love Evie riding with him because not only was Zack new to the group, but he was the newest to riding bikes. Even Kane had been riding in some form most of his life. Zack was brand new to it all and now had Evie on the back, waving her arms and encouraging him to go faster already.
The girl behind me shifted, her hand sliding up my arm like she had any claim to me. The touch was wrong—hollow, but heavy, it belonged to a stranger. It wasn’t steady or sure, like Evie’s. Her grip was always weightless, like she knew exactly where she belonged, like she felt completely safe with me, and that was grounding in a way I couldn’t explain.
But this? This only made my skin crawl.
I liked Evie’s brand of psycho. I liked her possessiveness, and that she felt it over me seemed surreal, but I couldn’t give it a chance to shine anymore. I wasn’t with Evie—she wasn’t mine, and yet I felt like shit for having another girl touch me.
Even worse, I knew how Evie would rip apart the world if shewanted me and saw someone else getting what she wanted. Her silence tonight was louder than any words she could have thrown. If she wanted me, she wouldn’t have walked away.
Right?
That thought should’ve been comforting—it should’ve helped me stick to the plan. But instead, it felt like I’d already lost something I never even had.
I had to remind myself why Evie had given me any interest from the start of this.
Blackmail.
She didn’t want me. She wanted something to pass the time until she found a new boyfriend. She wanted someone to help her solve this wild mystery she seemed to find because she couldn’t ask Rook for help. For all I knew, she had invited a guy over tonight and would be passing the time destroying his life next.
Zack swerved back and forth in front of me. One of Evie’s arms went up, the other wrapped around him. Jealousy burned deep in my chest, knowing it should be my fucking body she held on to.
