Page 35 of Her Crew

Tegan sits on the bed with her hand pressed over her mouth as if she did something wrong. She didn’t, but I can’t stop and tell her that right now. Against every fiber of my being, I follow Tye out the door.

“Tye!” I call after him, but he’s still walking away. When I catch up to him and grab his arm to stop him, he doesn’t pull it away this time.

“Dude, I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be.”

“No, I refuse to let a girl get between us. You’re my best friend, and I⁠—”

“It’s not like that. It’s⁠—”

“It was a mistake, Ace. Please, just let me sleep this off.”

I release his arm, and he disappears down the dark hallway. I grind my palm into my eye. I understand why Tye is upset. I don’t think he’d ever understand a desire to share. Not just a desire, a need. He would think he was doing something wrong even if I told him it was what I wanted. Just like on the bed. I asked for it, and yet the guilt still ran him down.

So much for that bright idea.

I head back to my room so I can confront the other third of this fucked up trifecta I’m trying to create with two people who are not into sharing like I am. When I walk in, Tegan swipes a tear from her cheek to keep me from seeing. I sit beside her and pull her into me.

“I’m so sorry, Tegan.”

“You wanted me to kiss him . . .” she whispers.

I close my eyes for several moments before opening them again. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“Because if he played with you, I could get hard enough to play with you too.”

Her eyes widen as she learns the gravity of what I meant. What I want from this relationship. I want her to have my heart, and I want to be a large part of her heart, but I want a little bit of hers to be occupied by someone else too.

And that’s fucked up.

Instead of discussing it further, she flops back on the bed and closes her eyes. The topic is shelved for now, but if Tegan ever wants something more from me, we’ll have to talk about it eventually. For the time being, I need to get some sleep. I’ll need all my senses for the midnight party.

Chapter 19

Tegan

Once Stacks passes out for the night, we gather in the parking lot near a makeshift fire pit, which is just a large metal can with a bunch of wood and paper inside it. Ace calls it the midnight party. Rolo keeps adding more to the fire while some of us sit around it. Others are off doing god knows what. Probably fucking or something.

Ace passes a bottle to me, and I pop it open and take a sip of stale, bitter beer. My face threatens to contort as the sour taste lingers on my tongue, but I don’t want to look like a child. I tip back the bottle once more to hide the grimace.

Tye comes up behind me, and I jump when he puts a joint in my face.

Ace’s eyes narrow. “She doesn’t need to smoke, Tye.”

“I’d like to try it,” I say.

His mouth forms a straight line, but he throws a nod toward Tye, who holds the spliff between his lips and lights it. I hyper-focus as he puffs on the wrap. He’s insanely handsome, and I can’t help but remember how his lips felt on mine.

Black smoke billows from the joint as he hands it back to me. I stare at the stick as if it might blow up in my hand. I’ve always been a good girl, but it’s not as if I’ll sully my reputation if I smoke a little weed. So I hold the joint to my lips and inhale. Warm smoke burns my throat and lungs as I suck way too much into them. On the exhale, I try to hold back the embarrassing coughing fit, but it’s no use.

Tye reaches for the joint and looks down at me with a smirk. “It’s okay, princess. Just cough.”

Princess.

I’ve never liked that word. Probably because my mother’s little friends called me that before they crawled into bed with me. But when he says it, my body doesn’t tense and tighten, and the panic doesn’t wrap around my throat.