Page 35 of Twisting Beauty

“Building tension?” Finn’s eyebrows shot up. “She’s building your prostate pressure, mate.”

Rafe threw a handful of crisps at him. “No ride is worth blue balls, Breez.”

But Breezy’s expression turned reverent, almost religious. “You haven’t seen her. I’d do a goddamn pilgrimage barefoot for a taste.”

Finn crossed himself with mock piety. “God rest your balls.”

“Amen,” I muttered, because some situations were beyond salvation.

Rafe squinted at him like he was solving a puzzle. “Wait. Is this the acting college girl?”

Breezy’s silence was answer enough.

Rafe pointed triumphantly. “It is! Jaysus, Breez. You never go full drama girl.”

“They’re beautiful, but mad,” Finn said, shuddering, no doubt remembering his own hard-earned personal experience.

“Like shagging the entire cast of a Greek tragedy,” Rafe said with a chuckle.

“They cry, they come, they cry again,” Finn added. “It’s a fucking one-woman dark comedy show.”

“It’s always ‘method acting’ until they’re method kicking you in the balls,” Rafe finished.

“She’s hot, alright?” Breezy’s voice held a desperate edge that made me wince.

“So’s the sun,” Finn shot back. “Doesn’t mean I want it in my lap.”

Rafe grinned, sensing victory. “Golden rule, lads?”

“Don’t stick your dick in crazy,” they chorused.

I laughed with them because that was easier than admitting my head had barely been in the room for the last ten minutes. Every joke landed somewhere far away, dulled by the fact that all I could really see was Rua with her hand around that acid vial, chin up and eyes hard.

Makeup shades could change. Food preferences could change. A stint in Magdalene might harden a girl around the edges. But Rua did not go in a skittish little wallflower and come back with that kind of heat in her spine and that look in her eyes, like she would sooner burn than bend.

Cracking her open was going to be interesting.

That should have been enough to leave it at suspicion and wait for proof. Instead, the thought of her only dug in deeper, until curiosity sharpened into something meaner and far more personal.

A familiar figure crossed the courtyard below, and the tower dropped back a step around me. The lads, the smoke, the bag in the corner, all of it thinned into background noise the second my attention locked on her.

Rua.

Except… not Rua.

The wrongness hit again the second I fixed on her properly.

My fingers tightened on the windowsill as I watched her tug Nuala beside her onto a stone bench, their heads bent together in whispered confidence. Every so often Rua would glance around her as if she knew she was being watched before leaning even farther in.

I frowned, my mind going back to the hallway earlier when she’d come to me with that pathetic excuse of needing to borrow notes. She hadn’t wanted notes. She had used me as cover to avoid Nuala. Whatever passed between them had rattled her badly enough to make her choose me of all people as a shield. The realization sat there, needling.

So why this complete turnaround? How did she go from avoiding Nuala to becoming fast friends?

The reasons why anyone did anything were boring and obvious. So this answer should have obvious. But I was left grasping.

Every time I looked at her, she only gave me another contradiction. Every time I thought I had hold of one clean truth, she handed me three more questions.

The laughter of the lads behind me faded to white noise. Every instinct I had narrowed on the girl below and started measuring the differences all over again, not because I needed more proof, but because I could not seem to stop.