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“Oh, well, that’s just fine then. As long as you didn’t intentionally shove your tongue into her mouth, we’re all good.” A pathetic silence follows, in which I decide being humiliated and naked aren’t a healthy combination.

Grabbing a pair of boxers from the drawer, I tug them on beneath my towel before tossing it into the corner of the room. Cheating bastards don’t get to see their boyfriend’s dicks. Everest at least has the decency to look away as I change, tugging on my paint-stained dungarees with no T-shirt and hooking only one strap over my shoulder. Finally, I stop in front of him, my shame subsiding into anger.

“I trusted you. After that fresher’s party, you swore nothing would happen between you two again. That you just wanted to see her succeed.” My features twist, years of anguish rising within. It’s never been clearer that Nicholas isn’t my tormentor anymore, it’s his son.

“Why do you think I’ve been making sure she keeps hating me?” Everest takes a step closer, but I shove him back again. I need to maintain the distance so I can think straight. Everest catches my wrists, and I twist myself free.

“Is your restraint so weak that you need her to keep you at arm’s length to stop you from fucking her?!”

“I’m not fucking her,” Everest growls, and we can both hear the silent word he’s left off the end of that statement. Yet. He’s not fucking her, yet. Dropping my hands, we both stand there, chests rising and falling hard, a million questions being left unanswered. Why her? Why can’t he drop this fascination? Why am I not enough? However, the one that leaves my lips is more of a broken plea than a question that needs an answer.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” I sigh, dropping back to sit on the edge of my mattress. My hair drips into my lap, peppering the denim that’s too worn to scratch at my skin anymore. Everest drops between my knees in an instant, his large palms covering my thighs, and I don’t have the fight left to keep pushing him away. “Don’t you see how toxic this is?”

To my surprise, Everest nods. We remain there, trapped between the pounding music and our hidden relationship shredding at the seams. Maybe Nicholas was right after all, and my infatuation with Everest was born out of spite. I don’t even know anymore, but Everest’s face is more determined than ever.

“I can’t walk away, Cody. I fucking love you.” The words slam into me like a fist directly to the chest. Staring at Everest, I watch his mask fall away, and his green eyes glisten with sincerity. I haven’t seen Everest this openly emotional in years, and as much as I know he means what he says, I feel myself pull away.

“That’s not enough anymore.” Everest flinches violently. Memories from every locked room, every stolen kiss, every night we pressed our bodies close together, every bruise I’ve carried in the name of loving him, plays out between the twitch between his brows. He can deny me all he likes, but it wouldn’t make me any less right. “It used to be, when Nicholas was all that stood in our way, but everything has changed now.”

“Meg isn’t standing in our way,” he’s quick to defend, and I stroke a hand along the length of his jaw. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

Everest leans into the touch before he can stop himself, his lashes dipping. He looks wrecked, truly wrecked. His bravado stripped bare, his green eyes glassy with tears he refuses to let fall, his mouth parted around arguments he can’t quite shape. The golden boy of Hollowbrook Academy in front of the only person he would drop to his knees for. I still want to catch him before he falls, still want to be his savior, even as I can feel myself pulling away.

“What do you want me to do?” he murmurs, his voice cracking against the music. “Pay her to leave and never return?”

Now there’s a thought. My eyes travel upwards, staring through the opposite wall as if I can imagine Meg slumped on the other side. My hand continues to move as Everest’s head slumps further into my lap, my fingers sliding into his hair, the blond strands catching between my knuckles. Everest trembles beneath my touch, while my mind has begun churning in a new direction.

Maybe I’ve been approaching this all wrong. Instead of humoring Everest in overseeing Meg’s well-being, I should have been making sure she never returned to Hollowbrook at all. The thought is vicious, curdling inside of me. To hinder someone else’s recovery goes against every fiber of my tortured being, but winning Everest completely and wholly is the prize. Having him back to myself, free of distraction, open to a future with me like we planned…well, that’s an idea that is all too tempting.

Such a feat will take time, planning, and space. Space from the man who keeps toying with my emotions, pushing me away only to draw me back in. Slowly, my fingers slip from Everest’s hair, the loss of contact drawing his gaze back up to my face.

“I want you to leave,” I say woodenly. Everest’s face empties of emotion, all panic, pleading heat, and softness vanishing beneath a stunned expression.

“Code—”

“Get out, Everest. I want to be alone.” Pulling my hands back, I lean on them, holding my nerve. I can’t break now. I have to be strong, for the both of us. I have to do what’s necessary, and rid Everest of the temptation he can’t seem to resist. It’s my last bid to save what has been slipping through my fingers for years.

For once, to my surprise, Everest listens. He moves toward the door, defeat lining his shoulders. The music continues to pound around us, loud enough to shake the glass in the window and disguise how he hesitates with the handle. Thankfully, he doesn’t turn back. I might have struggled to hold my resolve if he did. However, right at the last second before he slips out of view, Everest tilts his head to the side and carelessly calls back across the room.

“Don’t let her see those again,” he jerks his head to the stack of canvases beside the door. I smile without any humor, fisting my hands to keep them from shaking.

“Funny. I was about to say the same thing about your lips.” There’s a tic in his jaw, the mask sliding back into place before he disappears. The door closes behind him, and I cross the room to turn the music down. Silence rushes in too fast, pressing against my ears until I almost wish for the noise back.

Stepping up to my desk, I pull the drawer open and look down at the sketches I tried to hide. Meg’s face stares back at me, charcoal and trauma layered over one another.

Ironically, I may be the only person on campus who truly understands her. Who can sympathize with her. Yet, unfortunately for Meg, my conscience was strangled out of me by the powerful hands of a lethal man. Life isn’t fair. The strong win and the weak take. That’s the lesson I’ve been raised on, and that’s the only way I will be able to get Everest back.

I need her gone.

Chapter Eleven

I’ve come to the conclusion that therapy is a scam. A polite way of granting permission for someone nosy to peel back layer after layer of your self-preservation, and then expect you to thank them for creating a safe space.

At least, that’s what the past hour has felt like. Counselor Dowley has pressed and prodded at my psyche, not letting up for a moment when she thought we were having some kind of breakthrough. We weren’t, since everything I was confessing was a straight-faced lie, but she really could learn some tact from Liz.

There’s an art to stacking someone’s trauma like building blocks so they can understand which brick not to pull, lest the whole tower will come crumbling down. That’s where Dowley misses finesse. Her sympathetic head tilts were too frequent, her pauses too long, and the pen hovering over her notepad was all too eager to present Dean Colt with a diagnosis.

“How did that make you feel?” she asks for the fourth time.