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Something in his tone pulled my attention toward him, and when I looked up to his face, his eyes were glassy. He shook his head, fierce anger contorting his features. “That’s what the four of us did. We tried to break something beautiful. And we can’t ever unbreak it.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, and a look like determination passed over his face. Before I could register what he was about to do, he bent his head and pressed his lips against mine.
The kiss lasted only a fraction of a second—too short a time for my body to decide whether to recoil from it or lean into it—and then he pulled away, stepping back.
With his honey-brown eyes still regarding me carefully, he held out his phone, offering it to me.
My fingers felt numb as I took it from his grasp, staring down at the still image on the screen. As if unable to help myself, I tapped the play button with my thumb, and the soft sound of the ocean came through the small speakers as the beautiful, hopeful girl onscreen stared out over the dark ocean once again.
I stepped away from Finn, still holding the phone, and moved toward the doorway. Gripping the handle, I pulled it open partway, held the phone at an angle against the door’s frame, and slammed it hard.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The phone cracked and shattered, little pieces of glass tinkling to the floor as the casing bent and the screen flickered and went dark.
I pulled the door open wider and let the hunk of ruined metal and plastic fall to the floor as I looked back at Finn.
He nodded, not even glancing down at the destroyed phone—not even seeming pissed off that I’d just wrecked the thing. It was almost like this was what he’d expected me to do with it. Why he’d given it to me in the first place.
“Everything else was deleted. That was the last copy,” he said quietly. “It’s gone now.”
I wasn’t sure what I felt about that—couldn’t tell if it was relief or sadness—so I didn’t respond. I just pulled my gaze away from his and walked out.
Chapter 13
They’re liars, Talia. They’ll tell you anything to get what they want.
But what the fuck did the Princes want this time?
To get rid of me again, probably. Mason, at least, still seemed like he’d be only too happy to see me go. He might’ve called off the bullying, but he hadn’t pulled the about-face Finn had.
I had meant what I said to the blond football player. In some ways, it was easier to cope with the way Mason was acting. His obvious dislike of me made it easier for my brain to grasp that everything last semester had been a lie.
Finn’s words?
The look on his face?
That brief, almost desperate kiss?
They made it harder to believe that, made me start to question what I’d been telling myself over and over for months.
And that was more fucking dangerous than anything.
The rest of the day was a blur, as I tried to focus on classes and lectures while an array of thoughts spun around my mind.
That girl in the video, the one I knew logically was me but could hardly relate to anymore, had looked so… happy.
That night with the Princes had been one of the best of my life. The night it all came crashing down had been one of the worst, but there was no denying the fact that—even if it was all for the sake of the lie—the Princes had found and nurtured something in me I hadn’t even known was there.
A wildness.
A freedom.
A capacity for unbounded joy and happiness.
