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Oh God, what was I thinking? This is Beau.
“We should go eat,” I stuttered, wrenching away from him. He made me feel too much, too quickly, too intensely. When I was with him, I forgot my name and all of the reasons why a relationship between the two of us wouldn’t work. He was the only guy capable of hurting me, breaking me.
I had had boyfriends before—Dick was just one of them—and I had partaken in senseless hookups. I had never allowed anyone to get too close to me. There were walls around my heart, walls forged from trauma, walls made of impenetrable steel. Somehow, someway, Beau had chipped apart those walls, revealing the girl beneath. I refused to ruin our friendship, our connection, because of a senseless, unrequited crush. He may have been attracted to me, but he would never reciprocate my feelings.
I wanted to be more than a quick fuck to him, and that was all Beau did. Alas, I had found myself in the dreaded friend zone. It sucked there, but at least we had cookies.
“Your roommate is an amazing artist,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “He did draw these, correct? Who is he?”
He stared at me quizzically, golden hair catching on the waning sunlight flickering through the opened blinds. His expression changed and tightened, confusion giving way to unreadability.
In answer to my question, he shrugged his broad shoulders.
“You don’t know?” I questioned, and he nodded an affirmative. “Well, I got a single room.”
And it was apparently the room of a dead girl. Missing girl. Something girl.
I conveniently left out the snippet of information. I wasn’t sure Beau would take kindly to the knowledge that someone had threatened me.
My stomach growled, deafeningly loud. Beau’s lips twitched, and I glared at the offending body part.
“Shut your mouth,” I mumbled to it, and Beau’s grin grew. He took my arm again and wrote onto my skin.
Someone’s hungry.
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Laugh it up, asshole. I wonder if you’ll still be laughing when I steal your dessert.”
How are you still hungry? We just ate.
“Are you calling me fat, Beautiful?” I teased, resorting to calling him the old nickname we used as kids. He rolled his eyes, pinching the underside of my arm. “I just need dessert. Lots and lots of dessert.”
Smirking at him, I began to walk backward, out of his room and down the hall.
“Brownies and cupcakes and cakes and ice cream.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward, but the quirk of his lips betrayed his amusement. He could try to hide it all he wanted, but he knew I was hilarious. I made myself laugh daily.
“And pies and pizza and turkey legs and—”
A soft, muffled sob interrupted what I was going to say next. Turning in the direction of the sound, I saw a group of guys huddled together. They were maybe a year or two younger than me, baby fat still prominent on their faces, and they all threw back their heads together in a bone-chilling laugh.
It was only then that I saw her.
It was a girl, younger than me, with her dark hair twisted into two long braids. Her head was down, a posture that indicated her as demure and apprehensive. One of the guys was going through a pink backpack, pulling things out and throwing them on the ground. He grabbed a handful of crisp bills, said something to his friends, and pocketed them.
I saw red. It covered my vision like a garnet sheen, a thick theater curtain being drawn closed. My hands curled into makeshift claws.
Before I realized what I was doing, I was charging forward. Beau helplessly grabbed at my arm, no doubt trying to place himself in front of me, but allowed me to take the lead.
He recognized my kick-ass expression.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snapped, pushing through the men until I was directly beside the girl. Beau stood beside me, towering over the other guys with a glacial glint to his eyes.
When none of the guys responded to me, I turned toward the one who held her backpack.
“Give that to her. Now.”
He lowered his chin submissively, but his eyes were hard. Defiant. I had the distinct feeling that only Beau’s presence stopped this asshat from retaliating.
