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“And more importantly,” she continues like I didn’t sidestep her question, “why were you being followed like that? If you didn’t take the alley when you did, they were going to hit you.”
I don’t have the answers she wants. I barely have the answers I want for myself. If I did, I wouldn’t give them to her. But as my head clears enough for more thoughts to slip past the anger, one blaring truth becomes inescapable. I’ve been reckless with my life. It’s never mattered to me if this hunt ends with my death. That’s how far I’m willing to go to uncover the truth for my family.
But that disregard for life doesn’t extend to Maisy. For all that I hate her and her family, the thought of her death is unacceptable.
The wrongness of it clangs in a jarring blare, still echoing in my head when I met her eyes in the car.
Whoever followed us is connected to the same sick people in power that have this town in their claws. They’re dangerous, capable of making murder look like an accident. They don’t care who they have to get rid of. If their greed is threatened, they’ll go to any length to make sure they stay on top.
No matter what I feel for her, I don’t want her dead. Hate is intense, but it’s a passionate emotion that is as all-consuming as love. In some ways hate is love, equal in intensity from how deep it runs.
I loved Maisy before I hated her. Maybe it never fully went away, just shifted around to become this bigger, more complicated emotion that cont
rols my heart when I look at her.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. It’s like I’m hearing my voice from outside my own body, reeling a bit from the possibility I’m still in love with my ex-best friend. “They definitely weren’t looking for a friendly chat if they caught us.”
Her throat works as she swallows. Fear mixes with the bright exhilaration lighting up her hazel eyes. Something unlocks in my chest, a crack in my fortress that allows me to see her right now, separate from her parents.
For one too long, heartbreaking moment, my head fills with flashes of worst case scenarios. The SUV driving my car off the road, taking us somewhere to detain us, or skipping all of that to put twin bullets in our heads—all of it ends with Maisy dead in my mind.
No, my mind revolts against it. A tremor runs through my hands. She can probably feel it. The thought of her broken and gone from this world is wrong. My throat closes over and I blink against the staggering wave of refusal crashing down on my head.
This never started as an us situation, but now that I’ve had the thought, it won’t leave. It’s messed up as hell, considering the dirt I’ve been looking for on her crooked parents. But it was always me and her, back then and now.
Fuck it.
Something inside me snaps and I lose control of myself. I can’t hold back anymore, taken over by a single driving need to kiss her, to hold her close and erase the images in my head of what it would be like if she was gone.
My hand fists in her hair and my mouth slams over hers. She stiffens for a moment, then makes a small sound as her lips part for me. A rough, broken noise scrapes my throat as I plunge my tongue into her mouth, claiming her in a way I’ve always wanted to but haven’t let myself.
It was a line I wasn’t going to cross, but that’s out the window now that I’m kissing her. I never want to fucking stop.
Maisy wrestles her hands up from the crush of my chest against her and puts one palm over my cheek as I devour her in a soul-wrecking kiss. The other buries in my hair. My heart beats hard as I try to tuck her back into it, where she used to belong. She kisses me back, writhing against me like she’s trying to climb into my body—or maybe draw my darkness into herself.
We kiss until we’re breathless. It’s pleasure and pain, teeth and tongue, and the wild sounds we both make. It’s beyond perfect.
The only thing I’m aware of is how my world rearranges. I’ve existed like everything is upside-down for so long, but Maisy sets it right side up again.
And it kills me, because I can’t have this.
In the end, I didn’t use the information I got from the Landry’s cook. I couldn’t risk it, unable to trust Maisy not to warn her parents or stay home from the mayor’s party to catch me. After kissing her, I ripped myself away and demanded she get in the car. Stunned, she listened for once, touching her lips. I drove her back to school in silence and left her by her brother’s car before peeling out of there like my tires were on fire.
The kiss has plagued me all week.
I’ve avoided the Silver Lake High campus, thrown myself into my search efforts, alternated between working in the garage and beating the hell out of my punching bag, and punishing my body with more reps than usual on the bench press until I collapsed into bed.
The days bleed together, but she still won’t get out of my head. The only saving grace of laying low is that whoever followed me hasn’t found the warehouse yet.
Sleep brings no relief, my dreams full of the kiss on repeat and more, so much fucking more that I can’t have. Old dreams that used to be all I wanted—a field of wildflowers, a white veil, and her glowing smile. Last night my subconscious trapped me in the bathroom from that party last month, only this time she wore her school uniform without underwear beneath her skirt and I fell to my knees to bury my face between her legs.
This world is too cruel, ripping my parents away and showing me exactly what I’ve always missed in Maisy.
The same damn girl who was my best friend and the catalyst to the destruction of my world.
She didn’t have to be perfect for me, but the way she fits against my body and responds to every touch calls me down to my fucking soul. I’ve never looked at another girl the same way I’m drawn to her. It’s something I can’t deny anymore—I want her. Period.
It’s only because of her social media I figure out she’s not even in Ridgeview. She’s in Paris for the weekend according to the photo of her and her redheaded friend in front of the Eiffel Tower. Her friend is in a flowing white dress and is flashing her ring finger. The caption reads the bestie tied the knot in the most romantic place in the world. I’ve been so wrapped up in my head, unable to stop thinking about her, that I didn’t even notice when she managed to skip town thanks to her friends sneaking her out. Bet her parents love that surprise, judging by the cryptic comment Holden left on her photo to enjoy the fun while it lasts.
