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I swear she looked at me like I had horns sprouting from my head. “Now why would I ever do that? With you?”
I can’t remember when it changed, when she stopped wanting to be with us all the time and decided to go her own way. But she looked at me like I was a piece of shit on her shoe. I hadn’t been able to change her mind then when she was fifteen—and I sure as hell am not now that she’s a full-grown woman.
Getting her into bed with me a couple weeks ago wasn’t about changing her mind. She did what she wanted to. Always. And who knows why she did it. The woman has always been an unsolvable riddle.
Maybe she fucked me as an FU to her brothers.
Maybe she fucked me to show me what I couldn’t have, ever again because she hates me.
A signed book isn’t going to change that.
It’s cold, my breath puffing out in a white cloud, but the beer warms me. I tilt my head, looking toward her balcony. There’s an old cruiser bicycle there, with a big basket—like the one Stassi used to ride around the neighborhood, up and down the cul-de-sac that ended at the ocean. We used to hum the Wicked Witch of the West theme music whenever she pedaled by.
God, we were assholes.
I have to wonder if things would be different had I taken an alternate approach to her. I could’ve been the wholesome boy next door, the kid who held open doors for her, saved a seat in the cafeteria for her, and treated her like a princess. But Cooper and Aidan wouldn’t have allowed me to be that guy. On the surface, I might have looked like their ringleader, but that was because I knew how they wanted me to act to her. Plenty of guys at school had tried to be sweet to Stassi, and they always got their asses kicked in return. It’s not that they wanted guys to be assholes to her, though—they just wanted to be the only ones who had any contact with her, good or bad. And I was honored to be admitted into their inner circle—I was one of the select few allowed to give Stassi Hutton shit, so I wore that badge with pride, taking advantage as often as possible.
Until Jonathan.
That lucky bastard prick didn’t know how good he had it.
As much as I loathed the guy, I could see what Stassi saw in him. He was good-looking, generally well-liked, and had a way of wrapping people around his finger—teachers, coaches, girls. Two years younger than the Hutton boys and me, he was a naturally talented athlete. He was varsity from freshman year and probably could’ve been NHL if he’d wanted it enough. The kid was smart, too—he was a shoo-in for valedictorian his graduating year. Cooper and Aidan had taken a shine to him right away, brought him under their wings.
In a lot of ways, he was a lot like me.
But what I’ve never been able to understand was how he was able to convince Aidan and Cooper he was good enough for Stassi.
Maybe because he was a fake piece of shit.
I even tried to tell them that, but it was like talking to two brick walls. They didn’t want to hear it. They were too blinded by his charms to be able to see him clearly. I tried to point out all his red flags until I was blue in the face, then I stopped wasting my breath.
Shortly after that, Jonathan ratcheted things up a notch—at times, I’m certain, to spite me.
He knew I was onto him.
Which is why he had zero problems snorting coke in front of me in the locker room or bragging about sending dick pics to random girls on his phone. He knew if I ever opened my mouth, no one would believe me anyway. But everything took a turn for the worse the night that I found him getting head from Tori Meltz behind the bushes at a hockey house party. And when I asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing?
Jonathan laughed at me.
He told me I was a pussy, a third-rate hockey player, a nobody.
He told me I was jealous of what he had, that I was so green, it was all over my face.
The worst part? He was goddamn right.
Because to this day, I know it should’ve been me.
And if it had been, things would’ve been different.
It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but Jonathan Cole was a fuckhead—a fuckhead who managed to maintain his phony mirage for almost three years until the drowning accident that took his life.
After that, it didn’t feel right to tell Stassi what I knew.
Especially after what happened that night.
He might have been a fuckhead, but he didn’t deserve to die.
