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That he’ll remember.
Then he pulls his gaze from mine, and I can breathe again. God, why does he have this effect on me? As much as I hate him, I can see how he used to be a heartbreaker. He still is, even if he doesn’t know it.
He unwraps his straw in silence and stabs it through the cuts in the plastic lid. After taking a drink, he picks up his burger and pushes the hot, salty fries toward me. I glance around, and he lets out a snort of breath. “You afraid someone will see you eating my fries and think you’ve caught mad cow disease, or whatever you’re going to tell everyone is wrong with me this year?”
“I never said that.”
“Nah, you just told everyone I didn’t have a penis, but somehow I still had… What was it? Syphilis?” He bites into his burger and watches me as he chews, a challenge in his eyes.
“Explains the brain damage,” I mutter.
“Go on,” he says. “You can have them.”
“No, thanks,” I say, pushing the basket away even though my mouth is watering for them. “I shouldn’t eat that kind of thing anyway.”
He cocks his head. “Why?”
“Maybe just one,” I say with a sigh, reaching for the basket. “If I ate as many as I wanted, you’d have to roll me out of here.”
He laughs quietly and shakes his head. “Girls.”
“What about us?” I ask, annoyed by his tone.
“Nothing.”
“Must be nice to look like that without even trying,” I grumble. I realize what I said a second too late, but Colt just raises a brow and grabs a few fries, swipes them in ketchup, and eats them between bites of his burger.
I sit there in silence for a minute before caving and taking another fry. I nibble at the end, watching him eat the way boys do. I must be insane with grief, because somehow even the way he eats is sexy, and there is not one thing that I should find sexy about the school’s dirty outcast. What happened last year was temporary insanity, so brief I shouldn’t remember it any better than he does.
“You gonna be okay?” he asks, brushing his hands together when he’s swallowed the last bite of burger. I search for pity in his eyes, but all I see is casual guardedness. I might as well get used to the pitying looks. I’m going to have to go back to school next week, and I’m sure I’ll get plenty. I have a few days to rebuild my cocoon, add another layer of steel to keep them out. Never let them get to you, after all. Never let them see you cry.
“I guess you heard,” I say, slumping forward and resting an elbow on the table.
“I meant because you’re stranded here,” Colt says, grabbing a few napkins and wiping his nine remaining fingers. “I could give you a ride home.”
“You think I’m going to be seen getting out of your truck?”
“Right,” he says, crumpling the napkin and tossing it onto the table. “You live in the Dolces’ neighborhood.”
I stare at the worn, wooden boards of the picnic table while he picks up his soda and takes a few long pulls on the straw. I bet it’s not even diet.
“He jumped off a bridge,” I say to the table. “Who does that?”
“Lots of people,” he says without missing a beat.
That’s when I remember his sister did the same thing a couple years ago. Fuck.
“They should take out that bridge,” I burst out. “It’s dangerous!”
“It’s a bridge,” he says, then hesitates, looking at me in this way I don’t have time to deal with right now, like he’s trying to figure something out. Right now, I’m so stricken I might let him if he tried, but he shrugs after a second and takes another drink. “My sister did what was best for her. I can’t blame her for that.”
I stare at him a long moment, then shake my head and go back to the table, running the point of my sharp nail along a small crack in the wood. “He didn’t even leave a note,” I mumble. “I mean, he did, but not for us. It was public. I had to see it onThe Tea, after hundreds of people had already seen it. He didn’t leave us a different one privately, not even for Mom. After all she’s been through…”
Colt reaches over and lays his left hand over mine. I stare at the tattooed skin on his fingers, the ink partially obscuring the burn scars extending all the way up his forearm. I wasn’t there that day, but I know Duke Dolce did that to him. My gaze drops back to the stub of his missing middle finger, and I feel like I’ll throw up. Baron Dolce did that. Boys whose command I still obey, because if I didn’t, they’d do the same or worse to me. They haven’t left any outward scars except a little brand Duke leaves on all his conquests, but the damage that no one can see is inside, immeasurable and invisible.
But the instinct to keep going, to keep pretending, to hide the damage is too deeply instilled in me to stop. I want to throw my shell open and let him see, to emerge like something victorious, shining and beautiful and powerful, from the ash and grime that’s left. But I know that wouldn’t happen any more than it happened when I tried to run from Baron when Rylan showed up. I’m just as ruined as the rest of the twisted, huddled remains inside the cocoon that should have birthed a flawless butterfly. Now, only the cocoon will ever be flawless, and I’m desperate to keep him from knowing that the inside doesn’t match the beauty of my shell.
I slide my hand from under his and pull out my phone. “My sister’s almost here to pick me up,” I lie. “I can’t be seen with you. And if you ever tell anyone we talked…”
