Sometimes they were sickeningly perfect.
Rubbing his head at the forming headache, he propped his phone on the steering wheel and video called Ebony. The call connected on the second ring.
Cameron blinked at the image before him. It was the right background. The soft off-white walls and blush-pink tufted headboard told him it was the right number but he was staring at Gavin—a shirtless Gavin.
Leaning against the headboard with earbuds in his ears, Gavin smiled back into the camera. "Hey Cam, what's up?"
Cameron was tired of the games. Not wasting time on pretense, he leveled Gavin a bladed look. "Where is she?"
Gavin tilted his head, his smile never wavering as he considered him for a moment. His smile widened just before he tilted the camera downward.
Cameron sucked in a breath. The image on his screen felt no different than Gavin punching him in the stomach. Lying right next to Gavin was Ebony, sleeping soundly in a black bonnet, her face angled away from Gavin. She looked so unguarded.
When he had slept next to her in the hotel that one night and never got to see her sleep. They had been so tired they had both fallen asleep instantly only to be woken by the smug bastard who was now staring back at him wearing that fucking smile.
Cameron tried to hide his fury but he knew Gavin could see it. The way his demon blue eyes lit up with vicious pleasure told him so.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he rasped, his voice heavy with emotion. "With the both of you?"
Gavin stared at him, the moment stretching between them. He gave Cameron a look that resembled a wolf sizing up its prey, inhuman yet curious. "Let me ask you something instead, why keep fighting when the ending has already been written? She’s mine. Always was. Always will be."
Cameron hung up the phone, his hands shaking with pent-up fury. His breath came hard and uneven until the rage tore free in a bellow that rattled through the car, leaving his throat raw and his voice hoarse.
She had been withdrawing for weeks now. Why hadn't he seen it?
He hit the wheel. Again. And again. And again, ignoring the sting of it with each strike. Finally, when the pain seeped in, he stopped and sat back in his seat and let out a bitter laugh. Gavin was winning again.
He closed his eyes, thinking of Taylor's words. He was right.
Guilt clawed at him for even thinking it.
He stared at the image of her on his phone. It was a selfie of him and Ebony on the boat. Both smiling ear to ear like the world was theirs. She was so fucking beautiful it hurt.
"Fuuuuck." The word tore out of him deep and guttural.
All that spoiled bastard did was win, even when he shouldn’t be. Everything always went Gavin’s way with disgusting ease. While Cameron worked hard to maintain his grades, excel in sports, and make his parents proud, that bastard just waltzed in and took the glory. It was Cameron’s fucking picture that hung on banners and posters around town with the other top athletes of Stardust High. He was the one business owners and customers alike waved at and patted on the back with words of encouragement before swim meets.
He was playing by all the rules, goddammit. He had the looks, the popularity, the drive to get himself to the top, but none of it fucking seemed to matter when it came to Gavin fucking Rosebank. Because somehow, Gavin always outpaced him. It was his 4.5 GPA teachers talked about, it was his tournaments people went to see, and it was him that Ebony looked for when she entered a room.
Hewas tired. Tired of taking losses. He was out of moves, but worse, he’d run out of wanting to make any.
Chapter twenty-eight
Asoft whirring at her side had her hand moving before she opened her eyes. Shutting off the phone's silent alarm, Ebony stared up into the darkness. Bringing her phone upward, she checked the time: seven in the morning. The sun was up but her room was pitch black.
Laying the phone back down, she lay there in the dark letting her mind and body fully wake. A soft constant sound, barely audible, sounded from her right. Slow and rhythmic it was the same sound she had fallen asleep to for weeks, a sound she wasn’t sure she could ever go without again. Carefully, she turned her head and stared at the figure next to her in the dark.
She smiled. Gavin was the vampire who needed the total blackout to sleep. She could count on one hand how many times she had used the heavy automated curtains. When she had told him that he had scoffed. Now the curtains were set on an automatic timer. In a few minutes the sunlight would rouse the nosferatu from his sleep.
Pulling back the covers, Ebony glanced at him one last time and froze, her legs halfway out of the bed. Despite the dark and half of his face buried in the pillow he was hugging, his unguarded expression stopped her. Turning onto her side she stared at him. From the shape of his brow to his soft lips, there was nothing about him that wasn't captivating. Guilt twisted in her stomach as she hovered a hand over his defined jawline. Somehow, he was taking up more and more space in her life. There was hardly ever a moment in the day when they were apart.
After class, he stayed with her, helping on various year-end projects with deadlines that were approaching far too fast. He claimed it was all in the name of help but she knew he was really there to make sure she didn’t run herself into the ground again. She scowled. One little cold. She got one little cold and he blew it all out of proportion. For three days he wouldn’t let her leave the bed and had even called a doctor for a home visit. Because of him she had to get a painful steroid shot in her ass.
Annoyed all over again, she stood up and went to the bathroom. Taking her bonnet off, she began to undo the braids holding down her curls. She glanced down at the toothbrush charging next to hers. He was everywhere in her life. When was the last time he slept in his own room? Or used his own bathroom?
Her face heated at the memory. Last night she’d been in bed, half-distracted by an email to the prom photographer, when he’d walked straight through her bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. He hadn't even bothered to close the door. That half-second glance at him had felt like a flash of lightning sticking in her brain like afterburn. His damp hair was slicked back, the towel slung low on his narrow hips, his abs flexing with every step.
Ebony let out a sad sound as she grabbed her own toothbrush, next to his. He was trying to kill her. Slowly torture her to death, she was sure of it. Every boundary, every rule they had coexisted with for years was dissolving with each passing day.
