"Where do you think you're going so soon?" Cyrus's voice drips condescension from behind me. "We're just getting reacquainted."
I spin around, trapped between the guard and four sets of eyes that used to look at me with love. Now they're dissecting me like I'm a meal to devour.
Threesets. I can't see Tank's eyes behind his mask as he looms behind Kade, Jinx, and Cyrus like a silent shadow.
"If I go missing, people will know." The threat sounds hollow even to my own ears, but I grip it like the life preserver it is."Todd has security on me. My roommate knows I'm supposed to be back tonight. Someone will?—"
Kade's bitter laugh cuts through my desperate calculations. "You think that's what we're going to do?Killyou?" He shakes his head, a few strands of his styled brown hair falling into those cold gray eyes. His face splits with the widest grin yet. "Been too long to let you off that easy, Princess."
"What did I do?" I ask, even as I know the answer.
"Youleft." Cyrus snaps the words like a whip, eyes flashing behind his glasses.
He's changed, too. He's still lean, but he's filled out with muscle and his angular face makes him look like Clark Kent turned into a fucking mafioso.
Cyrus's lip curls as he glowers down at me. "You walked away without a word, without a trace. Like we were nothing. Like we never fucking existed."
I flinch, the accusation digging into me like a knife. I want to argue, want to scream that I tried, that I meant every word I wrote in those letters, that I snuck out so many times before Todd's security caught me and he?—
I force myself to stop spiraling.
From their perspective, I just vanished.
One day I was theirs, the next I was gone. And explaining now would just sound like I'm making excuses. Trying to save my ass from whatever revenge they've been cooking up for four years.
The fucked up thing is, part of me is relieved. They didn't forget me.
I'd rather them hate me than forget me. At least if they hate me, they remember the girl I used to be before she was hollowed out and filled with somebody else.
My eyes find Tank, still wearing that gas mask like armor against the world. I can't see his eyes through the dark lenses, can't read what he's thinking.
Does he hate me too?
The boy who held me in his strong arms and let me cry for as long as I needed, who carved me a bird just like the one we saved together? The boy who drove me home that final night and signedI love youon the way to signingfly?
The thought that Tank out of all of them might hate me makes something in my chest crack like safety glass, still holding its shape but shattered beyond repair.
I was wrong.
I'd rather be forgotten.
They have me surrounded now, a circle of beautiful predators. Even Jinx, who doesn't have the same hostile energy as the others, has this bitter twist to his perfect mouth. He's not making any move to step in, to defend me like he would have before.
Before I ruined everything.
He's gorgeous, though. They all are. Four years turned them from cute boys into devastating men. Jinx's blond hair falls past his shoulders now, all tousled perfection. Tank's always been huge, but now he's even more massive, his presence and the whooshing rasp of his breath through his mask filling the room.
And Kade…
Styled hair, tailored clothes that make him look like the underworld god he is. That same cocky confidence he wore like an oversized suit when we were kids clings to every fiber of his being, except now…
Well, now he's grown into it.
He stands in front of me, hands in his pockets like we're having a casual conversation instead of… whatever the fuck this is.
"We'll take your job." His words are casual, but his gray eyes burn into me. "Kill your stepdaddy for you."
Wait…what?
