“Fuck yeah! Now we’re talking.” Thalia bounced out of her seat and hauled Claire up into a kiss that could have been in a Hallmark movie.
“Ugh,” I snickered. “Love is gross.”
“Don’t be jealous, beautiful.” Thalia patted my cheek, her arm slung over Claire’s shoulder, holding her close. “We’ll pick you up in a couple of hours.”
I placed a cigarette between my lips and inhaled the thick smoke. “Cool. Where?”
“Down the road from your Aunt’s. There is no way I’m driving up to the house and having her report back to my father,” Thalia shuddered.
“He still getting on your case?”
“You know he is.” She rolled her eyes. “There is no way I’m marrying Archibald Harrington the Third.”
Claire’s complexion paled at her words, worry seeping in her bright gray eyes. She blinked away the tears that made them shimmer in the sunlight before Thalia saw.
My heart went out to her. I understood wanting something you knew you could never keep. Instead of saying anything, Iwrapped my arms around them and squeezed them until their giggles were echoing in my head as I drove back to Edelwood, wondering if there was anywhere else in town that I could stay.
The night smelled like weed,smoke and summer sweat. Music pulsed from Bluetooth speakers balanced on someone’s truck bed. Flames licked the sky from a bonfire where half of Brookhaven Ridge’s bored elite were gathered like moths.
I was already half-drunk, half-stoned, warm from the inside out, surrounded by bodies I didn’t care about and eyes that lingered for all the wrong reasons.
Which was exactly what I wanted. I wanted bad decisions. To make memories with the only two friends I’d ever really had. The night was young, and I was full of life, desperate to cleanse my head of memories that made me feel things I was certain I didn’t like feeling.
“I love this song,” Thalia squealed, pulling me into the makeshift dance circle. She spun once, then shoved me toward the center. “Go be a menace!”
I didn’t need telling twice. I danced. Not like someone trying to be watched. Like someone who didn’t give a fuck if he was. I let go and lived in the moment. Let the beat of the music move through me.
Shirt half unbuttoned. My hips moving in time with the beat. A guy with shaggy hair slid in behind me, hands bold and wandering, mouth brazen when he whispered something filthy in my ear.
I laughed and let him pull me closer. Leaned my head back on his shoulder and stared up at the sky before the stars started to spin in opposite directions. His hands wrapped around my waist, hips grinding against my ass.
Once, I would’ve been up for everything that he was angling for without thought of the consequences, only chasing sensation, release and a good time, but something held me back from following through. Not that I’d look too closely at it.
Before he got too far, I spun away and dragged a girl into my arms just because I could. I didn’t care who I was with, never had. I loved everyone for who they were. I loved them even more if they moved like liquid sin.
Bodies moved around me. Sweat-slick, alcohol-loose, glitter and sin on their skin. And I? I was fire. The catalyst.
Hours passed, and the moon rose high in the sky. I forgot why I was here. What I was running from and moved from dance partner to dance partner. I watched the girls moving to their own rhythm, lost in their own world.
Jealousy had never been my style. I was all for free love. But no matter who I lost time with, my eyes were always drawn back to them. And I yearned for the first time in my life to be somebody’s something. Their everything. Not just a passing fancy.
“Ugh, fuck,” I ground out as two big guys sandwiched me between them.
As the night had drawn on, I’d noticed the crowd changing around me. It wasn’t just the young, rich crowd. The darker side of Brookhaven Ridge had come out to play in the shadows. Maybe that was why the young elite of this town partied down here, because they wanted to sample the rougher side of life before slipping back into their perfect little lives.
I understood them because I had been one of them. Until I wasn’t. And though a few months had passed since I was kickedout of my former life, I couldn’t say I missed it. Yeah, working sucked. Living in my aunt’s pool house was shit, but I’d found in Brookhaven Ridge something I’d spent my life looking for—connection.
The guy behind me coasted a hand up my arm and sunk his fingers into my hair, tugging my head to the side, baring my throat to the smaller, younger guy covered in tattoos in front of me.
A wicked smile lit him up before he closed the distance between us and kissed the other guy over my shoulder.
“Fuck that’s hot,” I groaned, feeling them thicken against me almost at the same time.
They rocked and ground against me and sucked each other’s faces off. Even as their third wheel, I gave myself over to the moment, rolling my hips in time with them and the euphoric EDM that was blaring into the night.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. That’s when I felt it. That heat. That electric static crawling over my skin. My eyes fluttered open. Taking in everything and everyone around the lake.
Dark green eyes found mine like they’d been locked onto me for hours.
