This was bad. This was so, so bad. Savannah Ford didn’t just take the only man I ever loved. She stole my home. My friends. My future. And she made the whole campus believe I deserved it. Who knows—maybe I did. I'd spent a year fantasizing about revenge, about making Savannah Ford hurt the way she'd hurt me. Except now that I saw her brothers—actual people, not faceless villains from my angry daydreams, I felt like an idiot. Revenge required me to be cold and calculated, not flustered and flushed because Weston Ford had looked down my dress. Not distracted because Cash smirked at my sarcasm like he enjoyed it. Not breathless because Hayes had eyes that made me forget why I was supposed to hate anyone named Ford in the first place.
They were off-limits. They had to be off-limits. They were her brothers, for crying out loud. I needed to get home and thoroughly bang my head against a wall until whatever short circuit had just happened in my brain got fixed. Because this? This wasn't revenge. This was just asking for a whole new level of heartbreak.
2
***Hayes***
Istared after the woman who’d just stolen our attention. A sense of panic hit me hard and I had a crazy thought that if I didn’t go after her I’d never see her again. I hadn’t had all that much to drink which made the feeling even crazier. Just as I lost track of her pink dress, Cash moved.
“I’m not letting her get away that easily.” He grunted when I threw my arm across his chest to stop him. “What the fuck?”
“She’s mine. I-” West flipped us both off and hurried in her direction. “Hey!”
Cash and I rushed after him, dodging partygoers as we did. They parted for Weston’s big, cranky body and then we had to wait for them to part again to let us through. It was taking forever and I felt more than one set of hands touch my stomach and ass along the way.
Getting to the girl had become just as much a competition between brothers as it was a desperate feeling to not lose her. I saw an opening and took it, climbing the front stairs two ata time. My knee protested but I ignored it to jog to the first guest room on the second floor. I grimaced at the couple fucking against the dresser and slung open the door to the balcony. Swinging my legs over, I dropped to the front yard and nearly took her out. She was standing in the grass, looking down at her phone with a frustrated look on her face. When I landed beside her she screamed and after seeing it was me, she hauled her hand back and punched me in the shoulder.
“You scared the shit out of me! What are you doing? Did you just jump down from there?” She looked up at the balcony in horror and then down at my knee. “Have you lost your mind? Do you want to lose another season to a repeat injury?”
I grabbed her hand when she tried to hit me again. So, she did know who we were. She knew whoIwas and the injury I’d sustained. The concern in her voice and on her face was real. Real enough to hit me like a brick to the face. “You know who we are.”
She glared up at me, her blue eyes just as bright outside in the dark as they’d been inside under all the lights. “Yeah. And?”
West and Cash exploded out of the house, West growling at someone to get the fuck out of his way as they did. When he saw me standing there, holding the girl’s hand, he didn’t slow down.
Cash had a glass of punch in his hand and he ducked around West to hold it out to her. “Since my brother’s shirt took your last drink.”
She pulled her hand from mine and scoffed at the cup. “I’m not taking an open drink from you.”
All three of us gaped at her in horror. Cash recovered quickly and scowled at her before tossing the drink back himself. He wiped his mouth on the back of his arm when he was done and tossed the cup down. “We don’t drug women.”
She put her hands on her slim hips. “I didn’t say that you did. It’s just smart for a woman to not take an open drink at a party where she doesn’t know anyone.”
“But you know us.” I watched her pulse flutter at the base of her throat as I inched closer. I wanted her eyes on me and I felt like doing anything to keep them there. “What’s your name?”
She rolled her eyes and looked down at her phone again. “Doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to get a ride home. Where are all the lyfts?”
“Have a drink with us.” Cash eased her phone from her hand and slipped it into the pocket of her dress while West and I watched in envy. “One drink. It’ll make up for you implying we’d ever drug you.”
She stared up at him and I was sure she was going to tell him to go fuck himself but she didn’t. Instead, she shrugged and nodded. “Fine. One drink. Just to help your little feelings bounce back.”
He grinned and took her hand in his. “Come on. We can go around to the back patio. If you decide to run from us again, can you not go through the house? It was a pain getting to you.”
“You could always just stay put and not chase me down.” She nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s the winning idea.”
I fell into step beside her and she shot me a smile before glancing back at West and doing the same. For a split second, when he gave her a half smile back, I could almost see the old West shining through. It didn’t last, though.
“Are you really not going to tell us your name?” I didn’t like not knowing. I wanted more, as much as I could get.
There was something about her that made my skin tingle. She was beautiful, sure, but there was something about her that dragged me in and threatened to drown me. A wariness in her gaze that I wanted to understand, and one that I recognized. I caught it in the moments she looked away and blinked a littletoo slowly and in the way she sometimes paused to lick her lips before laughing at a joke. I caught it in the spaces between her smiles even. She seemed tired down to her soul in the seconds it took for her lips to tip back up. I could recognize that kind of exhaustion. I could recognize that she was going through the motions of having a good time, the same way I’d been doing since my injury.
I knew because I'd perfected it — the laugh that came half a second too late, the smile that didn't quite reach. I'd spent six months on a couch with my knee wrapped and my phone facedown because I couldn't stomach one more "how are you holding up?" text from someone who didn't actually want the answer.
I knew the signs, and I couldn’t help but see the wounds she was still suffering with. A damaged little thing like her should’ve sent me running. I wanted as little drama as possible in my life. Instead of running, I found myself wanting to know more, though. I wanted to know what we had in common and if she’d understand the things I hadn’t been able to say out loud to anyone else.
She’d dropped her shoes somewhere and as we circled the house she reached up and started pulling pins from her hair. It fell slowly in long, dark brown waves that released the sweet scent of strawberries. She didn’t seem to have a clue about how she was affecting us. “Cassidy.”
West reached out and rubbed a piece of her hair between his fingers. It was long enough that she didn’t notice. She just ran her hands through her hair and shook it out.
