CHAPTER 1
OWEN
Alcohol can makeyou do really dumb things. So could jealousy. Mix them together, and you get… whatever the hell this is.
Tipping my head back, I winced as the tequila burned a trail down my throat, and slammed the shot glass on the bar harder than I meant to, rattling the lineup of empties. I stopped counting around the time the ceiling fan started spinning in slow motion.
“You should probably pace yourself, man.” Jax nursed his third beer, condensation pooling on the wood beneath it.
Easy for him to say. He had a pregnant fiancée waiting at home and a functioning relationship. I had Cam, who was technically mine but whose heart kept drifting toward someone else.
The bar was packed for a Friday night. My gaze scanned across the room, past the clusters of people shouting over each other, and stopped on Trystan.
He was leaning against the brick wall near the pool tables, talking to Harlow, dressed in his usual ripped jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Cam said she was over him.
We all knew she wasn’t.
And I had a pretty good suspicion he wasn’t over her either.
Jealousy was stupid. I was aware. Didn’t make it go away.
“How’s everything going with Cam?” Jax asked because apparently, he chose tonight to develop his emotional intuition.
I forced something resembling a smile, feeling my jaw ache with the effort. “It’s all good.”
The lie tasted worse than the bottom-shelf tequila. Cam and I were amazing as friends. We always had been, but as a couple, something was missing. Something big. I loved her the way I loved Jax and Kaia. Which was not the way I was supposed to love my girlfriend.
I needed to tell her. I needed to end it before I destroyed our friendship completely.
But not tonight.
I glanced over my shoulder again. Trystan was still talking to Harlow.
The memory of the beach house crawled back, us on that terrace, standing toe to toe, neither of us wanting to back down. Both of us were staking a claim to something neither of us should have.
I didn’t really want Cam, but I really didn’t want him to have her either.
Syn appeared beside me, blocking my view with a wall of jet black hair and judgment. “Well.” She surveyed the shot glass graveyard spread across the bar top. “You’re really going for a personal record tonight.”
I rolled my eyes, and that was a mistake cause the room tilted sideways for a second. I twisted toward the bar and lifted two fingers at the bartender as he passed. He nodded without breaking stride.
“This has been a blast,” Jax announced, sliding off his stool. “But I’m ready to head home.”
“What?” I checked my phone. “It’s barely eleven.”
He finished his beer and set the empty bottle down, looking around the bar. “We’ve had a lot of good times here. But now the only place I want to be is home with Kaia, watching her fall asleep on the couch halfway through whatever show she picked.”
My lip curled before I could stop it. “That’s disgusting.”
“I know.” He grinned, completely unashamed. “It’s the best.”
They were nauseatingly perfect for each other. I was jealous, not of Kaia specifically, but of what they had. I’d thought Cam and I would find that eventually. That the spark would catch if we gave it enough time.
Wrong.
Some fires weren’t meant to burn. You can strike the match all you want.
