Still nothing.
I froze in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at my own reflection. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
My reflection, wisely, said nothing.
“You’re never drinking again.” I pointed at myself. “You hear me? Never.Again.”
That was a lie, and we both knew it.
I blew out a heavy sigh. I needed to end things with Cam, and then I needed to track down Harlow and tell her we might have a condom situation. That could lead to a baby situation.
I dropped my head against the mirror.
Fuck my life…
CHAPTER 3
HARLOW
I’d savedmy virginity for twenty years.
Twenty years.
Sure, some of those years weren’t really an option, but still. All those years of waiting, of imagining how it would be. Candlelight, maybe. Or at least a coherent conversation.
And now, here I was, doing the walk of shame in yesterday’s clothes.
Definitely not how I pictured my first time, and I definitely hadn’t foreseen not remembering most of it, fragments, really. His hands. The sound of my own breathing. The way the room spun when I closed my eyes.
What made it so much worse was that I wanted to claw my way out of my own skin, and I felthorribleabout the whole thing. When Owen said he and Cam were over, I’d assumed he meant they’d already broken up. Past tense. Done. Finished.
I was wrong.
I shouldn’t have assumed. I actually should have known better. That kind of news would have spread like wildfire through our friend group. Trystan would’ve told Syn. Syn would’ve told me. The gossip chain was sacred, and it had been radio silent.
Which meant they weren’t broken up.
Which meant I slept with my friend’s boyfriend.
I shoved open my bedroom door harder than necessary. My purse sailed through the air and landed on my bed, bouncing off a pillow before knocking over the picture frame on my nightstand, the one photo of all of us before everything went to hell.
It clattered face-down, but I could still see it in my mind: Trystan, Jaxtyn, Kaia, Camryn, Owen, Syn, and me, all crammed together on the back deck during summer break, tanned and smiling like we didn’t know heartbreak was a thing that existed. Like we thought, we’d stay that way forever.
That was the night I’d admitted to Camryn that I had a crush on Owen. She’d hugged me tight and promised that girl code was sacred. Now, several years later, she was dating him.
So much for sacred.
The rational part of my brain knew that Cam probably didn’t even remember that conversation, but I did. She was the only person I ever said it out loud to.
Another part of me knew that Cam’s story ended with Trystan. Everyone could see it, even Cam, who was fighting her feelings for him like they were armed intruders trying to break down her carefully constructed walls. But the irrational, slightly vindictive part of me that had done the walk of shame wanted to set the photo on fire and watch our smiling faces curl into ash.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin, a strangled gasp escaping my throat.
Syn, short for Madisyn, nicknamed for being the walking embodiment of the word sin, stood in my doorway with her tatted arms crossed and her black hair wild around her shoulders, wearing an oversized black Kiss t-shirt that hung off one shoulder and a pair of red leggings. She was my best friend,my soulmate, my complete opposite in every way. Where I was careful, anxious, and perpetually overthinking, she was chaos, confidence, and zero apologies.
“Jesus…” I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling my heart hammering against my ribs. “Do you have to lurk like a horror movie villain?”
