He scoffs. “Not really. If I never moved here, I never would have met your loser ass.”
I bark out a laugh and lazily throw one of my drumsticks in his direction. He catches it and throws it right back, beaming. “Besides, we go there enough to see the guys and Tini.” He pulls a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it with a deep pull before letting the smoke fly free. “Hell, we’re going there tonight for the race.”
My finger fiddles over the indentations in my drumstick, the wood carved in a specific place to feed my comfort. We may nothave any more friends here, but that’s not true for Oakson. We spend most of our weekends there, practicing with our band and lounging around. It’s a small reprieve from the suffocating atmosphere here. It also doesn’t help our reputation at all, as everyone in Greenwood seems to see Oakson as the filth beneath their shoes.
Well,almosteveryone.
As soon as I think about her, there’s a flash of white and green in my periphery. Blonde hair swinging in a high ponytail and legs that go on for days. My eyes snag on the way her arm is locked with that alpha boyfriend of hers, a slight snarl escaping from my curled lip as my scent strikes harshly like lightening beneath my skin.
“Ugh, you’re making the grass smell burnt,” Ledger complains, his nostrils flaring.
“At least I don’t smell like old paint.”
“Acrylics.” He huffs. “It’s specifically acrylic, I’ve told you this a million times.”
“Well, it makes our apartment smell like we’re always painting,” I tease him, pulling out my own cigarette from my pocket to light.
My eyes move back to Stacey. Maybe I’m a masochist, or maybe I’m a glutton for punishment because I can’t take my eyes off of her, even as Brent slides his arm around her shoulder and whispers in her ear. She doesn’t giggle or respond the way a doting girlfriend does, but that’s not really her style anyway. She keeps her narrowed gaze on her friends at the table, always on alert with them in case she needs to defend herself. My fist tightens into a ball, my frustration growing by the second.
Stacey Hawthorne is a diamond in the rough. And by that, I mean, she is worlds better than the people she keeps company with. When I have the opportunity to look into her eyes, there’sa real person staring back at me. There’s a vulnerability there that everyone else seems to lack and it pulls me in like catnip.
Everything about her intrigues me. From her innocent floral scent, to the ridiculously expensive outfits she wears. How her blue eyes sparkle anytime they land on mine before they harden back into a mold of what she thinks she has to be. And her body… It’s been part of one too many of my fantasies these past few years.
What I would do to have her in my arms in real life. To feel her smooth skin rub against mine, touch her with enthusiasm. To hear what she sounds like when I do it just right.
To smell white gardenias directly from her core.
“Still pining after the princess?” Ledger’s annoying voice cuts into my thoughts.
“Shut up. She’s meant for me, she just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Forget about it, man. She’s too busy trying to live an omega’s life.”
“She isn’t an omega.”
He laughs. “That’s why I saidtrying.”
I shake my head. I don’t care that she isn’t an omega. She smells just as pretty as one, and I don’t need someone bowing in submission anyway. I like the fight, us bantering back and forth. It’s like foreplay to me, and Stacey has been edging me for years.
I wipe my hand through my hair, a laugh bubbling up inside me. “She could be an alpha for all I care. I’d even let her bark at me.”
Ledger may think that my feelings are rooted in delusion, but he hasn’t been in my shoes for the past ten years. Stacey and I, we’ve been playing this game for a long time. I see how she looks at me, the hidden glances she sends my way. There’s been hundreds of moments, tons of times where we stole brief conversations, insulting each other like foreplay.
Tons of moments that belong only to us.
It’s exhilarating being around her, even if she’s turning up her nose and rejecting me half the time, because the other half of the time, she’s sending me all the signs I need. The number of times I’ve watched her glance at me when she thought I was distracted, or the times she’d bite her lip to keep herself from laughing at my antics. She’s been my most silent supporter, never joining in on the jokes but also never defending me either. Not that I’d expect her to. She has her own stuff going on, her own issues with living in this town that keep her up at night. I never want to add to the stress of that.
Nothing has actually happened since that party in high school, the one I dragged myself to because I heard she’d be there. She’s so convincing, trying to play the part of the perfect HBIC, but I can see her cracks clear as day. She yearns for excitement and loves the thrill of the forbidden. Maybe that’s why she let me kiss her that day, but I don’t mind. I hold that moment dear, cradle it close to my chest. She was my first, and I am positive I was hers, and no one can take that from either of us.
She is hellfire, a reckoning waiting to happen, and I’m ready to be consumed.
“She’s going to be mine,” I declare to him.
“Yeah, whatever,” he mutters. “Your funeral. Don’t come crying to me when the town swarms in with pitchforks because you decided to corrupt their perfect princess.”
“That’s rich coming from you, Ledge. You’re in love with the town’sactualprincess.”
He gets up and swings his bag over his shoulder, glancing across the courtyard like I knew he would. There in the corner, sitting alone and reading some brown-leather tome that probably holds knowledge of historical art pieces, is Whitney Greenwood. The daughter of our town’s mayor and descendant of the first settlers of this town. Her hair is layered in braids allover her head, and her overalls are splattered with paint as she bites her nails, completely enraptured by the text before her.
