Nicole presses closer, her body flush against mine. “Want to skip next period? Come hang out with me.”
Her hand glides over my chest, fingers spread as if she owns me and yet, I still feel nothing.
My body doesn’t fucking respond. My cock stays soft. Uninterested. Like it knows the difference now. Like it’s already made its choice.
Her fingers slip lower, reaching for my belt, teasing for a good time.
I catch her wrist. Hard. Not gentle.
Her eyes go wide, confusion flickering across her face. “What?”
“If you fucking touch me again,” I say, voice low filled with warning. “I’ll break your fucking fingers.”
Shock flickers across her flawlessly made-up face, her lips parting in disbelief.
No one talks to Nicole like that. No one ever rejects her.
“What’s your problem?” she snaps, her voice rising.
I release her wrist, letting it drop as if it’s contaminated.“Find someone else to fuck,” I say flatly. “I’d rather jerk off than have my cock anywhere near you.”
Her mouth drops open, forming a perfect little ‘o’ of stunned disbelief. Then anger rushes in quickly, replacing the shock in an instant.
“You’re an asshole,” she hisses.
“Always have been,” I say, my tone bored.
She scoffs loudly, making sure everyone around us hears her. Playing to the audience like she always does.
“You’ll come crawling back,” she says, her voice dripping with false confidence.
I don’t respond because I won’t. Not this time. Not ever again.
I turn and walk away before she can throw another desperate line at me, knowing that something has shifted inside me, changing in ways I don’t fully understand yet.
I don’t know when it began. Maybe that night I kissed Bells on the couch, or maybe before that.
But I know this much: For the first time in my life, the shit that used to matter—the easy fucks, the reputation, the game to chase pussy—doesn’t mean shit anymore.
Chapter Twelve
Lola
The words won’t leave me alone: No change in his condition.
They’ve been following me all afternoon, sticking to the inside of my skull just like the hospital smell clung to my clothes when I left. The doctor said it like he was talking about the weather. As if he wasn’t standing there holding my entire damn life in his hands.
No change.
It loops in my head the entire drive, stuck on repeat. No change means Dad’s still lying there in that bed. Still not waking up. Still not coming back to me. And he’s caught between here and the afterlife, and I’m supposed to keep breathing while I wait to see which way he falls.
I swallow hard, blinking through the burn behind my eyes, and force myself to focus on the road.
I texted Jace as I was leaving the hospital, my fingers trembling as I typed: On my way.
He replied almost immediately:
Jace:I’ll be waiting out the front.
