I couldn’t hear anything but swirling fury and pain gushing in my ears.
What the fuck had I just done?
I try to clear the lump in my throat, raw fear gripping my lungs as Harlen’s thumb skates across the cut in his bottom lip, collecting droplets of blood at the corner, his dark blues never wavering from mine.
“Kinda regret teaching you how to punch like that,” he growls to Cameryn’s back, and she gives him nothing, just curls her hand around mine and mumbles something that I don’t quite catch beneath her breath.
Tyler is on my opposite side, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him and turning me so my back is now to Harlen. Cameryn lets go as the three of us walk away. I glance back over my shoulder at Harlen when Tyler says, “When did we start keeping secrets from each other?” He squeezes my bicep tightly, but not painfully.
I want to scoff. I know he cares about me, but he lost the privilege to my secrets a long time ago.
We step into the same room Cam and I were just in, and Ty slips past me, snatching up a bright red towel off the table and wiping down his face. He flicks his dark hair away from his eyes when I whisper under my breath, “When you left me, too.”
Because that’s the truth. Everyone always leaves me.
No one ever gave me a reason to believe they’d stay.
His head drops between his shoulders and he nods. “I deserve that.”
My back is at the door, and I slide down the cold wood until my ass rests on the ground. My chin finds my chest, and when I feel something against my arm, I raise my gaze and take the bottle of whiskey Cameryn extends toward me, pushing it to my lips and sinking a heavy mouthful.
Running the back of my hand over my mouth, I meet Tyler’s dark gaze, then I start to talk because, truthfully, I have nothing left to lose.
“He left me, Ty. On that pier… He left me.”
I told Tyler everything.
And now he has every intention to finish the job Cameryn had started.
I don’t try to stop him.
I’m fucking hurt, and my friends are now hurting with me. This is someone they had laid their trust in too.
He couldn’t understand why he left, and I mean, neither could I. I think the only person who had the answers to all of our questions was Harlen, but in our cloudy haze of fury, we were too hurt to even think about seeking them out.
The steel doors at the back of the venue swing open as Tyler bullets through the threshold. His head rotates from side to side, searching,hunting.It takes him no longer than a few short seconds to find Chase and Harlen across the parking lot.
Harlen’s eyes seek mine out almost instantly, and even among the dim moonlight, I can see them so clearly. They’re as bold and big and bright as they’ve always been, highlighted perfectly by the golden curls that hang from his head. Hedoesn’t spare Tyler one glance, the same way he hadn’t looked at Cameryn. The only person he’s watching isme.
It has the hairs at the back of my neck standing, and I feel myself forcing air into my lungs as Cameryn wraps her arms around me and pulls me into her tightly.
It’s the sound of metal slamming that has me spinning around and looking over my shoulder. My blunt’s between my forefinger and thumb, pushed between my lips as I burn a line down my throat.
Tyler moves toward me like a vampire out for blood, yet I find my eyes drifting right over him and locking ontohersas she stands at the door that just slammed shut at her back.
“You alright, man?” Chase asks, his voice a low cadence of concern.
I shrug, slipping the blunt back between my lips and taking my final hit. I dart it to the ground, exhaling sharply before slumping my ass on the curb of the parking lot and hanging my wrists over my knees.
I’m not fighting him.
This is my fucking surrender.
Running a hand through the length of my curls, I reply to Chase, though I’m still watching her. “Not really.”
Chase drops down next to me with a sigh. “You-”
He’s quickly cut off when Tyler steps in front of us and I push up from the ground. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” I ask, shoving my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, andthough the question is directed at Tyler, I haven’t taken my eyes off Cherry.
