I pull out cash for a generous tip and slide it under the coaster before I leave.
CHAPTER 2
CHASE
I can still remember the way the color bloomed across my eye the moment his fist impacted my temple.
A flash of red-white, then deep burgundy, then blackness.
“What were you trying to fucking pull?” Aiden roared above me as his knuckles came down fast for another blow. “What were you doing with her?”
I didn’t know they were dating.
Didn’t even know they were a thing.
His girlfriend Anna came onto me, actually, at the party earlier that night, where she offered me a couple of unprinted green pills that I didn’t even want. For a long time, I had known I needed to be done with that part of my life. But my reputation wasn’t mine to control anymore. Everyone still saw me as the guy who would do anything at a party.
I refused the mystery pills that Anna offered.
And then an hour later, she informed me that she had crushed them up and mixed them into my margarita anyway.
“They’ll make you see the stars, Chase,” she said with a wicked smile.
I was seeing them, now.
Black and white stars in the corner of my vision, from the one eye that still has any sight at all.
“Did you fuck her?” Aiden roared again, and I felt his arm come down in a bar over my chest, pinning me to the ground.
When I moved my head, it slipped on the hardwood.
I dimly registered that I was resting in my own blood.
It was strange to be rolling on some combination of Molly and who knows what else flooding my veins as I was being beaten to a pulp.
“Didn’t even know—” I tried to choke out. I coughed on the words.
Aiden spoke through clenched teeth. “You are toxic poison to everything around you, Chase. And you wonder why your dad fucking hated you.”
A bitter sinking feeling spread through my chest. I tasted the blood on my tongue and spit some out on my side.
“Go fuck yourself,” I told him in a low tone.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I think you heard,” I tried to say louder, but my voice came out hoarse. “Go fuck yourself.”
I didn’t do anything with his girlfriend. He found me outside with her, both of us soaring through the high of whatever mix of drugs she gave me, looking up at the sky as fireworks bloomed out over the horizon. It was the Fourth of July, and Anna had draped her arm over my chest, rubbing circles across my skin.
It felt fucking amazing.
But nothing happened between us.
“What the hell are you doing?” Anna suddenly shouted, coming into the room. “Chase didn’t do anything.”
“I don’t believe you,” he roared.
“He didn’t even touch me back,” she said. “But you know what? I wanted him to. Because you throw temper tantrums like a rabid fucking dog?—”
