Page 24

Tate says something about seeing if the inn is serving breakfast or if there’s anywhere open with food, and he and Ares go to start looking for a room service menu.

Brynn stays where she is, and I notice her taking deep, measured breaths, her lips moving silently like she’s saying something to herself. Can’t blame her for being stressed about all this.

Ares wasn’t thrilled about having to come home either, and that was before all the shit with the plane and the weather. It makes sense that Brynn might have some similar feelings. And whatever is going on with her is her business. The last thing I need to do is get involved in it.

I push off from the wall and go to my bag, getting out my sketchbook. There’s a restlessness under my skin, and usually the only thing that settles me when I feel like this is getting it out in sketching. Some of the drawings become tattoo ideas down the line, some just exist to be an outlet for frustration. Either way, I go sit with my back to the wall on the other side of the room and start drawing.

11

BRYNN

The rest of the day is a bit surreal to say the least. I’m stuck in a hotel room with three men. All of them are gorgeous, and I’ve had sex with two of them. Two of them seem to hate me, or at least dislike me intensely, in Callan’s case. The look he gave me when we came out of the laundry room downstairs definitely seemed like he was pissed I was fucking around with his friend, and I guess I can’t blame him for that, considering what Ares must have been telling them about me.

Tate doesn’t seem bothered, but then I still haven’t seen Tate be bothered by anything. We’re stranded in the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm, and he’s still just as cheerful and flirty as he was on the plane.

I have no idea how he does that.

Callan and Ares mostly keep to themselves. I’m sure Ares is pissed that I’m going to be coming with them in the rental car when we get it, and honestly I’m surprised he didn’t put up more of a fuss about leaving me behind. The only reason why I didn’t is because I wouldn’t put it past him to try to make sure I didn’t get a car and had to stay until the airport opens or something.

And then there’s Callan, who has had his face buried in what looks like a sketchbook since earlier in the morning. His hand grips his pencil, and his brow is furrowed in concentration as he works with fluid lines in decisive strokes. He clearly knows what he’s doing, and I wonder what it is he’s sketching.

There are a ton of tattoos visible on his arms, climbing up and around his forearms and biceps in stark lines before disappearing beneath his shirt. I wonder how many more he has. Usually people who are so heavily tattooed in visible places have even more where their clothes cover.

I don’t know enough about him to even guess at what he might have under his sweater and jeans, but the curiosity is there.

Everyone seems to be content to be left to their own devices, so I do the same, settling in the chair in the corner with my tablet to answer some emails and try to clear my head.

Absently, I end up humming under my breath, following the thread of a melody that pops into my head as I’m sitting there. Sometimes songs just come to me like that, notes falling one after the other to spread out into something that can be wrangled into a usable bit.

I hardly notice it happening most of the time, but I feel eyes on me at one point, and I look up to see Ares looking at me.

As soon as our eyes meet, he looks away.

I don’t know why that makes me feel bad all of a sudden. It’s not like I want him to look at me. It’s not like I want anything to do with him anymore. What we had is over and done with, and now he’s telling everybody who will listen what a shitty person I am, I guess. At least his friends know, even if they didn’t know exactly who I was.

It’s just… such a fucking mess.

Things used to be good with us. Really good. Maybe it wasn’t simple because of the history between our families, but it was worth it—to me, anyway.

Sitting there, I can’t help but think about when things went wrong between us.

It was humiliating for one thing. I was standing there at the front of the school, with so many people gathered around us. Friends, people I didn’t know, some people watching with confusion and some watching with a kind of glee.

Ares was so angry, staring at me with that hard expression, his hands curled into fists at his sides.

“We’re done. This thing between us? It’s fucking over, Brynn.” His words echo in my head now, the way they echoed around the school courtyard. I couldn’t even get a word in edgewise, confused and hurt and stunned. “I can’t fucking believe you would do something like this. That you would use me like this just to hurt my family. I thought we were better than that, better than this stupid rivalry, but I guess that’s just another thing I was a fucking idiot about.”

“Ares—” I barely got his name out before he was glaring me back into silence.

“So much for The November Place, huh? Guess that was all just a big lie, too.”

I never understood what he meant by that, and I still don’t. “The November Place” was our secret code word for a spot where we used to meet up in secret, which we found one November and decided to make our own. The look on his face as he spit those words at me showed how angry and hurt he was, proving that he was serious about being done with me. It devastated me to see it.

Ares walked away then, and I remember Genevieve being there, looking delighted. No surprise there. Of course she’d be happy to see me humiliated and to have more to gossip about.

It’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around it being so easy for Ares to throw what we had away. Back then, I thought we were like Romeo and Juliet, fighting fate and the rivalry between our families to build something of our own. But in the end, it turned out the bad blood ran too deep, and maybe we were stupid to think we could overcome it.

Thinking about it puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day, and I keep to myself, not engaging any of them in conversation when we eat the meager dinner provided by the inn with what they had left.