“No, Nix. It’s done. It’s in the past. We’re in the past. Zane was right.” Conviction glittered in her murky eyes. “This, us, it isn’t healthy. We can’t keep doing this, torturing each other. Whatever we had, it’s done. It’s over.”
“You don’t mean that, B.” Because it didn’t feel over. It felt unresolved: a dark cloud lingering over us, a storm brewing. Circling. And until it exploded, it wouldn’t pass.
She got right in my face, green eyes coolly assessing me. “I don’t know how many more ways to say this. I. Hate. You. Everything we ever shared… It was a lie. I realize that now.”
Anger vibrated through me, setting off a wildfire inside my chest. How could she say that? After everything we’d been through, how could she—
“This was a mistake,” she said, going to walk away.
But I grabbed her arm, yanking her back to me.
We weren’t done.
Not until—
“Get off me, you… you overbearing asshole,” she spat with fire and fury.
The air crackled. My heart hammering against my chest, my pulse thudding in my ears.
This girl. She wasn’t only my kryptonite, she was my addiction. The one bad habit I’d never fully succumbed to but had never been able to quit either.
She was the only girl in the entire world with the power to ruin me.
And she was staring at me as if she meant every word.
As if she truly hated me.
“Phoenix, I—”
I grabbed the back of her neck and crashed my lips down on hers, swallowing her hateful, spineless words. She could hate me. She could despise and resent me. But it didn’t change the fact that I felt it.
I still felt the invisible tether binding us.
“Fuck, B,” I breathed, sliding my hand into her hair and angling her face up to give me better access to her lips. To her goddamn delectable mouth. She pressed her lips into a tight line, refusing to give me entry.
I smirked. “You want to play it like that, huh?” I leaned in, licking the corner of her mouth, tracing my tongue along the seam of her lips. She tried to resist, thrashing against my hold, but I tightened my grip in her hair, holding her at my mercy.
She could fight me all she wanted, but I knew the truth. Her body betrayed the lies she had spewed.
Harleigh wanted me.
Even if she hated me.
And right now, I didn’t care enough to stop.
“Open up for me, Birdie, let me in,” I whispered, kissing the corner of her mouth.
Her eyes simmered with anger, and I pulled back slightly to look at her, really look at her. Maybe I’d misread things. Maybe I’d seen what I wanted to see. Because she was a statue in my hold. A silent storm, waiting to strike.
Fuck, I’d messed up. I’d—
She crashed into me, her hands going around my shoulders, her mouth fusing to mine. Devouring me. A breathy moan spilled from her, and need pulsed through me as I slid my hand down her spine, pressing her closer, erasing every inch of space between us. I needed to feel her, feel the soft curves of her body, her smooth skin. Feel the steady beat of her heart beneath my palm.
Kissing Birdie, breathing her air, her taste, it was like coming home. It was the thing that had been missing for the last nine months.
Her.
Me.
Us.
“Fuck, B,” I breathed, cupping her face. Kissing her deeper, stroking my tongue against hers, exploring every inch of her mouth. Her skin.
I couldn’t get enough.
She made the loud noises in my head quiet.
She made the beast inside me slumber.
She made the darkness circling me abate.
“Nix,” she whispered, slowing the kiss.
“I’m here, B. I’m right fucking here.”
Wetness coated my cheeks, confusing me. I pulled back slightly, touching my head to hers. My heart was a wild beating thing in my chest as I stared at her. Took in the tears, her broken expression.
“B-B?” I choked out, wiping away the tears with the pad of my thumb. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“This was a mistake.” She stepped back, inhaling a ragged breath.
“A mistake?” My voice turned cold, my blood like ice in my veins. “Because you’re too good for me now? That it?”
She stared at me, shuttering her expression. Refusing to let me see what really lay there in her green eyes.
“This was a mistake,” she repeated, folding her arms over her chest, and touching a finger to her lips. Prodding. As if she was trying to remember if it had been real or not.
It had been real; the most fucking real I’d felt in weeks. Months. And she was going to pretend like it didn’t matter.
“So that’s it, huh?” Dejection coated my insides. Thick and sludgy, it filled my chest making it hard to breathe. “You don’t even want to hear my side of the story?”
“I…” Hesitation flickered in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Too much has happened.” Her gaze dropped to the ground. “We can never go back.”
I wanted to roar at her. Beg her to listen. To hear me out. But I wouldn’t… I couldn’t.
Not yet.
“The past doesn’t define you, doesn’t define who you are,” I said. “That’s what you used to tell me.”
When I’d turn up on the door sporting another bruise from my father that’s what she’d say to me. Always trying to remind me that I wasn’t like him, that I would never become him.
“And it doesn’t.” She met my heavy stare once more. “But this is different. We’re different.”
“So that’s it? You just want to pretend like this didn’t happen?”
“It shouldn’t have happened,” she said quietly, barely meeting my eyes.
“Such pretty lies, B.” I closed the distance between us, reaching out to snag a strand of her hair. She pressed her lips together, refusing to answer. “It was always you, B,” I admitted. “I know things are fucked up. I know I messed up… but so did you. This isn’t over. We’re not over. We’re not—”
“Yo, Nix. We need to go.” Zane burst through the trees, pale and wide-eyed.
I jerked away from Harleigh. “What happened?”
“Chloe.”
“Fuck.” I dragged a hand down my face.
“Kye needs us, man.”
I glanced back at Harleigh, and her lips parted as if she was going to say something. But she thought better of it, snapping her lips closed.
Say it, I silently implored. Ask me to stay.
The words never came though. She just stood there, expressionless. Frozen. As if we hadn’t just devoured each other with our teeth and tongues.
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s go.” I spun around and stormed off, fighting my natural instinct to stay with her. To protect her.
“Hey, man. Where’s Harleigh?” Miller asked as I blew past him. “Wilder, where’s—”
But I was gone.
I needed to get the fuck out of here, anger descending over me like a red mist.
The whole situation was fucked.
“Whoa, Nix, calm down.” Zane caught up with me as I followed the shadowy path back toward the party. We’d only wandered down here because Cherri turned up and decided to try to get a rise out of me by draping herself all over Hench.