No, I wanted to roar. I’m just like you. Angry. Bitter. Broken.
Swallowing the words, I lifted my chin in small defiance.
I couldn’t remember a time when we didn’t hate each other. The only difference was when I was a kid, part of me had craved his approval, his acceptance. I’d been desperate for whatever scraps of his attention I could get. But I quickly learned. I quickly learned that it was a fool’s hope.
“I want you gone.” His words were like a blow to the stomach.
“What the fuck do you mean, you want me gone?”
Jessa.
I couldn’t leave Jessa. I wouldn’t.
“After graduation, I want you out of here.”
“You know I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t—”
“Not my problem, kid. I’m done carrying your dead weight. Finish high school, figure out a plan, and get the fuck out of my life.” He stared past me, through me.
“Jessa won’t—”
“Jessa isn’t your responsibility and it isn’t her decision what happens in my fucking house,” he spat the words, full of venom and fire. “She’s mine, Nix. Mine. She isn’t your mother, thank fuck for that. She’s a good girl and I—”
“You don’t deserve her.” I stepped forward. “And you didn’t deserve my mother.”
“Watch it, kid,” he sneered. “If it wasn’t for Jessa you’d have been long gone by now.”
It shouldn’t have hurt. It shouldn’t have mattered that the man I hated with every fiber of my being felt the same. But it cut like tiny knives, slowly slicing me open, and leaving me to bleed out.
My mother hadn’t loved me enough to stay. And my father hated me enough to send me packing the minute he could.
Whoever said you could always count on family had clearly never met mine.
“Don’t worry,” I drawled, wrapping my words in false bravado. Because I would never—over my dead fucking body—let him see his words affected me. “I won’t outstay my welcome.”
“Good. And pull that shit with me again and you can pack your bag. We might not like each other, but this is my house and you will fucking respect that.”
Go fuck yourself. I imagined myself screaming the words at him. Grabbing the nearest thing I could find and throwing it at his smug fucking face. But I didn’t. I just stood there, teeth grinding behind pursed lips, glaring at him. Waiting for him to walk away. It wasn’t exactly a small win. I’d still be homeless come graduation. But at least I stood my ground.
It worked. He blew out an exasperated breath and stormed off toward his bedroom, no doubt going to grovel to Jessa.
I grabbed my keys and cell phone and shoved my feet into my sneakers and left, wondering if I’d even make it to graduation. It was getting harder to bite my tongue, to rein in my fists. But I had nowhere else to go.
I’d never given much thought to what happened after graduation. I wanted to get out of The Row, of course I did. But it was a dream I couldn’t afford to allow to take root. Because I had Jessa to think about. So I took each day as it came and hoped to God that one day she would wake up and smell the roses and leave my old man’s sorry ass.
But maybe she was right. Maybe loving someone meant setting them free. Letting them choose their own path. Even if that path was steeped in mistakes and woven with pain.
Even if it meant that in the end, you lost them…
Forever.
Nix
“What is this place?” Harleigh asked me as we drove in the darkness.
I was supposed to be driving her home, but after watching that fucker Denby taunt her at the party, I couldn’t do it.
I needed a minute.
I needed her.
Fuck, it was getting harder and harder to deny her.
And that kiss earlier…
* * *
“Did I… do something wrong?” she asked, her voice a weak whisper.
But I couldn’t tell her, I couldn’t… fuck. Tonight had been a real test of my restraint.
“Harleigh, not here, not now.” I let out an exasperated breath.
“What does that even mean? So I have done something? Is it the costume? Because I thought—”
“I can’t do this right now.” I snapped, storming off into the shadows.
But she followed. Of course she fucking followed me. Because that was Birdie, so willing to follow me into the dark.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me,” she shrieked. “We are talking about this. Right now.”
I swung around, trying my damn hardest not to crack. “Harleigh—”
“Don’t call me that.” She flinched, pain etched into her features. “You never call me that.”
True. I didn’t. She was always Wren or Birdie or B. But I needed to put some space between us, some distance.
“Just tell me why you’re being so… so weird.”
Silence stretched out before us, the gentle rise and fall of her chest taunting me, drawing my eye to her amazing curves. That tempting, hot as fuck outfit that I’d tried my damnedest to ignore all night.
“I…” I dropped my gaze, a murmured cuss leaving my lips.
“Phoenix.” She stepped forward. “Just talk to me, please.” Harleigh reached for my hand, but I jerked back.
“Don’t.”
“I know I’m not like Cherri or—”
“Cherri?” I snorted. “You think this is about Cherri?”
“Well, her… girls like her.”
“Birdie, that’s not— fuck. Fuck.” I jammed my fingers into my hair and pulled the ends, frustration radiating from me.
“Nix, what’s happening to us? I don’t—” Crowding her against a tree, I leaned down and touched my head to hers.
“I…”
Fuck. This was dangerous territory. The line I’d drawn between us was right there… right fucking there, and if we crossed it, if I crossed it, nothing would ever be the same again.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?” I whispered against the shell of her ear, feeling a shiver run through her.
“M-me?” she asked.
Harleigh pressed back into the tree trying to get a better look at my eyes. She went to speak, but I curved my hand around her throat, dragging my thumb over her bottom lip. “So fucking beautiful.”
Surprise lit up her eyes. “Nix, w-what are you—”
“Sssh, B. I’m trying really fucking hard not to lose control right now.”
A tremor ran through me. She was so close, too fucking close. Her scent. Her skin. Her delectable lips. How the fuck was I supposed to walk away without one taste?
One little taste.
“Why,” she breathed. “What would happen if you lost control?”
“This.”
My mouth crashed down on hers, hard and demanding. She gasped at the sudden assault as my tongue snaked out, licking her lips.
* * *
I shouldn’t have kissed her because now all I could think about was kissing her again. And again. Tasting her skin and mapping her sexy as fuck curves with my hands until I knew the shape of her body.