*
Darkness embraced the side of the house, the back porch and the yard. I struggled across the lawn, my arms aching, blood staining my collar from the cut I’d staunched beneath my eye.
Christ, that’d bled like a son of a bitch. So what? This was what I’d wanted. To teach him a lesson for what he’d done—for chasing her away.
The cops would come soon. I didn’t have much time.
I jogged up the back steps, my loafers scratching on the wooden boards, and strode to the window next to the back door. Mike had always left it unlocked for me throughout high school, and now that we were home from college, it was no different.
I slipped my fingers under the wooden frame and lifted it quietly.
One leg went in, then the other, and I entered the house. It was quiet as the grave, but for the tick of a grandfather clock from the living room. More shadows, more blackness. That suited me perfectly.
I wound around the familiar shapes of dining chairs and a table and reached the open archway that led out into the corridor. I halted and listened. In the distance, sirens whooped through the night.
A smirk tugged at the corners of my lips.
I shuttled down the hall, then up the first and second flights of stairs to the attic room at the very top. The door was closed, and the sliver beneath it let out nothing but faint, pale light. Not a bedside lamp, but something else. A nightlight?
Shit, no way. She was too old for that.
In spite of everything, my heart skipped a beat, and I stalled in front of Olivia’s door.
She was the only one who did this to me.
Cops on my ass? Didn’t bother me. My father’s displeasure? Fuck him. But Olivia… She’d already made it clear she was ready to move on. She’d regret that decision sorely. She’d regret ever imagining that she could walk away from our little whatever-the-fuck-it-was unscathed.
My resolve iced over, and I turned the crystal knob on her door and let myself inside.
Stars blinked down from the ceiling—hundreds, perhaps a thousand, luminous plastic stars arranged in constellations. They cast an eerie yellow-white light on the desk in the corner, the carpet, the bed, its sheets, and the figure lying atop them.
Olivia’s hair was spread across her pillow, a book clutched to her chest. She breathed evenly, deeply, peaceful in sleep.
Well, that’ll have to change.
I snapped the door shut behind me, and her eyelids fluttered open. She blinked, her brow wrinkled, and she sat up. She spotted me and let out a tiny yelp.
She didn’t scream. Good girl.
“Beckett?” she whispered, voice hoarse, eyes wide and green-blue as the ocean. I couldn’t make out their color, but I’d memorized it, so that they glowed in the dark, just as much as the stars above did.
“Up,” I said.
Olivia shifted the book, and her frown became a scowl. “What the hell? Get out of my room. You have no right to be here. You have—”
“Get up, now.”
She leaned forward, no doubt with another choice bit of vitriol hovering on the tip of her tongue, then froze. “What happened to you? There’s blood on your—Beckett. What happened?” She was off the bed in seconds, the book dropping to the carpet with a dull thud.
She practically floated across the room and halted in front of me, her fingers dancing up my face to the cut along my cheekbone.
I inhaled at her touch, not from pain, but from the sheer need that coursed through me. Never had we touched like this. We’d never held hands. We’d only written letters, only fantasized, pretended we could be together when in truth, we wanted different things.
I didn’t need a woman around, holding me back, ruining my best-laid plans. I was on a warpath—to destroy my father’s dream for my future, to get out of college.
And she wanted to study for real, in spite of what her family had told her she should be doing. Another reason she’d attracted me.
Spoiled Olivia from high school had become Spoiled Olivia who was driven, too. Driven and stunning, with lips that quivered each time they spoke my name.
Her fingers dropped from my cheek, and I watched her reactions, the concern that flickered there, then confusion, frustration. The myriad emotions I made her feel. No one else would ever compare.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You really don’t know?” I said, and the smirk leaked into my tone. “Poor Olivia.”
“Don’t start with that. You can’t. I know who you are inside, Beckett. You can’t hide from me.”
She was wrong, of course.
“It’s the last night,” I said, after a second of silence, punctuated by those distant sirens. They drew closer now, grew louder. My time was almost up.
“Huh?” Olivia clicked her tongue. “You don’t always have to speak in riddles, god dammit.” But her breath caught in her chest.
We were so close. The closest we’d ever been. I’d never come up here in all the years I’d been friends with her brother. Not once. It would’ve violated the rules—Mike would never have approved, and I’d tried to respect that.
She made to step back, and I caught her wrists.
“Beckett.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Beckett, what happened to your face?”
“Life. You.” I dragged her to my chest, cupped her cheek, and brought my lips down to hers. It was a hard kiss. Rough as my personality, as the raw feelings that dangled between us, which had tortured me for the last five years.
She moaned against my mouth, and I was lost.
I parted her lips and tasted the sweetness of her mouth, of her tongue. I claimed her, every inch of that soft warmth, then pulled back and stepped out of reach.
Olivia sagged, pressed two fingers to her lips, and stared at me, wild-eyed. She didn’t say a word, but the desire radiated from her. Waves of need.
I wallowed in this moment, pulsed for her, then turned and walked for the door, powerful strides carrying me to whatever fate waited at my house next door.
“Beckett, wait,” she said, her voice thick. “Please.”
I left her there. I left her there, and I’d have done it again, given the chance.