Chapter One
AUSTIN
“Fire!” Someone had shouted the word loud enough for me to jolt awake in a full-on panic. Heart hammering against my chest, I quickly assessed my bedroom for flames or smoke.
Pink walls. I hated pink. Pink walls summed up just about everything you needed to know about me. Namely, that my life wasn’t mine to control. I had pink walls because my mom liked soft colors and wanted my room to look feminine.
And the old One Direction poster with asshole Zayn on the front of it? Well, that’s what normal teenagers had on their walls, right? At least, that’s what my father said, since we always had to please the voters. And when the local news did a story on our house, it was a huge hit. Look at the all-American straight-A student and her normal high school room! Yay me. So the walls were pink, and I was staring up at One Direction.
Damn you, Zayn, damn you to hell!
I shook my fist in the air. Partially because I was still pissed at him for leaving, but mainly because I was so pissed at myself for allowing others to control me.
I blinked up at the white ceiling, my eyes finally dry after so much crying. No tears left, I sighed.
No fire.
No heat.
Just. Nothing.
I blinked again. Had I imagined someone shouting “Fire!” at me? Was I really that exhausted?
“Oh look, you’re awake.” My best friend, Avery, breezed into my childhood bedroom with a plate of chocolate chip cookies in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. “I was afraid you were dead.”
“What?” I yawned, stretching my stiff arms over my head. Pieces of chocolate fell onto my face as I opened my clenched hands. Huh, imagine that, I still had some. “Why would I be dead?”
“You smell like it.” She scrunched up her nose. “And word on the street is you’ve given up showers and decided to stop shaving your legs.” She held up her hand.
“What? What are you doing?” I squinted and tried to focus. “Why are you holding up your hand?”
“Girl power. High five.” She closed it into a fist. “Or do we bump?”
“Why are you here? In my room? Isn’t it Monday? Don’t you have work?” After Avery screwed her boss—literally—and found her happily-ever-after with her childhood friend-slash-nemesis, she’d been moved to a different department, one that needed so much organization, I almost felt sorry for her having to put in so many hours. Between both of our schedules, we’d barely seen each other in the last week.
“Saturday.” Avery rolled her green eyes. “It’s Saturday, Austin, as in, the weekend.” She picked up a half-eaten granola bar and made a face. “Is this all you’ve had today?”
I snatched the bar away from her and almost growled. “Mine.”
“Wow, your transformation is complete. You’ve turned into a hairy beast with smelly hair and . . .” She narrowed her eyes. “Dear God, you have Cheetos in your hair.”
“Really?” I perked up.
“No!” She smacked my shoulder. “See! This is what I was afraid of! This is what you do when you get sad! You revert back to your junior high self.” Her eyes leveled me with a knowing glare. The one that was ever present during the tumultuous high school years when my then boyfriend, Braden, had literally slapped a piece of bread out of my hand during prom night because he said it was going to make me fat. Thinking about him gave me hives.
Avery sighed. “Are you stashing junk food in your bed?” She pulled back the covers to reveal my shame. “MoonPies in your nightstand!” Her movements were too quick.
“No, don’t!”
Too late. She could barely get the drawer open as chocolate MoonPies spilled over onto the floor.
“Austin.” Avery shook her head slowly and held out her hand. “Give me the Mountain Dew.”
Braden had hated Mountain Dew.
That’s why I bought stock in PepsiCo the minute we broke up.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I sniffed while trying to move the unopened soda farther under my pillow.
“One!” She held up a finger. “Two!”
“Stop counting! I won’t be threatened in my own room!”
The room I still lived in while I finished grad school.
The room that reminded me of all the things that drove me to want to go to grad school in the first place.
“Three!” Avery launched her body across mine, using her nails to scratch my arm as she dug under the pillow and swatted the Mountain Dew onto the floor. “Oh, Austin, they put formaldehyde in these things!”
I clenched my eyes shut. “Just go away.”
“No. I’m not leaving—and not just because you’re trying to pickle your body with this . . . Look, it’s been a month.” She pointed a judgmental finger at my can of soda. “You need to get over him.”
Him.
Because I refused to say his name.
Because saying his name was just asking to be haunted by the feel of him, his rough hands running all over my body, the way he kissed like he was going for the gold, or the way he never, ever, let me leave his side without squeezing my hand and kissing me across the lips, gently as if to say, Hey, just wanted to touch you.
The dreams were bad enough.
The memories?
Worse.
I refused to think about him during the day, because that just gave him more power, but my body had different ideas at night, when the darkness blanketed me in a quiet loneliness that threatened to choke me to death.
Everything was perfect.
And then it just. Wasn’t.
Damn it.
The tears came again.
Of course they did.
My chest was sore. Like an idiot, I rubbed it, but nothing made the heartache dissipate. Add school stress to the mix and I was an exhausted hot mess, barely able to function without sobbing my eyes out and drinking lots of coffee so I wouldn’t fail at life . . . or my classes.
School stress, I knew I could manage. I always did.
Family stress, it was always there.
Exhaustion? Well, that was typical for a college student.
But the whole Thatch situation? That’s what sent me over the edge. That’s what kept me up at night. That’s what made it so that when I turned in my last project, my professor gave me the number to the UW counselor hotline.
Thatch.
Why? Why was I so unlucky with guys?
He was supposed to be a really hot one-night stand. We’d had an agreement, and then everything changed. You’d have to be insane not to want more of that man after one night. And when that one night turned into another, then another, and things got serious on my end, when I confessed how I really felt, he should have made a run for it! That’s what cock-sucking cheaters did! They made a lame excuse about how it was “fun” and then ran in the opposite direction with their tail between their legs. But what did he do instead? He said, “Let’s try.”
Let’s.
Try.
As in, let’s be more than sex partners every other Saturday when I wasn’t up to my ears in research and when he wasn’t scrubbing in on some lame-ass boob surgery.
Try.
So try we did.
And it worked.
And it was awesome.
Until it wasn’t.
Until the leopard took a good hard look in the mirror and thought to himself, Gee golly gosh, I really do miss those spots! Damn it! I can’t be tamed. Insert Miley Cyrus lyrics here.
End of story.
No happy ending.
Because the leopard let a girl, who was not me, maul him with her mouth in front of me, hours before confessing that he’d been feeling apprehensive about our arrangement.
What? Like we signed a contract or something?
That should have been my first clue.
Instead, I ignored it, and walked in on him kissing my best friend’s sister.
And then, after all the tears on my end, when I went to his apartment the next day and said I wanted to really try to make things work.
He said no. And broke up with me. With me.
As if I were the one who did something wrong! When I was willing to forgive and forget—willing to move the hell on! Because I liked him. An irritating voice panging inside my chest cavity, a voice also known as my heart, had other feelings, strong ones, feelings that reminded me how tender he’d been toward me, how loving, how caring. How pissed off he’d been when I told him about my parents’ lack of affection, and how nurturing he’d been when I confessed how badly school was stressing me out.
Fine. I loved him.
Had loved him.
Had.
I still couldn’t even look at my navy-blue Converse sneakers or favorite boyfriend jeans without bursting into tears. I’d worn them the night he’d broken up with me and quietly closed the door in my face.
The sound of the door clicking shut may as well have been a gun going off.
The pain was probably the same.
I knocked. Over and over again.
Finally, one of the neighbors threatened to call the cops. I hadn’t even realized I was sobbing until I got into my car and glanced in the mirror.
He’d broken me.
And he hadn’t even looked sorry.
With a loud sigh, Avery pushed Snickers wrappers out of her way and sat on my bed, putting her hand on my lap. “It will get better, I promise.”
“No,” I sniffled.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you that I took a can of spray paint to a few of his signs downtown and gave him boobs?”
I started laughing. “Yes.”
“No can do. I’m pretty sure they send you to prison for that kind of shit, but I did manage something even better.”
I perked up.
“Oh, I see that look of revenge in your eyes, and I like it. I can work with revenge. What I can’t work with is Sad Austin. I hate Sad Austin, she’s no fun, and I say this because I love you, but Sad Austin’s going to give Awesome Austin diabetes one day.” She pulled out a bag of Skittles from the foot of the bed and dropped it onto the floor.
“Those aren’t mine,” I said defensively while my mouth watered with need for the sugary, sticky candies.
“I forgot you still have an imaginary friend who sneaks into your room and litters it with junk food.”
“Hey, that excuse worked when I was eight! My parents totally believed me.” Probably because for the most part they ignored me. I was to be seen and not heard, and when the time came for me to do my part for Daddy and his campaigns, I memorized cute little speeches and made sure to wear dresses that were only an inch above my knee. My parents loved me—they just had an odd way of showing it.
“That’s called ‘enabling,’ sweetie.” Avery patted my hand and stood. “And I refuse to do that. So, Sad Austin has got to go. The first step is admitting you have a problem, and you”—she pointed to the adjoining bathroom—“have a problem. You smell like cheese.”
“But I love cheese,” I whispered longingly. “I could go for some cheese right now.” Where the hell was my Gouda when I needed it!
“Not the good kind, Austin.” Avery scrunched up her nose.
My shoulders slumped.
“Austin,” Avery began, using her serious voice, the one that said she was done with kid gloves and was ready to pull out the big guns, “you’re smart, motivated, a kick-ass friend, and you’re only a few months away from graduating with your MBA!” I nodded. She was right. She knew my hot buttons. There was a reason I was trying like hell and working my ass off. “Besides, do you really want to be like your mom?”
And there it was.
The knife twisting.
I recoiled.
A loud sigh escaped between my lips. Avery didn’t take it at all as a sign to stop talking before I burst into tears or smothered her with a pillow.
“She gave up everything for your father. Her education. Her interests. Now look at her.”
Yeah, my mother was a perfect Stepford wife with a tight smile. The perfect trophy wife. The perfect everything.
All modeled after my father’s idea of perfection.
I shivered.
That could not be my future.
“You don’t want that, do you?”
“Thatch wasn’t turning me into that,” I said defensively. Even though a small part of me knew that if I was willing to overlook cheating this early on in a relationship, then I had already lost a part of myself, an important part. I frowned. “What the hell!”
Avery jumped back.
I clenched my fists. “I was going to take him back!”
Her eyes widened.
I cleared my thoughts with a shake of my head. That bastard! I was going to sacrifice my pride for him! And he shut the door in my face!
In. My. Face.
“What’s this revenge you speak of?” I asked, feeling the best I had in weeks, probably because I suddenly realized I wanted to be angry at him, not sad because of him. I wanted to cut off his balls and feed them to piranhas while he watched.
“First.” Avery moved my hand away from her arm—apparently, I’d been squeezing her skin between my fingers. “My arm isn’t his face. Second.” She grinned. “I got Lucas drunk and got dirt on Thatch, so much dirt that I turned into a dirty little girl and—”
I covered my ears.
“Just making sure you’re listening.” She winked. “Let me put it this way. When a guy screws you over, cheats on you, and you’re the one in bed eating all the calories and hating life? Well, we don’t get sad, we get mad.”
“Madness is insanity. It’s not actually anger, Avery.”
“‘Anger’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘sad’—work with me here.” She clapped her hands in front of my face. “Okay, I’ve breathed through my mouth enough—go shower before they send in the hazmat people.”
I rolled my eyes. “Stop being melodramatic.”
“Your mom found a mouse yesterday.”
I let out a snort. The only time my mom came into my room was to steal my clothes. The ones she fought tooth and nail to fit into. Spin classes were her addiction—then again, she had a sweet tooth too, so she had no choice but to take a daily class in order to stay perfect.
For my perfect father.
For our perfect family.
I gagged.
“So?”
“In your room. I’m pretty positive it died from Cheetos consumption.”
“You’re lying.”
“It had a bloated stomach. We had a funeral for it and everything.”
I rolled my eyes at her clear exaggeration and slowly walked toward the bathroom, stopping once I was at the door and turning to whisper, “Thanks, Avery.”
“For what?”
“Kicking my ass.”
“Oh, that part comes later.” She winked. “Just remember . . . revenge can be sweeter than”—scrunching up her face, she made a circular gesture around the room with her arm—“whatever the heck you have going on in here.”
I nodded and shut the door.
She was right.
I was going to destroy him.
And when I was finished?
His heart was going to be shattered and scattered—just like mine—just like mine still was.