“Why!” I throw my hands in the air. “So you can hold it against me the first chance you get? So you can laugh at me with your friends? The prissy girl with the first-world problems? So you know how weak I am? Why should I talk to you? I’m nothing to you. I’ve always been your nothing. The bitch who drove your twin sister away. Don’t pretend otherwise just because we shared a few sloppy, illicit kisses. Don’t act like you give me a sliver of thought when I’m not in front of you. I’m not Adriana.”

His lips curl in revulsion. I think I really pissed him off this time around.

He takes my face in both his hands and brings my nose to brush his.

“No,” he hisses. “You’re not Adriana. I agree.”

He pulls back from me, digs in the back pocket of his low-hanging skinny jeans, and takes out a single house key with a blue plastic string tied around it. He throws it into my hands. I catch it.

My eyes widen. How did he…?

“Stole it from your pompoms.” He looks away, walking to the other side of the room, pacing like a tiger in a cage. This is big. Huge, maybe. He keeps me everywhere he goes.

I chase him across the dance room, planting a hand on his shoulder. He turns around. He looks ragged and heartbroken, and I think it’s because of me. I want it to be because of me. What kind of person does that make me?

“What’s eating you, Daria Followhill, queen bee, cheer captain, and the most popular girl in the county?”

My family.

My friends.

My secrets.

My insecurities.

My errors and mistakes and past.

And you. You bury me so deep in feelings I can’t even explain.

“Melody stopped coming to my room. It used to be our thing. Every night since I was born, she would give me a kiss good night. I think she stopped loving me,” I tell him, and when I do, I realize it’s not a lie. It’s a numbing notion inhabiting every cell in my body. My mother doesn’t love me anymore.

I made someone programmed to adore me unconditionally forget all about me.

“She loves you.” He slides the back of his hand against my throat, staring deep into my eyes. “But you hate yourself, so it doesn’t matter.”

I snort.

“I love myself. Look at me. I’m Daria Followhill.” I motion to my body with my hands. He shakes his head. He’s not buying it.

Wordlessly, he pushes me toward the mirror in front of us. Standing behind me, he jerks my chin up so I have to look at myself. At us. He’s over a head taller than me. Broad and muscular like a Greek god. His face is sharper, more symmetrical than mine. His charisma is blowing up this room, and I’m standing here, casing most of his body yet barely drawing any attention to mine.

“When I look in the mirror, I see an orphan. A football player. A student. A grieving brother. A guy whose dream is to attend Notre Dame so he can escape the shithole that’s his life and break the poverty cycle. I know who I am. But who are you? Tell me what you see, Daria.” His breath fans across my hair. “Help me get into this beautiful, awful head of yours.”

My hand travels to my stomach, and I grab a thin tire of fat.

“I’m too curvy.”

My hand flies to my face, a finger rolling over my nose.

“My nose is too small, and my eyes are too big. And my hair always looks hella dry.”

“What else?” he asks. His hand travels to my pajama shorts and snakes into them, his fingers tracing my slit through my panties. “Confide in me, my hideous little monster.”

I snort out a laugh, shaking my head. I want to tell him to stop. That he has a girlfriend and a child and I’m not like that. A Jerry Springer-style homewrecker. But for the first time since yesterday, I feel seen.

“I’m the most jealous and petty person I know,” I admit.

“That’s because you live inside yourself.” He kisses my neck, and I let him. I’m so weak and pathetic. “What else?”

“My soul is black, Penn. When I see competition, I smash it before it grows. I’m so vindictive.”

“No, Daria, you are so human. That’s what you are.”

My toes leave the floor as he tugs my panties aside, his hand shoved deep inside my shorts, and he starts fingering me with two fingers, his thumb playing with my clit. I moan and roll my head over his chest, closing my eyes and letting myself drift somewhere only we exist. My ass grinds against his erection, and I love feeling how hot he is for me.

“Your insecurities are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He bites my earlobe softly, and when I open my eyes, I see that he is still staring at us in the mirror.

Of course, he’d feast on my weaknesses. Why wouldn’t he? It makes him stronger in our screwed-up relationship.

My knees give out, and my hips buck forward as he fingers me faster and deeper, then a door whines open upstairs, and heavy footfalls descend the basement stairs.

“Marx.” I gasp, turning around and pushing Penn away. I look left and right helplessly, my eyes landing on the en suite bathroom of the studio. I shove him inside and slam the door behind him at the same time the studio door flies open and my dad steps in.

Shit, shit, shit.

I’m so busted. I pull my shirt down to cover a very prominent spot of lust on my shorts. My body shivers from the impending orgasm.