I snuggled deeper into the softness around me. The familiar, crisp fresh laundry smell had me burrowing in farther, trying to absorb more of the comfort. I wanted to wrap it even tighter around myself and never wake up, a reverse Sleeping Beauty. I hoped my alarm didn’t go off. Do I have lunch money for Alyson? Have I overslept for my shift at the bakery? Screw it—I don’t even care.

My face was pressed against the hard plane of a chest, and smooth skin rubbed against my cheek. My head moved in time with each breath of his rising and falling chest.

“I think they doth protest too much.” The loud words startled me from my warm cocoon, and I slowly got my bearings. Other sounds sank in slowly—seagulls, no cars rumbling by…

I wasn’t home. I was at the beach house. I opened my eyes and shot up, my head whipping around to see Declan, Mak, Heath, and Kara staring back at me. His arm was around my shoulder and my face had been nestled in the crook of his neck. My arms were wrapped around his waist with my legs across his lap. I could smell his leather and mint scent since my nose was right against his skin, and the urge to throw my leg over his and straddle his body, take him out of his pants—what the hell am I thinking? This was what happened when I’d been sex-deprived for too long.

I turned my head with wide eyes so big I might as well have been a Looney Tunes character, and I stared at my own personal snuggle pillow.

Emmett.

The night before came rushing back—the beach, grilling, Noah coming over, Emmett leaving, and the storm…the horrible way my stomach had knotted…trying not to lose it in the bathtub before he’d shown up…and then us watching movies.

We disentangled ourselves from each other and shot up off the couch. Emmett squeezed the back of his neck. At least he looked as unsettled as I felt.

I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling more naked than I had the previous night in front of Emmett with my soaked-through clothes.

Kara stepped up from beside everyone else and held out her hand, pointing to us. “This summer has been better than any show I could ever have dreamed up.”

Everyone nodded and smiled. Their full-out grins at our whole situation were maddening.

“Glad you guys are all finding this so hilarious.” Emmett barbs were part razor, part cotton candy. There was an edge to his voice, but he wasn’t spitting acid like the first night.

“You’re back.” Declan grabbed him in a bear hug that turned into a wrestling match.

“Obviously.”

Heath rounded the couch and punched Emmett in the arm.

“I got stuck in the flooding from the storm. I couldn’t get out, so I walked back.” He didn’t look at me. Right. He hated me, thought I’d cheated, and nothing had changed just because he had been nice to me the night before.

The awkwardness was back, like that feeling when you trip in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Declan stepped forward. “Why didn’t you call us? We’d have come to get you.”

“It’s all good. It was late. I needed the space.”

I folded the blanket and draped it over the arm of the couch. The closeness of the previous night had evaporated so quickly my lips puckered.

Declan rocked back on his heels.

“Let’s head somewhere off the island today, if the bridge is clear,” Emmett suggested.

Heath sucked his breath through his teeth and made a face like when your grandmother offers you another plate full of meatballs with raisins in them. “That would be awesome, but we’ve got a couples kayaking thing going on today.”

“Wow, way to extend the invite.” Emmett looked at them like they’d kicked his dog. “Not like I didn’t pay for all this so we could hang out.” He actually said it like he’d forgotten he hadn’t paid for this summer vacation. It was a default for him that he always paid. As long as I’d known him, he’d never tried to bend people to his will with his money, but the fear that he would had always lurked in the background for me, especially after the run-in with his parents. I’d always worried it was only a matter of time before he’d lord the fact that he was paying for things over me.

“Wow, nice, Emmett.” I crossed my arms over my chest, seething. It seemed the passing storm hadn’t just washed away the lightning and thunder, but also my driving fear to run and hide when he was near.

“It’s true.” There was fire in his eyes.

“Technically, it’s not,” Heath said, piping up as he inched toward Emmett like he was approaching a wounded animal.

Emmett’s head whipped around. “What?”

“We told you not to worry about paying for all this, so everyone chipped in and split it. Since you weren’t going to be here the whole summer, it didn’t even make sense for you to foot the bill. We wanted to give it back to you, finally pay for something for you.”

“You guys are renting the place without me?” The edge to his voice was a mixture of disbelief and betrayal. His shoulders rounded and he fixed his eyes on me.

“It’s no big deal. We gave the realtor the money and everything’s set up. There’s a refund check waiting for you at her office. They were going to mail it out this week.” Heath looped his arm around Kara’s shoulder, and Emmett looked even more confused than before.

“I thought I could take it, but this situation is fucked.”

“Emmett…”

His eyes snapped to mine. My stomach curdled. I thought maybe after last night we’d be able to make it through this. But it wasn’t just anger in his eyes. It was hurt. Me being here was hurting him.

“I’m going for a run.” He disappeared into the bedroom and came back out seconds later with a shirt in hand, slipping his sneakers on.

“Hey, Emmett—” Heath called out.

“Where is he going?” Liv asked from the bottom of the steps.

The door banged closed behind him, a hell of a lot less dramatically than the last time he’d walked away from me.

“He’ll be okay. Just give him some space. Who’s ready for some breakfast?” Declan clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

Everyone else headed into the kitchen. Cabinets opened and closed. Electricity raced through my body. This wasn’t over. He’d be back. The weight on my chest made it hard to breathe. I couldn’t take this, couldn’t take the anger and hatred in his eyes. Worst of all was the hurt. It was why I’d stayed away, why I’d left as soon as I could, but Mak wasn’t going to let me anymore. I wasn’t going to force her to keep getting between us, sending us to our corners of the ring.

Following the scent of coffee, I walked into the kitchen, and Mak pushed a mug toward me. A small smile was all I could muster. Lifting the pot, I froze mid-pour. Everyone else moved around, pulling things out and laughing together.

Out the kitchen window, I saw someone had pulled into the driveway with Emmett’s car, followed by a truck with ‘Mike’s Auto Body’ painted on the side. A guy in coveralls stood beside Emmett and handed him the keys, and he signed the clipboard the mechanic held out. Emmett’s car was parked beside Percy, who looked like a beaten-down lump next to Emmett’s pristine new S-Class coupe.

“Shit.” I shook the piping hot coffee off my hand and dashed out the door. I couldn’t let him leave. I wasn’t going to let this be over. He’d stay away because of me, and as much as I wanted to hate him forever, I couldn’t take the guys away from Emmett, not when I knew how much they meant to him. I’d written his parents off as a lost cause; loneliness was something I’d always seen in him. He’d tried to pretend but wore it on his sleeve whenever I was around, never afraid to tell me how much he missed me and liked me being around, unlike most guys our age, who were desperately trying to play it cool. My dad might not have been the best, but he was usually around, and I’d always had Alyson.

Emmett had extended me a kindness the previous night; I could do this for him.

With my hands on the railing, I raced down the steps, my bare feet slapping against the brick pavers when I hit the bottom. The engine turned over. I yanked open the passenger door and threw myself into the car.

Emmett’s arm was behind the headrest of the passenger seat as he prepared to back up.

“What the hell are you doing? Get out.” He stared at me like a he’d seen a ghost, haunted and angry.

“No, listen, we can’t keep doing this—declaring a truce and then crapping all over it.”

He stared straight ahead and tightened his hands on the steering wheel.

“I need you to leave.” The muscles in his jaw tightened.

“Listen to me.” There was an edge of desperation in my voice, more so than usual. “We’ve co-existed fine enough so far. I’m not going to be here all summer. I’ve got one week left. With Declan and Mak together, we’re going to have to figure out how to get over our past. I know you don’t think it’s true, but I’m not trying to keep you away from the guys.”

He glanced at me before settling right back on the steering wheel.

“I don’t want to figure things out. I don’t want you here. Leave my friends alone.” His angry words bounced off the plush interior of the car, which was nothing like Percy, whose suspension was so shot I was surprised my teeth hadn’t been jolted loose.

I bristled. This couldn’t work if I was the only one trying to keep the powder keg from exploding. “They were my friends too, ya know. Who the hell did Heath come to for advice with that student teacher? What about Declan at the prom with Mak? They were my friends for three years.” Not until the past week had I realized how much I’d missed them. They were the same goofy group I’d hung out with on so many nights at Emmett’s house or at the rink. “You don’t have the right to tell me where I can and can’t go.”

“I booked this house, I paid—”

“You didn’t. You’ve had that in your back pocket for a while, haven’t you? Always ready to whip it out and rub it in someone’s face. Everyone chipped in to pay for this place.” I jabbed my fingers toward the house. The slats of the blinds at the window swung and swayed as whoever was there shot back away from the glass.

“I’ve never used the fact that I’ve paid against anyone.”

“But you could. You always had that power and you knew it—we all knew it.”

“I would never use that against the guys.”

“Looks like no one wanted to take any chances.” I glared. I’d hoped he wasn’t that guy, or maybe I’d been blind to clues that he was more like his parents than I wanted to admit. I hated thinking that, never wanted to believe it, but had I pretended myself right into a pretty little corner with a guy who’d turn out exactly like Mr. and Mrs. Cunning? A shudder shot through me.

The heat of his stare was a punch to the stomach.

“I—” His shoulders rounded, his body hunched, but his grip on the wheel didn’t lessen.

“We’re both here by their gracious invitations.”

“I don’t want you here.” His words barely made it through his clenched jaw.

“We’ve gone over this more than once: you have fun, I have fun, and then we both leave.” A few months ago, I’d have turned around and run the second there was a hint of Emmett in the vicinity, but I wasn’t going to do that anymore.

“That’s what you’re all about, right? A fun time?” He glanced over at me, an ice-cold blast breaking through the surface of his barely controlled emotions.

“You’re right. That’s all I’m about, nothing but fun. Fucking fun-time Avery.”

He had no idea what I’d been through. He couldn’t even begin to comprehend the shitty hand life had handed me. Did you ever tell him? I pushed that thought aside.

“Is that what you were doing that night?”

I didn’t need to ask which night. I closed my eyes. “Is that what you’ve been doing with the puck bunnies draped all over you every time you’re photographed? The ones at the dinners? The clubs? The charity events? And almost never the same one.” I hated that I knew that, hated that I’d been compelled to look, unable to tear my eyes away, like watching a slow-motion train colliding with a semi stalled on the tracks.

His head whipped around. “I never looked at anyone else when we were together. The thought never even entered my mind. My hands on someone else…” He grimaced. “I couldn’t even comprehend something like that. You were the one—”

My palms were clammy. Screw it. If he didn’t want to get along, I wasn’t going to drag him back inside. “Well you sure made up for lost time.” I put my hand on the door handle.

His heavy grip wrapped around my wrist. “No, you don’t get to pretend like you’re the injured party. What I did after we broke up had nothing to do with what you did.”

I’d had nightmares about that night for months after. It was only in the last year or so that they’d subsided, and I had a feeling that would change now.

“It had everything to do with what I did. You got everything you deserved.” The perfect life without me in it.

“What the hell kind of thing is that to say? You’re saying it was my fault? That I made you do it?”

“Let go.” I tugged my arm away from him, but his firm grip didn’t budge. My heart was hammering against my ribs so hard, I thought I might break one. I needed to get out of that car. It was like all the air had been sucked out of it. Going out to him had been a mistake. I should have let him go, let him drive off into the sunset. This was what I got for trying to make peace.

“No! You…” His lips moved, but no sound came out. The fingers around my wrist shook with unbridled anger. “I never cheated!” he bellowed, his face a twisted mask of pain and anger.

“Neither did I!” I spat right back in his face, letting out the words I’d been holding on to for so long, the ones I’d begged him to believe that night in the room with Fischer. Then we’d walked out in front of everyone and it was too late to get into the details. I couldn’t confess what had really happened to Emmett, not in front of everyone, their eyes laser-focused on us. The truth would have torn my life—my little sister’s life—apart. The resolve steeling his gaze when I’d refused to say a word still haunted me.

Tears glittered in my eyes as his got wide, anger creasing the edges in the corners before the look changed. Confusion and disbelief filled his face.

I’d just told him the truth.

Shit.

With one more hard jerk, I snatched my arm out of his hold and threw the car door open. My head snapped up at the scraping of metal on metal—another nice, new dent on Percy.

Whatever. I needed to get out of there. Rushing back up the stairs, I stomped into the living room, ignoring the looks thrown my way through the breakfast bar opening.

Like he’d been a saint. Like I hadn’t seen pictures of him all over LA with a new woman on his arm in nearly every picture. I’d immunized myself to it after a while, reasoned that I’d made my choice by letting him think what it had been so easy for him to believe, by letting him think it hadn’t killed me to let him go. That was what stung the most—all it had taken was one misunderstanding for him to blow up and throw everything away. So, I’d given him what I never could, what he couldn’t give himself—a future with everything he ever wanted—and I got to protect my family.

The front door crashed open, making me jump. His nostrils flared and he stood filling the entire doorway. The pit in my stomach grew into a yawning cavern. Everyone’s eyes bounced between us.

“Avery…” Mak stepped out of the kitchen and protectively put her hand on my arm.

“No.” I shook my head, but couldn’t look away from Emmett. This train wreck was inevitable. Maybe that was why I’d stayed, to clean out the old wound I kept reopening over and over. The old fear had made me run, but I didn’t need to anymore. Alyson was in college. My dad could find another job if he needed to, but this? This ended today.

“You don’t get to run away, run from this. What the hell do you mean ‘Neither did I’?”

Tears burned the backs of my eyes. All the speeches I’d practiced over the years fled my mind. So many times I’d practiced it. I never should have let him believe it. I’d never wanted us to end the way we had. I’d never wanted it to end at all, but then what? What would have happened? The slow dismantling of what we had? That would have been so much more painful.

I stubbornly squeezed my lips together. The achy, trembling, raw feeling was clawing its way out of my chest. We were a powder keg drenched in lighter fluid on top of a bonfire.

Warm, snuggly night aside, this was what I needed to see. Those thoughts that had raced through my head while on the couch with him had been a mistake. His niceness had been a courtesy—nothing more.

He hadn’t believed me then, on that night when I’d stood in front of him, begging him to believe me while that cold stare filled his eyes—the Cunning stare that had previously only ever been turned on me by his parents.

The humiliation of that night had burned even brighter when his words cut me down. It was like he’d been waiting for it to happen, waiting for there to be the slightest hint of doubt so he could cast me aside.

“You were there—you saw what happened!” Emmett jabbed an angry finger into the center of Declan’s chest.

“You saw what you wanted to see.” My words came out sharp and full of venom.

“I saw what you were doing.” His hands opened and closed, anger vibrating off him. Good, because I was just as pissed.

“You didn’t see anything because nothing was happening.”

“He had his hands in your fucking hair, Avery. You were on your knees in front of him. What the hell do you call that?” he yelled, and the windows rattled. The storm was inside now.

I didn’t cringe, didn’t back down. I’d meet him on the battlefield, meet his fire with some of my own. I’d made mistakes, more than I could count, but I hadn’t been wrong about me. About how he really saw me, about the whispers and stares from everyone around us. How would that have changed once he was a professional athlete? On the national stage, going to the events he did? I’d seen the women he’d had on his arm the last few years.

They were nothing like me. They were polished, gorgeous. No one ever did a double take when they saw him with them, not like they would have with me. It would only have been a matter of time before he thought the same thing. The thought made me want to wrap my arms around my stomach and race from the room, bury myself under the covers, and never come out, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

I took two steps closer. Declan got the hell out of dodge.

Mak had been on me to finally get it all out there. Well, here it is. “The worst fucking night of my life.”

“Because you got caught.”

I shook my head, but kept my eyes on him. He wanted someone to be pissed at? He needed to look in a damn mirror.

“No, because the guy I loved and who professed to love me didn’t believe me when I told him what happened. I begged you. You took the word of a drug dealer over mine. I didn’t fucking cheat on you.” My throat was so tight I could barely get the words out.

“Damn,” Kara whispered.

Yes, we had an audience, but I wasn’t going to stand there with everyone still thinking in the back of their minds that I was some unfaithful asshole. Some secrets didn’t matter anymore. Alyson had graduated, so I didn’t have to protect her, didn’t have to keep my deal with the devil any longer.

It wasn’t exactly how I’d pictured this going down, but since when had anything I planned ever gone my way?

Emmett’s eyes got wide. The anger on his face was blanketed with confusion again then turned right back into rage.

“I don’t believe you.” His words came out raw and ragged.

Bile raced up my throat. Those same words had nearly broken me before, but now just pissed me off. “That’s exactly what you said that night, and that was when I knew all your pretty words about loving me and wanting us to be together forever meant nothing.” Disappointment weighed in my stomach, though not as hard and heavy as it had then—that night it had taken me to my personal brink. I shook my head in disgust and glanced at Mak. “This is why I didn’t tell him before. No use when someone’s already made up their mind.”

I turned to walk away then a heavy hand manacled my upper arm, not painfully, but it was a strong grip. Emmett stared down at me.

I lifted my chin, waiting for an insult. During the storm the previous night, I’d been vulnerable, had been weak and afraid. I wasn’t anymore.

His words were fierce, slicing as they made their way through me. He jabbed his finger at the front door. “Everyone out.”