Leah was a good woman. Jacob knew that.

She was nice. Sensible. Charitable. Cute ass and soft eyes (again, paraphrasing here. Other than the eyes part. That shit was actually in the Bible.)

She was no Rachel, though.

She was no Rachel, and he wanted Rachel. It was. Always. Fucking. Rachel.

Jacob argued, fought, and tried to talk some sense into his uncle, but in the end, he’d lost. Life was like justice, even back then. It was anything but fair.

“Seven more years of work,” Laban promised. “And I’d let you marry Rachel, too.”

So, Jacob waited.

And lurked.

And yearned.

Which, anyone with half a brain should know, only gratifies your desperation for your subject of obsession.

Years ticked by. Slowly. Painfully. Numbly.

In the meantime, he was with Leah.

He didn’t suffer. Not per se. Leah was good to him. A safe bet. She could bear his children—something Rachel, he would later find out—had difficulty doing.

He knew what he wanted, and it may have looked like her, and may have smelled like her, and fuck—maybe even felt like her—but it was not her.

It took him fourteen years, but in the end, Jacob won Rachel fair and square.

Rachel might not have been blessed by God. Leah was. But here was the thing.

Rachel didn’t need to be blessed.

She was loved.

And unlike justice and life, love is fair.

What’s more? Eventually, love was enough.

Eventually, it was fucking everything.

Seven weeks into my senior year, another looming calamity had decided to blow up in my face in spectacular fashion. Her name was Rosie LeBlanc, and she had eyes like two frosted-over lakes in an Alaskan winter. That kind of blue.

The what-the-fuck moment grabbed me by the balls and twisted hard the second she opened the door to the servants’ house on Vicious’s lot. Because she wasn’t Millie. She looked like Millie—kind of—only smaller, shorter, with fuller lips, higher cheekbones, and the little pointy ears of a mischievous pixie. But she didn’t wear anything overtly weird like Emilia. A pair of sea-starred flip-flops on her feet, black skinny jeans cut wide at the knees, and a tattered black hoodie with a name of a band I didn’t know plastered in white. Designed to blend in, but, as I’d later find out, destined to shine like a motherfucking lighthouse.

Inferno-red hit her cheeks and crawled down the edge of her collar when our eyes tangled, and that told me everything I needed to know. She was new to me, but I was a familiar face. A face she studied, knew and stared at. All the fucking time.

“Are we engaged in a secret staring competition?” Her recovery was immediate. There was something in the rasp of her voice that almost sounded unnatural. Too small. Too hoarse. Too uniquely her. “Because it’s been twenty-three seconds since I opened the door and you haven’t introduced yourself yet. Also, you blinked twice.”

I originally came there to ask Emilia LeBlanc on a date, cornering her like a frightened animal with nowhere else to go. She wouldn’t give me her phone number. A hunter by nature, I was adequately patient to wait until she was close enough for me to pounce on, but it didn’t hurt to check on my prey every once in a while. If we were being honest, though, pursuing Emilia wasn’t really about Emilia. The thrill of the chase always made my balls tingle, and to me, she provided a challenge other chicks hadn’t supplied. She was new meat, and I was an insatiable carnivore. But I wasn’t expecting to find this.

This changed fucking everything.

I stood there like a mute and flashed my come-hither smirk, taunting the shit out of her, because on some level, she taunted the shit out of me. And it occurred to me that at that particular moment, maybe I wasn’t the hunter. Maybe, for a split, flashing second, I was Elmer Fudd with an out-of-bullets gun in the woods who just spotted an angry tigress.

“Can it even talk?” The tigress’s light eyebrows pulled together, and she leaned forward, poking me in the chest with her little claw. She called me it.

Ridiculing me. Undermining me. Fucking with me.

Wearing my best, innocent expression (that shit was hard to begin with. I forgot what innocence was before my umbilical cord was thrown into the trash), I clamped my teeth beneath my lips and shook my head no.

“You can’t talk?” She folded her arms and leaned against her doorframe, arching a skeptical brow.

I nodded yes, biting down a huge smile.

“That’s bullshit. I saw you at school. Dean Cole. They call you Ruckus. Not only can you talk, but most of the time, you can’t seem to shut up.”

Fuck yeah, little pixie. Bottle that rage and save it for when I roll you between my sheets.

To understand my level of surprise, you first have to know that no girl has ever talked to me like this before. Not even Millie, and Millie seemed to be the only female student who was immune to my all-American, hot-jock, tear-your-panties-with-my-teeth charm. Hell, that’s why I noticed her in the first place.

But as I said, plans change. It’s not like we’d dated yet. I sniffed Millie’s tail around school for a few weeks, debating whether she was worth pursuing, but now that I saw what I’d missed—this little firecracker—it was time to find warmth in her crazy flames.

I unleashed another dirty smirk. This particular one landed me the nickname Ruckus in All Saints’s hallways two years ago. Because I was. I was fucking chaos, brewing anarchy everywhere I went. Everyone knew that. Teachers, students, Principal Followhill, and even the local sheriff.

When you needed drugs—you came to me. When you needed a good party—you came to me. When you needed an amazing fuck, you came to me—and on me. And this was what my smirk—the one I’d been practicing since I was fucking five—said to the world.

If it’s corrupted and dirty and fun—I’m all over it.

And this girl? She looked like a whole lotta fun to corrupt.

Her eyes traced my lips. Heavy. Wanting. Drunk. It was easy to read them. High school girls. Though this particular one didn’t smile as wide as the rest. She didn’t offer a silent invitation for flirtation either.

“You speak,” she coughed her words accusingly. I sucked my lower lip and released it. Slow. Calculated. Teasing.

“Maybe I do know a few words after all.” I got in her face on a hiss. “Wanna hear the interesting ones?” My eyes begged for me to slide down her body, but my brain told me to wait it out. I decided to listen to the latter.

I was relaxed.

I was cunning.

But for the first time in years, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

She gave me a lopsided grin that rendered me speechless. Shoving so many words into one, single expression. Telling me that my attempt to butter her up left her sorely unimpressed. That she liked me—yes—and noticed me—sure—but that I was going to have to do better than casual, half-assed flirting to get there. Wherever it was, I was ready for the journey.

“Do I really?” She dallied, not even noticing as she did. I dipped my chin down, leaning forward. I was big, commanding, and confident. And I was trouble. She probably heard all about it, but if not, she was about to find that out.

“I think you do,” I said.

Two minutes ago, I was determined to ask her sister out—older sister, I bet, this chick looked younger and besides, I would have known if she was a senior—and lookie here, fate made her open the door and change my plans.

Baby LeBlanc sent me an odd look, challenging me to continue. Just as I opened my mouth, Millie galloped into my vision, sprinting toward the door from the small, stuffy living room like she was fleeing a war zone. She was clutching a textbook to her chest, her eyes puffy and red. She was staring straight at me, and for a second, I thought she was going to smack me across the face with the five-pound textbook.

In retrospect, I wish she had. It would have been far better than what she actually did.

Millie pushed the little pixie aside without even realizing that she was there, threw herself onto my chest—uncharacteristically affectionate—and pressed her lips to mine like a possessed demon.

Fuck.

This was bad.

Not the kiss. The kiss was fine, I guess. I didn’t have time to process it, because my eyes widened, darting to the spear-eared elf who looked horrified, her cornflower-blues staring, processing, and boxing the three of us into something I wasn’t ready to accept.

What the hell was Millie doing? A few hours ago she was still pretending not to notice me in the hallway, buying time, seeking space, faking indifference. Now she was all over me like a rash after a dodgy one-night stand.

Gently, I pulled away from Millie and cupped her cheeks so she wouldn’t feel rejected, still making sure we had enough space to fit the little pixie between us. Emilia’s proximity was unwelcome, and that was a fucking first when it came to a hot chick.

“Hey,” I said. The body of my voice lost its usual playful tilt, even to my own ears. This wasn’t like Millie. Something happened, and I had a general idea who caused this little scene. My blood boiled. I breathed through my nostrils, determined not to lose my shit. “What’s up, Mil?”

The emptiness in her eyes made me nauseous. I could almost hear the sound of her heart cracking inside her fucking chest. I chanced another glance at Baby LeBlanc, wondering how the hell I was supposed to walk out of this one. She took a step back, her eyes lingering on the hot mess express that was still trying to hug me. Millie was distraught. I couldn’t deny her. Not then.

“Vicious,” the older sister said through a loud sniff. “Vicious happened.”

Then she pointed at the calculus textbook like it was evidence.

Reluctantly, my gaze drifted back to Emilia ‘Millie’ LeBlanc.

“What’d the asswipe do?” I snatched it from her hand and thumbed through the pages, looking for nasty comments or offensive drawings.

“He broke into my locker and stole it,” she snuffled again. “Before stuffing said locker with condom wrappers and garbage.” She wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve.