He was right. Of course, he was, but it was different now. Everything was different from the way things had begun, but that didn’t stop the hurt from filling Josie’s eyes or the way she took a step out of my reach.
"I’m not staying here for this." Josie’s hands tightened around her backpack straps until her knuckles turned white. "You two can have a whose dick is bigger than whose contest without me here."
She didn’t look back at me as she strode toward the door, and neither Lucas nor I tried to stop her. I wasn’t foolish enough to try to have any sort of conversation with her while he was here.
After what had just happened between us, I wanted to know where her head was. The sex between us was amazing. There was no question about that, but I had felt more. Everything about us felt like more, and I knew that she felt some of that too.
Even if she hated me, she still felt something, and I let the small bloom of hope take over at the idea that maybe she didn’t hate me as much as she thought she did. If she did, she would never let me touch her like she just had.
She would never let me devour her and fuck her and need her like I did.
Lucas looked over at me as the door slammed behind her, and I knew that he was ready to kill me. He hated me every bit as much as I hated him.
He was the villain in my story and I in his.
It didn’t matter which one of us was right and which one was wrong. I would never see him as anything other than what he was to me, and he would do the same.
It felt so foreign to remember him as anything other than this, but we had been friends once. We had been so close that I had trusted him.
Fuck, I had really trusted him.
"Don’t go around her again." He backed away from me, and I let him have the parting shot. I didn’t need to prove anything to Lucas. Josie was mine whether he wanted her to be or not. She was mine, and the only person that could stop that was her.
And I would fight to prove to her that I was worth it. Even though I had fucked up beyond repair, I was willing to do whatever it took to convince her otherwise.
I was still the villain in her story too, but I would either fall or rise at her hand alone. She had the power to destroy me if she wanted. She held all the power, and I was completely at her mercy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JOSIE
Ineeded to get out of here.
It had been over an hour since I walked out of that locker room, and I had been watching every tick of the clock until that final bell rang.
I wanted to get away from this place. Away from Lucas and Beck and the memory of what I had just done with him. I could still feel him between my legs. I could feel the low ache there and in my lower stomach, and even though I had loved it when it was happening, I regretted every minute of it now.
I regretted that I had let him get to me when I should have been shoving him away.
I felt insane. I knew that Beck wasn’t good for me, I knew exactly what he had done, and I still couldn’t just walk away.
What Cami told me didn’t change anything. Not really.
Not for me and Beck.
I knew his reasoning behind what he did, but that didn’t erase his actions.
He still made his choice to fuck with my life, even if he did so out of his anger for Frankie.
Out of his care for her.
I wouldn’t lie and say a part of me hadn’t softened toward him when I heard the truth from Cami’s lips. Even if it had still hurt me.
I pushed past the heavy front doors and out toward the parking lot. There were a ton of students milling about, and I wanted to avoid them all. I had no interest in talking to any of these people.
I had to work tonight, and I just needed to get there and talk to Allie and
have her talk me off my ledge.
She was the only one I had to talk to, the only one I truly trusted, and I knew that she wouldn’t judge me for what I had done. She never judged me.
I made my way to the far corner of the parking lot where my car was parked, and I finally felt like I could breathe as the sounds of everyone around me faded with the distance I put between us.
I felt like I had been suffocating under their constant stares and judgment.
I had almost made it to my car, my dad’s car, when I saw Frankie standing next to Beck’s SUV. She was messing with her phone, and I tried to quickly walk by without her noticing me.
I had barely ever spoken to the girl, not really, and I honestly didn’t know what I would say now. Now that I knew the truth.
I felt guilty that I hadn’t known before, that I hadn’t known and she had to face me like I wasn’t Lucas’s stepsister.
She looked up just as I passed his SUV, and her gaze hitting mine caused my steps to falter. I couldn’t just look her in the eyes and walk away like I knew nothing. I couldn’t just let this girl think I was somehow as cruel as my stepbrother.
"Hi." She blinked up at me, and I shifted on my feet in front of her. We were only a few feet from each other, but it felt like we were miles apart. She was Beck’s sister and I was Lucas’s stepsister.
She had never done anything wrong to me nor I to her, but somehow, I still felt like I was her enemy. We were on opposite sides, the line drawn in the sand by the men who surrounded us, and I hated that I felt like I couldn’t cross it.
"Hey." I felt so foolish standing in front of her not knowing what to say, but part of me realized that she probably felt the same way. Her brother hadn’t done to me what my stepbrother had done to her, but in a way he had.
They had both taken advantage of our trust, and in doing so, hurt us irrevocably.
Neither one of us spoke for a couple of seconds, then we both try to talk at once. Our rushed words were mumbled over each other’s. We both laughed before I mustered up the courage to say what I needed to say.
"I’m sorry for what Lucas did to you." She looked shocked by my words, and I could see the shame fill her eyes as soon as they passed my lips. She was still wholly affected by what he had done to her. It didn’t matter that it had happened in the past or that Lucas thought she had wanted what he did to
her. Every part of me knew that she hadn’t simply by looking at her face.
And my stomach felt like it was in a constant flip as I saw it. That truth staring back at me.
Lucas had taken from her, and it was something I wasn’t sure she would ever get back. Some piece of her armor, her dignity, her heart. And I knew that even though it had felt like it just a moment ago, what had happened to us was nothing alike.
I was pissed at Beck for what he had done, but Lucas had truly hurt this girl. He had taken from Frankie, and I had wondered what she had been like before he had. Had her smile been different? Her laugh?
Had she always looked like there was a shadow clouding her eyes?
"And I’m sorry for what Beck did to you."
"Don’t." I held up my hand and tried to shut down her apology. I couldn’t stand to hear it.
Frankie owed me nothing.
Not an apology. Not her sympathy.
It made my chest ache just hearing it pass her lips.
"You don’t owe me any kind of apology." There is a sadness in her eyes that told me she knew what I meant. What Beck had done to me was wrong, but it wasn’t the same thing.
It wasn’t even comparable.
I could apologize to her for the rest of my life for what Lucas had done, and it wouldn’t be enough.
Nothing would ever be enough to erase what he had done.
"You don’t owe me an apology either. Neither of us can help the fact that our brothers were jackasses to two girls that loved them." Her words struck me in my chest, and it was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that however she had felt about Lucas was vastly different than how I felt about Beck. She may have loved Lucas, but I couldn’t say the same. I had thought I was falling for Beck, I may have even used that damn L-word before, but now it felt so stupid.