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I placed my palm on my chest, trying to slow down my heartbeat.

He whirled around to face me, hiding his back from me. He leaned towards me, threateningly. I backed up until my back met with the door. My bag slid from my arm, crashing into the floor.

With a face full of thunder, he snarled, “Not pretty enough for you, princess? What’s the matter, don’t like what you see? Don’t worry, Ariel, you won’t ever have to touch me.”

With that, he turned around and stormed off, further into the house. I stared after him with a world of heartbreak in my eyes and tears trailing down my cheeks. I hadn’t done anything wrong and yet I’d still managed to mess everything up.

I swallowed thickly, painfully. I didn’t want Dash to hate me.

Who had done that to his back? Quint had said that Dash’s mother and grandmother had treated him horribly. Were they responsible for those horrific scars on his back, hadn’t Quinton said something about his grandmother whipping him? I couldn’t remember exactly what Quinton had said to me about it. Did he have more somewhere else I hadn’t seen? I hoped not. Somehow, it would seem a whole lot worse if his family were the one’s responsible for it. It would also make what happened between my mother and I seem just a little bit less horrible. Which didn’t make me feel very good to think but I kind of liked that I wasn’t the only messed up one in the bunch. It made fitting in with them seem a whole lot more realistic.

“What the hell was that?” Julian asked cautiously.

He and Damien stood across the room, watching me, both looking extremely upset.

I sighed, completely forgetting about the creepiness outside due to the fact I had so much bullshit to deal with inside.

Boys.

You really didn’t need more than just the one. More than one was a headache.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I didn’t know Julian or Damien very well. One seemed nice and had always been sweet to me. The other one had a nice, non-complicated girlfriend who had sex with him whenever he wanted her to and she was older than me.

Both had seen me naked and neither would I consider a friend.

And, right now, both of them looked worried.

I didn’t want to deal with this. Which seemed to be the story of my life now.

“Ariel,” Julian prompted.

Julian had honey blonde hair that was buzzed extremely close to his head. He was tall and thin, but somehow still muscular. He had light brown eyes and a gold lip ring on his bottom lip. He wore blue jeans and a plain black, short-sleeved t-shirt. He didn’t have any socks on either. If you took the lip ring out, and with the right clothes, Julian looked like he could fit in anywhere. If not for the magic, I wondered if Julian would still be best friends with Quinton, Damien and Dash. His personality didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of theirs. Quint was Scary. Dash was angry. Damien seemed haughty. And Julian, well he seemed sweet.

Damien hadn’t made a very good impression on me, but he was really pretty to look at in a cold, untouchable sort of way.

He had a thin, sharp, angular face. His hair was blonde. Long on top, shaved on the sides. He had light brown eyes framed by extremely thick, feminine lashes. His skin was tanned to golden perfection. He wasn’t dressed casual like the others but instead wore black slacks and a dark blue long-sleeved button up dress shirt. He wasn’t barefoot either and had black socks on his feet.

People who wa

lked around barefoot were weird. My feet always got cold.

“I think there was someone outside when I got here. Dash was going to go check things out and…” And, what? I didn’t know how to stay quiet when faced with someone else’s horrible truths.

“What?” Damien asked cautiously. I think it was the first time he had ever spoken directly to me. “Who was outside? There’s no one around for miles.”

I puffed up my cheeks and blew out a large breath. Now this one, he would think me a crazy person.

“Julian,” Dash said coldly as he walked back into the room. “You stay inside with her. Damien and I will check things out outside, make sure there’s no one creeping around.”

He wouldn’t even look at me. Holy crap. Panic threatened to choke me. This was not good. We weren’t friends yet, but we were going to get there, I knew we were going to get there. And I liked him. His quiet intensity and the depths of darkness in his eyes. The way he watched everything, always so serious. The fact that I had only seen him smile the one time and it did funny things to my heart. All things I found endearing about him. He was closed off, guarded, and he reminded me a whole lot of myself.

And I knew myself, I knew how this was going to go if I didn’t fix it now. If I didn’t find some way to fix this now, it would fester and nothing good would come of it.

Think, Ariel Kimber, think.

I completely understood why he’d snarled at me and had had a similar reaction when someone took notice of my scars.