Page 3

They both stared at me like they thought I was a moron. I didn’t appreciate the looks one bit. This was why I only wanted to have to explain this to one of them. Two was not always better than one. I could feel their judgment from here and wished I’d had more clothes on.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Julian asked, sounding genuinely confused. I wanted to throw something at his stupid head. Was I the only person who saw what went on around here?

“Did you just say link?” The hurt in Damien’s voice made me flinch. “What kind of link do you have with Dash that he can check in on you without actually having to be around you? And how the hell are we just now finding out about this?” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me.

Ugh, shit.

Totally busted here, and I had nobody to blame but myself. I knew it’d be me who spilled the beans and not Dash. I thought he was the type to take secrets to the grave.

Time to deflect. “Can we stay on track and stick with my original problem I needed you to help me with? I’m having a crisis.”

I should have felt bad, but I didn’t. It was my birthday, and I was not going to let these boys bully and push me around in the slightest. Not today, not any other day. I wore the pants in the relationship, thank you very much.

Just, you know, not exactly literally at the moment because I was standing here in my underwear, but whatever, you got the point.

“And what exactly is your current crisis? You’ve yet to properly explain it to us.”

“But, Jules, what about—”

Julian cut Damien off. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll get it out of Dash since she obviously isn’t going to tell us without putting up a fight. And she’s right about one thing, it’s her birthday, and we can’t be mean to her on her birthday. But she’s forgetting something we’ve got going for us. A secret weapon, if you will.”

“Oh yeah?” I challenged. “And what’s that?”

Julian laughed, and they both said, “Quinton.”

Oh crap.

If they enlisted that beast’s help, Dash stood no chance against the three of them together. Since he’d been acting like a child lately, I’d take a page from his book and leave his ass out there to swing. Normally I’d give him the heads-up this situation deserves, but not this time, sucker.

This was where things got embarrassing for me for real. “I want your help with what to wear. I want to wear something that’s going to make it even harder for him to resist me. The problem is I suck with clothes, and if it were up to me, I’d end up in leggings and a ratty old hoodie.”

They both looked properly disgusted with my clothing choices. I knew I needed help.

Damien snapped his fingers and bounced on the balls of his feet excitedly. “Since we’re going to be outside for most of the day, I’ve got just the thing. I bought it for you a while ago and can’t believe I forgot all about it. When I bought it, I actually had Dash in mind. Trust me, beautiful, it’ll blow his mind.”

I nodded my thanks. Blowing Dash’s mind sounded like just the thing I needed right about now and exactly what I was going for.

However, I absolutely was not excited about spending the rest of my day outside with my family. I enjoyed spending time with them. It was the pool that put a damper on things for me.

As soon as Quinton found out I couldn’t swim, he’d gone ahead with putting a pool in the backyard and forced me to learn how to swim. I wasn’t an expert and likely never would be, but now the fear of drowning had been eliminated entirely, which had been Quinton’s point. He didn’t like for me to have any weakness that could be used against me were the wrong people to find out.

These were dangerous times we currently lived in.

Still, I didn’t like the pool because it was a glaring reminder of how much Quinton got away with where I was concerned. I held a little bit of resentment toward him and even more so because I knew he’d been right.

We had a tumultuous relationship at times, but it worked for us.

“Here we go!” Damien cried out triumphantly.

He clutched something orange tightly in his fist and my lip immediately curled in disgust.

“No. Absolutely not.”

They both ignored my protest, like I knew they would, and forced me into the stupid thing.

2

Iwasn’t ashamed of my body, and ever since my face had been permanently messed up, I no longer put much stock into the rest of the scars on my body. When you had to wear one on your face for the whole world to see, it worked well to desensitize you to people’s remarks or personal opinions. I was well over caring about my scars and rarely even thought about them anymore.