Page 15

You deserve better, Sloane.

“I’ll think about it,” I tell her quickly, and I see her lips pull into a smile as she walks backward, headed to the attendant check-in to grab her ID.

“That’s all I want!” she says, flashing a smile. I turn back to the mirror and grab my weights again as Sloane gets her ID and walks out with a little wave.

I nod my head and grit my teeth. Squatting low again, weight in my heels.

I get in another set, then lug my weights back to the rack, feeling spent.

After I tighten my unraveling braids, I think about heading out. I’ve got ten minutes of cardio I’m supposed to do to finish out my workout, but no one is keeping me here. Just as I make up my mind to leave, I see the door open at my back.

And he walks through, confirming the truth all over again, as if having his blood in my mouth wasn’t confirmation enough. His hand on my face. Seeing him in the student service’s building.

I wonder if Sloane saw him.

I hope he stays far the fuck away from her.

My heart races as our eyes meet in the wall of mirrors, and for a second, he pauses.

The attendant turns, her mouth pulling into a dazzling smile at the sight of him, and I want to grind my phone into dust.

My pulse pounds in my ears, and I have to clench my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

I blink, and I realize that Cortland has handed his ID to the attendant and he’s now striding toward me.

No.

The attendant watches him, still smiling, typing something in her phone as she does, no doubt messaging her friends. Does she know his name? Does she recognize it?

A local news legend, ladies and gentleman, making his way home.

The prodigal son returns.

Maybe she had the luxury of not watching the news. Oftentimes, I got faster updates through there than prosecution.

Maybe she just doesn’t care what he was accused of.

After all, he’s innocent.

I’m holding my breath as he approaches, still looking at him in the mirror. He’s wearing a fitted black T-shirt with a teal West River High wolf on it. Welcome to Pack Territory. It shows off the tanned muscles of his biceps, and he’s in gray jogging pants that show the outline of his…

I taste bile in the back of my throat and I bring my gaze back up, to his eyes.

He’s right behind me.

I can smell him. Cedar and pine.

Dizziness courses through me.

We stare off in the mirror, and I see he’s got a foot over my five three. I come up to his shoulders, and just barely at that.

I can feel his heat at my back as neither of us look away. I won’t make the first move.

“Do you ever want to die?”

He says my name now, in the present, and it sounds cold coming from his mouth.

I swallow the lump in my throat, fist my hands tighter at my sides.

“What?” I snarl, feeling helpless again.

Like I did that night, when he was cupping my face and his friends were touching me and it was like his gaze tethered me, helped me endure.

In the morning, aching and sore and bleeding, I tried to convince myself I had wanted it.

And as I had looked at him, his arm flung out where it had been around my shoulder while he slept, I almost did.

I almost didn’t say a word about it.

But I went to pee.

It burned and I cried, trembling in his bathroom. And I remembered the flash of a phone in my face, and my heart began to race. If Silas saw any images from that night, if he thought I did any of that and let myself be photographed…

I’d wiped the blood away, left the bathroom, put my shoes that had somehow come off in the night back on with trembling fingers.

He’d woken up, called out my name as he scrambled from the bed.

But I ran. I’d left, my Corolla waiting on the curb where I’d parked it when I had driven over before he took us to the park. Before the party.

He called me all day.

Sent messages.

The day after, it all stopped.

The police had come to him.

“How’s it going, Remi?” he asks now, his voice quiet, his eyes fixed on mine, his jaw clenched.

I catch his woodsy scent as my nostrils flare. “Fuck off,” I snap back. I go to spin around to walk away, feeling braver now with a witness, but he clamps a hand on my shoulder, keeping me still, and every muscle in my body is tense.

I inhale, grit my teeth, close my eyes.

I hear him laugh, a low, soft sound.

Then his breath caresses the back of my neck. “You look tired. Are you not sleeping well, is that it?” he taunts me. “Having nightmares?”

My throat feels tight. It’s not fear that rolls through me. It’s anger.

He really doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

I keep my mouth shut out of defiance.

He sighs, his fingers crawling up my shoulder, coming to my neck, closing around the back of it. “My girlfriend wouldn’t really like me being here, so close to you.”

I tense, my eyes flying open as I meet his in the mirror.

Immediately, my thoughts flash to Maya.

To him watching her drop me that day in the gym.

I think about his lips over mine in the bathroom. His blood on my tongue. “Your girlfriend?” I blurt out, annoyed there’s so much anger in my tone.

His hand closes tighter around the back of my neck as he keeps his eyes on mine in the mirror. “I think you might know her, pretty baby.”

Those words cause my chest to tighten. I used to love when he called me that. I thought that meant he cared. My sick brain thought his soft words were kind.

But I was na?ve. A young girl with daddy issues and only the worst kind of attention at home. I was stupid.

I’m not that girl anymore.

“Maya Bell ring a bell?”

My stomach flips. “You’re still with her?”

He smiles at me in the mirror. “You sound surprised.”

I shake my head. “Get off of me, Cortland.”

His hand squeezes tighter. “No, thanks.”

I grit my teeth. “You’re disgusting.”

At this, his eyes narrow. “Says the girl who has slept with literally all of my friends.” His fingertips sink into my flesh, and he jerks me closer, so I can feel him at my back.

I feel his dick, too, how hard he is against me.

My skin prickles.

“You know I didn’t want them,” I tell him, meaning it.

He arches a brow. “Huh. Well, it would’ve been nice if you’d have said so that night.”

My face flushes pink in the mirror and I know he sees it too.

“But I gotta say,” his hand slides around to the front of my throat, gripping me tighter. I know the attendant can’t see what he’s doing, because his tall frame blocks her view.

My breath hitches, and I see his fingers curled around me.

“I kinda like the new you. That piercing, your hair. Covering yourself so no one else can look at you like I did.” He shrugs, pulling me even closer, my shoulder blades against his torso.

“I don’t remember you being so damn feisty, either, Remi.

” His fingers tighten again, and I close my eyes, trying to breathe.

“You know how I remember you, Cortland?” I ask him, still keeping my eyes closed. Like hiding under the covers. If you don’t see the monster, is he really there?

His fingers splay along my collarbone, under the edges of my hoodie. “Tell me, baby.”

“I remember you as the cruelest thing that ever happened to me.” My breaths are shallow, my mouth so dry. But I’ve wanted to say these words to him for a long time. “I remember you as a criminal, and we both know your current view shouldn’t be these mountains.”

His nails dig into my skin, dragging down further, over my chest.

I keep talking. “It should be a prison cell. Bars on a cage.” I take another breath. “You did deserve it, Cortland,” I tell him, throwing back his words from the bathroom. “You do deserve it.”

He digs deeper and I wince, although I don’t open my eyes. My heart is racing, and it feels good to say those things, to stand up for myself for once. Because it’s been bullshit this past year.

Nothing is fine.

But then he nudges my hair away from my neck with his nose, his piercing gliding against my skin, and I’m shaking all over again, pressure building behind my eyes. He slams through all of my progress, all of my defenses in that one motion. Violating my space, just like he did that night.

My eyes snap open and connect with his, his face beside mine, his fingers still on my skin.

He doesn’t dig in his nails anymore; he lightly traces the slight swell of my breast beneath my sports bra, and I keep shaking at his touch as he stares at the two of us, side by side, him leaned down to my level.

“My current view should be you on your knees, apologizing for everything you did to me.”

I suck in a breath, my spine straightening.

“Don’t get so damn brave, Remi.” He turns his head, his lips against my ear with his next words. “Wolves have teeth.”

He releases me all at once, straightening. His eyes linger on mine a moment before he walks away, down the corridor to the change room.

He was already in workout gear.

I take that as my sign to get out. Away from my living, breathing nightmare, brought back to life.

Wolves have teeth.

I grit my own. So do I, fucker.