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I watch Maya’s fingers, my throat constricting. She pulls aside her panties, exposing herself to me and I clench my teeth, forcing myself to meet her gaze. Think about what she just said. “Why did you invite them?” I ask her. “You know Chase and I aren’t exactly friends anymore.”

She sighs, snapping her legs closed and smoothing down her dress with her hand. “Yeah, because of a dumb slut who tried to ruin?—”

I close the space between us, grabbing her neck and tipping her head up. “Shh.” I run my thumb over her bottom lip. “I don’t want to hear about her.”

She swallows beneath my hand, and my dick gets hard with the feel of it. “I never see her, you know,” she whispers, her eyes on mine. She runs her tongue over her lips, and I wonder if Remi would ever get turned on by something like this.

I grip Maya tighter. “She won’t be here tonight?”

Maya shakes her head. “No, baby.”

I think about seeing Chase. Brinklin. All of us together again. At West River, we were the wolves. Welcome to Pack Territory was our school’s motto. And it was ours. Together, we could get away with anything.

But I think about Storm behind Remi yesterday.

His hand on her neck.

If she’s there tonight, things could get messy.

“She won’t be there,” Maya reiterates, and she thinks I don’t want to see her for a very different reason than the one that’s in my head. “I wouldn’t fuck you over like that, Cort.”

Yeah, you would, baby. Maya comes from a big, middle class family. She’s a social climber, and I know she’s only with me because she likes my money—my mother’s money—and my attention.

The idea of being comfortable.

For now, our relationship is symbiotic. Since I transferred to Ely to be near my brother, Tristan, Maya is like a shield.

She helps maintain my innocence.

From a girl who tried to ruin my life.

Again, Remi’s golden eyes flash in my mind.

She’s so fucking different.

Her hair. Her clothes. That piercing.

I wonder if she’s trying to hide.

As if she could ever hide from me. Her face is implanted in my mind.

So are all of the feelings I want to forget. All the memories.

A cold chill runs down my spine and I remember what it was like in the aftermath. Not sleeping, not eating. Unable to get out of bed even though no matter how many hours I laid with my head against the pillow I couldn’t fall asleep.

I remember Mom taking it all out on my father. On Tristan.

My nostrils flare but I bite back on that rage.

I drop my hand and step back from Maya.

She runs her manicured nails through her hair, tossing it over her shoulder. She’s bitched every day we’ve been apart this past year, wanting me to come visit her more from Texas.

Now, of course, I’m here, and since yesterday when she came over, all she really cares about is posting selfies of her, of us. Of bragging to everyone that I’m back in her clutches. Getting all my old friends here to recreate what we had in high school.

I think about her on her knees fifteen minutes ago, my dick in her mouth.

And unbidden, I think of that night. The four of us surrounding Remi.

Wolves.

Then the next morning, her stumbling out of my bed. Panic. She panicked.

My hands start to tremble like they did in the weeks before I had to get on that plane to Texas, head toward the future Mom wanted for me, away from the rape allegations and sexual assault charges I’d narrowly escaped.

Away from Remi.

I clench my hands into fists, take a breath. Force it all away.

The tremors let up.

“What’s Storm do anyway?” Maya asks, glancing at her nails. “Haven’t seen him in town all this past year.”

“Since you’re so concerned with him, why don’t you suck his dick tonight, huh?” I ask her.

She looks up with a smile, dropping her hand. “You feelin’ jealous, Cort?” she mocks me.

No. Storm isn’t interested in her because of the simple fact he isn’t interested in anyone.

“Nah. You can suck his cock if he’ll let you get close enough,” I tell Maya truthfully. She has no idea why I left her here alone yesterday while I walked with him to go book my appointment. The last thing I wanted was her by my side as I tried to adjust to being in a place that Remi orbits, too.

I lean down, grab my undershirt from the bed, shove it on, then snatch up the plaid long sleeve and put my arms through it.

Maya sighs in what’s supposed to be disappointment behind me. I’m not sure how the fuck we made it this past year, but then again, it’s not like I’ve been faithful to her. Sex is the only thing that clears my head of all the bad.

But with the photos Storm sent me last year of her sidling up next to EU’s basketball players after their championship game, I don’t think she’s been faithful to me, either.

We spent most of the summer apart, too, and I know she probably fucked her way through the beach town she stayed with her sister at.

I don’t really care.

Maintaining a relationship with her makes me look innocent. In the aftermath, she was the one who was there. For her own purposes, maybe, but still, she was there.

I hear a knock on my bedroom door and as I turn my head, the devil himself steps through. Storm doesn’t spare Maya a glance, his light blue eyes locked on mine.

“You ready?”

So much more in that question, and those unspoken words pass between us.

He was the first friend I made at West River, right after he punched me in the face for accidentally stealing his lighter.

I’d found it on the sidewalk, snatched it up.

Apparently, he’d just dropped it. I swung back, cracked his nose.

After that, we were close. He marches to the beat of his own drum, which is more or less dark silence, but I like it.

When I was looking for peace and quiet from my mom’s shit, he didn’t ask questions.

Didn’t pry. He just let me sit in his car and get high, listening to Deftones with the windows down.

When he knew I was transferring here, he offered to move in, help me pay rent. He was living in a rundown apartment anyway. He doesn’t go to school. He’s a dealer.

I imagine my mom’s horror if she knew that. But she didn’t argue with me wanting him as a roommate. She’s in the business of pacifying me, as long as I do the same for her. A little like me and Maya that way.

I nod once in answer to Storm’s question, open up my closet door and step inside. I snatch a hat from the top shelf, put it backward on my head and close the door as I walk out. I glance in the mirror, running a hand over my black and gray plaid shirt.

I catch Maya’s eyes in the mirror and see her smiling at me, leaning back on the bed, her knees parted.

Storm is still in the doorway, and I shift my gaze to him to find him staring back at me.

What will we do with her, if she is there?

I drop my hand, a slow smile curving my lips.

I’ve got the whole year to figure that out.

I never really thought I was a bad person. I didn’t hate people or hurt them. I looked out for my brother, had a good relationship with my dad.

But that night, Remi broke everything into pieces.

And turns out, we’ve all got monsters inside of us.

When the three of us are walking in the dark to the park, Storm offers me a cigarette and I take it, even as Maya complains about the smoke. But my hands are shaky again, like they were in the aftermath of the charges.

If you know what’s best for you, baby, you won’t be here.

Remi didn’t go to many parties back at West, even though I looked for her at every one.

But that bright orange hair and tongue piercing, combined with that I don’t give a fuck attitude she had before I knocked into her, I don’t know her anymore.

I think about her skin under my fingers, the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra.

That night, I remember wanting hers off, but I was too drunk and it was too hard to rip it off and… fuck.

I bite my cheek hard enough to taste blood, and I remember that, too.

The taste of hers.