Page 30 of Full Out Fiend

Yet here I sit. Unmoving. Picking at a napkin and doing everything I can to distract myself from what feels like an inevitable showdown.

Cole checks on me every few minutes, and I’m doing my best to stay calm and reassure him. The last thing I need is for someone to call Jake or interfere with what’s about to go down.

I fight back the urge to text Dem. I don’t need a lecture right now. My mind is made up. I have to see this through.

Instead of reaching out to my twin, I go for the next best thing and catch up on all the memes and TikToks Maddie sent me throughout the week. I’m chuckling to myself when my skin prickles with awareness.

“Wait, it’s this guy?Thisfucking guy?”

On the defense, I crane my neck and shoot a glance at the two men standing next to Melissa. They’re in their mid to late twenties with similar features. Both are wearing baseball caps and have their arms crossed in front of their stocky frames in an almost-comical matching stance.

They’re on the shorter side—five-nine or five-ten—and the one on the right is smirking, rubbing his chin with his hand, while the one on the left confers with the redhead.

I stare at them awkwardly until the one on the right mutters under his breath to the other. He’s got this eerily familiar face, and he’s wearing a knowing smirk that tells me I should be able to place him.

“Do I know you?” I try.

“You’re about to wish you didn’t.”

He turns to the guy beside him, who I assume is the ex.

“This fucker’s been to our house before, brother. Shown up at parties when he wasn’t invited. Created chaos when he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Last summer he showed up totally fucked up, then proceeded to convince my boys to circle up and take him on at once, fight-club style.”

I feel the blood drain from my face—a sensation I’ve never actually experienced before—as realization and recognition set in.

Dread churns in my gut.

Regret spreads like wildfire through my veins.

I couldn’t place his face. But his voice unlocks a memory buried deep in my brain.

A party. A barn. A lower than low moment.

I choke back bile, my heart hammering double-time as I relive the way the fists pounded on me, unrelenting, unmercifully, before a girl stopped them. A girl who inevitably came home with us that night, and somehow forced herself into my brother’s closed-off, frozen, martyr heart.

I couldn’t pick this guy out of a crowd. But I’ve rewatched enough of the videos from that night to easily place the voice.

Fuck that night.

Fuck this noise.

If this guy is who I think he is—and the way he’s smirking at me and scrolling through his phone tells me he is—that means Daphne’s ex-fiancé is Anthony Adley?

Chapter 19

Daphne

Islipthroughthefront door of The Oak and try to get my bearings. The bar is loud and crowded, but it only takes a few seconds to scan the room and spot him.

It helps that he’s six-two with a drool-worthy head of wavy blond hair. He’s the best-looking guy in the building. I could spot Fielding anywhere.

Warm recognition floods my gut. But the joy is quickly replaced by prickles of dread.

Fielding’s standing near the bar, half on and half off a bar stool, glaring at the people in front of him: Anthony, his younger brother Andy, and Melissa.

My spine goes rigid, and I freeze where I stand.

I desperately want to get to Fielding—to get his attention and talk to him alone. But each face-to-face interaction I’ve had with Anthony over the last few weeks has been less savory than the last. He and his brother are notorious for riling each other up, and Melissa’s already proven she’s stirring the pot tonight. There’s no way I’m prepared to confront them all together.