by Holly Renee
But I had no intentions of letting her go. "I have no intentions of letting you walk into that party and kissing somebody else. I don't care if it's Will or any other guy. You are mine whether you know it or not, and I hate that I need to remind you of that fact."
I hated that I made her question the fact at all.
I wasn’t here to ruin her night. I just needed to see her. But coming here was a mistake.
As much as I tried to pretend like I wasn’t selfish, that I wanted what was best for her, I couldn’t let her just walk in there and find somebody who wasn’t me.
"Don’t say shit like that unless you want me to go in there and wreck Will’s face."
Her hips moved the slightest bit, and I felt her clenching her thighs together. She may have hated me, but the thought of her driving me mad, of her driving me to violence turned her on.
"I am not yours." She turned her head and stared up at me. "You've already wrecked me. But that's what you do, isn't it? You just fucking wreck people."
She was right. It was what I did. I wrecked her, and I hurt my sister in the process. I had disappointed my parents, and it was all for nothing.
"You just use them however you want, then you throw them away when you’re done."
"Is that what you think I’m doing? Just throwing you away?" My hands spasmed around her arms, and her lips parted as she stared at me.
"Isn’t it?"
"No." I shook my head. "I’m not fucking finished with you."
She pressed her hand into my thigh and her fingers dug into my jeans as if she was trying to hold on for dear life. "Then prove it, Beck."
I should have done the noble thing. I should have walked away from her and let her enjoy her night regardless of who she chose to spend it with, but I couldn’t.
It didn’t matter that I knew it was wrong. I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to hers. She moaned at the contact, the tiniest little sound, but it was the only reassurance I needed.
I wrapped my hand in her hair, and I gripped the long strands as I held her mouth to mine. Her teeth raked against my bottom lip and I knew she was as desperate as I was for whatever the hell was happening between us.
I opened my mouth, and she deepened the kiss before I could even consider it. Her back was still to me, but it didn’t stop her. She kissed me as if she had been dying for it since the moment I hurt her. She kissed me as if she thought she could erase every bit of her hate for me right there between our lips.
She turned in my arms, and I kept my hand buried in her hair as she reached for me. She tangled her fingers into my t-shirt, and she tugged me closer to her. There wasn’t an inch of room between us, and I knew that she wanted it that way. She wanted this as badly as I did.
"Beck," she whispered my name, and it was like every ounce of restraint that I held on to left my body. I couldn’t do the noble thing when she said my name like that. I couldn’t think, let alone make a conscious decision to walk away from her.
I held her tighter against me as I devoured her mouth. Our kiss wasn’t gentle, it was all teeth and tongue and a desperate chase to find something in one another.
Neither one of us cared that this was a bad idea, those fears were long gone, but I knew that they would return after we stopped. The way she hated me would return the moment her lips left mine, and I wasn’t ready for that to happen.
I was desperate to keep this moment between us alive.
I was desperate to feel her and for her to feel something for me.
I never wanted it to stop. I knew that it would, I knew that it had to, but I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind as I hopelessly clung to this moment in front of us.
I sucked her bottom lip into my mouth, and she moaned into my mouth.
She pressed her hips into mine, and I knew that I should stop this. This felt like more than just a kiss. Neither one of us wanted to stop, neither of us cared who was around, and I knew that taking this any further would be a mistake.
But it was a mistake I was willing to make. Because no matter what I did, no matter how much I messed up, I knew that I would never regret her.
Even as fucked up as it was, I would never regret what happened between us.
"Josie," I whispered her name against her lips, but it did nothing but spur her on.
Her hands clung tighter to me, and her body begged me for more even though she didn’t say it out loud. But I doubted she ever would. Josie may not have been anything like her family, but she still had their pride. I had hurt her, and she would be damned if she begged me for something ever again.
And I knew that when I pushed her away, when I stopped this, it was going to hurt her even further. It didn’t matter that it was the right thing to do, that it was honorable, she would hate it and she would hate me for doing it.
It would do nothing but fuel her hatred for me.
I pushed slightly against your shoulders, and she clung to me even tighter. She knew that I was about to stop us. I was about to stop whatever mistake we were willing to make, and she hated that idea as much as I did.
Her kiss felt desperate, full of longing and pent-up aggression, and in the back of my mind, it somehow felt like goodbye. There was a part of me that thought when I stopped this she would never kiss me again.
But I still had to torture us both and put an end to what we were doing.
"Josie, we have to stop."
She finally looked up at me as she pulled her mouth from mine, and there was so much anger staring back at me that was faintly veiled with lust. She took a stumbling step, away from me, and I reached out to steady her. She jerked out of my touch so quickly you would have thought she never wanted to be there.
"Princess." I couldn’t just let her walk away and think I was stopping this because I didn’t want her. I wanted her more than I had ever wanted anything before.
Her gaze has slipped down to my lips before snapping back to my eyes. "Don’t fucking call me that."
"Calm down." I looked around and noticed a couple of people who are now staring at us, and I tried to reach out for her again. I knew that I should have been groveling, I should have been begging for her forgiveness, but there was something about her that made me feel as angry as she was.
I knew that I was in the wrong. I knew that I was the one who completely fucked everything up, but she refused to give me a chance to explain. And her kissing me, her falling into my arms, did nothing to help how badly I wanted her.
If she wanted me to walk away, then I would do it. No part of me believed that was what she really wanted. Not with the way her body has clung to mine as if it was meant to be there or the way her lips traced mine as if she would never feel that feeling again.
We both wanted each other, but our want didn’t matter.
What I had done to her was the only thing she could see when she was looking at me like she was. I was the traitor, the villain, and even though she wanted me, she hated me more.
"Don’t tell me to calm down." She tucked her hand into the front pocket of her jean shorts and backed away from me. "This will never happen again."
"It will." My words pissed her off, but they were true. Regardless of how much she hated me, this would happen again. I didn’t know what to do if I was to believe otherwise.
"No, Beck. It won’t." She turned to walk away from me before stopping abruptly and turning back in my direction. She pointed her finger toward my chest and her eyes were ablaze with anger. "You don’t get to decide anymore. You lost any and all rights when it comes to me."
I knew she was right. I should have nodded my head, agreed with her, and kept my mouth shut. But I did none of those things. I was too far gone to be rational right now. I had wanted to talk to her ever since everything happened, and she just had her mouth on me.
I couldn’t think clearly with that combination. I could barely think at all.
"I wasn’t the one who kissed you, remember." I ran my hand through my hair, and I tried to think clearly ab
out what the hell I was doing and saying. "I didn’t come here tonight to kiss you."
She blinked her eyes rapidly, and I knew that I had said the wrong thing.
"Then why are you here, Beck?" Her soft tone was filled with gravel and so much hurt. "If you didn’t want to kiss me, then why did you come in there and bother me when I was having a good time with Will? Is that all you wanted? To mess up my night?"
"Trust me when I tell you that I wanted to kiss you."
She rolled her eyes before the words were completely past my lips.
"Is that what you think I do? Just go around random parties looking for ways to ruin your night?" She wasn’t wrong that I had been looking for her, but I hadn’t intended for things to go this way. I had no idea what I thought was going to happen. I just knew that I couldn’t stand another moment away from her.
"That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Allie told me you guys never come to a Clermont High party."
"Is that why you’re here? Because you thought I wouldn’t be." That thought pissed me off far more than it should. It was only logical for her to be ignoring me. I would be ignoring me too if I was her, but nothing about the way I felt about her or thought about her was logical.
She shifted on her feet before she stared at me with that same fire I knew could be heaven and hell. "What do you expect me to do, Beck? Do you honestly expect me to trust anything you say after what you did?"
Of course not. She was right again, but I hated her for it. I hated her for the way she got under my skin. For the way my plan backfired because of who she was. I hated her because my plan had still done what I had intended even though I had pussed out, and I wanted to take every moment of it back.
And it had nothing to do with the fact that I knew her father was pissed. Lucas had all the guys on the team talking about whether or not her father was going to press charges against me.
I didn’t care one way or another.
Her father was nothing more than a bastard, and I dared him to try to take me down. I fucking wished he would.
If he had the nerve to try to press charges against me after what Lucas had done to Frankie, I would gladly deal with the consequences.
Consequences that Lucas didn’t pay.
The only repercussion Lucas had was the day I beat his face in. There were no other consequences for him. No ramifications for what he did.
"I just. Fuck. I don’t know what I want."
"Exactly." She threw her hand out to the side. "You have no fucking idea what you’re doing, Beck, and I’m not some toy you can use any time you and Lucas need to have a dick-measuring contest."
"Me being here has nothing to do with Lucas."
"It had everything to do with him." Her hand trembled at her side, and I wanted to reach out and steady it with my own. But I felt as unstable as she looked. "That’s the only reason we’re in this mess. That’s the only reason you ever talked to me on that damn beach."
I took a step toward her but stopped when she flinched. It was almost unnoticeable, but for me, it was unmistakable. "I had no idea who you were on that beach. I had no idea you were his."
"I’m not his!" she screamed, and my heart felt like a war drum in my chest. "I don’t belong to anyone."
I shook my head as I stared at her. She was wrong. She was so fucking wrong. "You belong to me."
She laughed. Actually threw her head back and laughed. "I let you fuck me, Beck. I didn’t ask you to marry me."
The way she said it felt so wrong. Yes. We had fucked, but it had been more than that. I had taken her virginity for God’s sake. "Don’t say shit like that."
"Like what?" She stepped closer to me, and I didn’t give a shit who was watching us. I didn’t care what they heard or what the hell they thought was happening. "Do you want me to pretend like we didn’t fuck since you didn’t get it on camera?"
"Of course not." I reached out and wrapped my hand around her bicep, and every part of me wanted to slam her body against mine. I wanted to slam her against me, and never let her go.
But I knew that we would end up exactly where we were moments before. It felt like the two of us were just dancing circles around each other. We were on the same fucking loop that didn’t feel like it would end.
"Everything about that night was real." I stared down at her arm with my skin against hers. "None of that was about anyone but us."
She jerked her arm away from me, and I could see her emotions storming in her eyes. "But everything before that was, right? Everything else was all a game?"
"No." I shook my head, but that wasn’t the whole truth. So much of getting her, of having her as mine, started out as nothing more than a plan to fuck with Lucas. As soon as I found out who she was on that beach, it was all I could think about, but that had changed somewhere along the way.
I didn’t know when. But it had.
It had changed, and I knew before I even took her to the country club that I wouldn’t go through with sending out that video.
But my hatred for Lucas had proven to be far greater than my own self-preservation. I knew how badly she would hate me after I sent that video to him, but it hadn’t mattered.
I sent it anyway, and I never thought that we would end up here. I never thought he would stoop low enough to put a video of his own family on the internet to hurt me.
Obviously, I didn’t know Lucas at all. I never had.
"Do me a favor." She turned her back to me, and this time I knew that she wasn’t coming back. "Congratulate yourself for fucking over a Vos like you wanted to all along and leave me the hell alone."
She didn’t say another word as she walked back into the house, and for once, I didn’t follow her.
I let her go and tried like hell to calm my racing thoughts and my racing mind.
Getting through to her was going to be much harder than I thought, and the two of us were likely to kill each other before I did.
But I knew that I couldn’t leave her alone. I wouldn’t.
It didn’t matter that she was still a Vos. She was so much more than that now, and I couldn’t just walk away.
Chapter Five
Josie
I hated this school.
I hated being in these old walls with this stuffy uniform and these people that I didn’t like.
None of them liked me either, and I was completely okay with that.
I didn’t need them to like me. I just needed them to leave me the hell alone and find someone else to talk about. Because it seemed that every move Beck and I made was being watched. It didn’t matter that there was no me and Beck.
I had kissed him outside of the damn party the other night, and somehow everyone found out. I had been drinking, but I didn’t blame my choices on the alcohol. But it had still been a mistake.
A mistake I made in a moment of weakness when I had been drinking and he had looked so handsome and I just wanted to forget everything that had already happened between us.
My body hadn’t gotten the memo that he was no longer available to us. My mind knew that Beck Clermont was off-limits, but my body didn’t care.
I kicked an old bottle of water from the bleachers and took a bite of my sandwich. The bottle rolled and clanked loudly against the metal as it fell from step to step.
I hadn’t eaten lunch in the lunchroom ever since I had to hear the word slut or whore whispered under someone’s breath between each of my bites. It didn’t matter that Lucas had started sitting with me as if he actually gave a shit about me. None of them cared.
They didn’t fear Lucas as he wanted them to. As he expected them to.
He wasn’t Beck.
The bottle hit the bottom step and slowly rolled into the fence.
"That was unnecessary."
I looked up from my feet just as Cami took a seat on the bottom step. I had no idea what she was doing out here. The two of us had been avoiding each other since our run-in on my first day back, and I had no plans in talking to her now.
She may not have been the one to post the video of me, but she was just as bad as the rest of them. She was just as cruel.
"What do you want?" I was tired of tiptoeing around these people. If Cami was out here, it was because she wanted something, and I trusted her even less than I trusted Beck.
"I was just leaving the locker room, and I saw you sitting out here all alone." Regardless of what she wanted with Beck, one thing was absolutely certain. She wanted me nowhere near him.
"I really don’t have the energy for you today, Cami." I shoved my trash and the rest of my sandwich into my lunch bag and zipped up my backpack.
"I just wanted to say I’m sorry."
My gaze snapped to her because it was the absolute last thing I was expecting her to say. "What?"
She looked out to the baseball field then back at me. "I’m sorry." She shrugged her shoulders, and her blonde hair bounced with the movement.
"What exactly are you apologizing for?" I leaned forward and pressed my elbows to my knees. If I didn’t head back inside within the next few minutes, I was going to be late for my next class, but there was no way I was leaving now. Not until I heard what Cami had to say.
"For what he did." She blinked up at me, and I didn’t know if it was my own animosity toward her, but I could have sworn there wasn’t an ounce of remorse on her face. "I knew that he was planning to use it to get back at Lucas, but…" She hesitated, and I hated how on edge I felt. I was clinging to every word that passed her lips. "I never thought that he would take it this far."
I swallowed down the emotion that was threatening to drown me. "Exactly how far did you think he was going to take it?"
"Honestly?" She turned so she was facing me more, and her uniform looked so pristine. Everything about her did. "I just thought he was going to use you to get under Lucas’s skin. I didn’t know he was going to post that video. I didn’t realize the two of you were going to take things that far." Her eyes clouded over, and for a second, the feeling of regret washed over me.
Cami cared about Beck in whatever fucked up way the two of them allowed, and I had helped him cross a line that neither of us was meant to cross. He had planned to hurt me all along, but I also helped him hurt her.
