“Out,” I attempt, with a shrug of my shoulder.
“With Gray?” he asks, and the familiar deep rumble in his voice reverberates through the air.
“No. Unless he really wants to.” Be nice, Everly. Be nice. Don’t say anything stupid.
“You think you can put on a pretty dress and I’d forget anything ever happened between us?”
I scoff and rip my arm free from Gray, “You’re going to find this hard to believe, Rowan, but the world doesn’t revolve around you. My world doesn’t revolve around you. Not anymore.” I open the door, turn on my heel, and walk toward the car. Snow has started to fall. It’s light, barely there, but it feels good.
And it’s Rowan’s favorite season. I hate that I know that.
“You made sure of that, didn’t you?” he shouts after me.
I don’t say a word as I get into my car and spin out on the driveway until my tires gain traction. I don’t know where the hell I’m going. I don’t know what I’m doing, but what I do know is, I need to get away from Rowan Michaels as quick as possible.
School break can’t end soon enough.
Chapter 3 Rowan
I lean against the frame of my bedroom window and watch Everly burn rubber as she spins out of the end of the driveway. My fists clench together when I think about her. A lot of anger, a lot of regret, and so much pain, I can feel myself drowning in it. It’s like the biggest tease, fighting for a breath because the surface is right above me. It’s there, holding all the air I need, but my legs are weighted down, and I’m swallowing water with every attempt to get to the surface.
No matter how hard I fight, I can’t reach it. And I just keep drinking it in—keep drinking her in.
And don’t get me started on seeing my best friend’s hand on her. It made me see red. And that’s another thing that bothers me. It shouldn’t make me see red. I shouldn’t fucking care who touches her, but I do. The thought of anyone else pleasing her the way I did, making her moan the way I did, the way her nails scratched down my back…
My own nails drag against the wall. The sound isn’t enough to unclench my jaw or stop the drywall from drifting into a cloud of smoke and leaving indentations in the wake of my madness.
Once her taillights are out of view, I punch a hole in the wall. I pull my hand back, wincing in pain, to see blood decorating my knuckles.
“You want to tell me why you’re being such an asshole?” Gray interrupts from behind me.
“Not really.”
“Too fucking bad. You brought me here, and I’ve never wanted to leave somewhere so much in my life. You’re going to sit down and tell me what is going on. Everyone seems so nice and that Everly chick is hot! If this is about her being your stepsister now, who cares, you aren’t blood related.”
“Don’t talk about her,” I growl with warning and look at the window, hoping to see her headlights coming down the driveway again, but I know it’s useless. She isn’t coming back for a while. I drop to the bed and sigh, flexing my hand to make sure nothing is broken.
“Ah, so it is her.” The bed dips next to me as he sits, and a large exhale leaves my lips.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Can you let me in? Because this living situation is awkward as fuck.”
I laugh before pinching the bridge of my nose. I really don’t want to talk about this, but she is affecting my mood, so it’s only fair. Gray knows nothing about Everly. I’ve never mentioned her. I never wanted to talk about it because she hurt me so bad.
“Yeah, man.” I lay my hands on my thighs and push myself off the bed, going to my suitcase where I’d tossed her picture like it didn’t mean anything.
I say the feelings are up to debate, but that picture means everything. I unzip the main section of my bag, take the picture out, and give a small smile to the people in the photo.
“This was us four years ago,” I hand over the precious memory that money could never buy and sit down again as I wait to see his reaction.
“This is you?” He rubs the glass to get more of the dust off. “Oh my god, it’s baby Rowan,” he jokes, but it dulls down to a soft, more serious chuckle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so happy, man. On a real note, I’ve never seen you look at any other girl like that.”
“Because there has never been any other girl like her, Gray. I’ve known her since I was five. Hell, I snuck into her bedroom window almost every night just to watch TV. I didn’t know how in love with her I was until I was seventeen.”
He whistles and hands the picture back to me. “So what happened?”
I run my fingers through my hair and tug on the strands a bit as my mind takes me back to the night of the bonfire. “What didn’t happen?” I say in a low breath as it escapes my chest. “I never wanted to tell her how I felt, but it was getting harder and harder to be around her. We acted like a couple anyway, always sitting next to each other, spending all of our time together, holding hands, my arm around her. It was just natural, being with her. Fuck, I don’t know man.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Why aren’t you giving me shit for this? I figured you’d jump all over me for being all mushy.”
He looks off into the distance and squints his eyes. “I know I can be a jokester, but I know when to be serious, and this issue between you guys is
