He flashed me a perfect white smile.

“You’re going to be the death of me.”

“Yeah, well, I think Ethan would want us to be together.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

He shrugged, falling in step beside me as we went to the back stairway. He thumbed in the passcode from Kara and opened the door for me. His hand touched the small in my back as we started our way up the stairs. He murmured, bending close to my ear, “I think he would’ve come around and realized he was being stupid.”

“Is that so?”

His hand applied pressure on my back as he nipped at my earlobe. “I think so, yeah.”

We snuck into my room. When I took my caddie to the bathroom to get ready for bed, a tingle was spreading inside of me. It was tickling me, sending me into something that might’ve resembled being happy. But that wasn’t me and it wouldn’t last. This was the first night Jesse was sleeping in my room, in my bed, and I tried to tell myself this wasn’t a boyfriend/girlfriend deal. This was what we used to do. When we had an itch, we sought each other out.

Stepping back into the emptied and darkened hallway, I went to my room and then took deep breaths. I had tried to fade the relationship, or I started to try to fade us out. It hadn’t worked. Jesse just changed tactics, but I needed to remember the truth.

I was a mess. And he had no idea how much of a mess.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I took one more deep breath before I went inside. As I did, as I saw him waiting for me on my bed, with an easy grin on his face, I knew that he was going to learn how screwed up I was.

Was it too much to hope that he wouldn’t leave when he realized how broken and screwed up I was?

“I’m horny.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Come on. Crying women speak straight to my loins, Alex.”

The last shred of resistance I had to him shattered.

I was in love with him. I had never stopped.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jesse never pushed for the reason of my emotional breakdown at his home. He thought it was because how rough he’d been earlier. That time with him had touched me in ways he’d never know. He had energized me. He had made me feel alive, in ways that I hadn’t felt since before Ethan’s death. And that had also been the night when my floodgates were opened again. They’d been closed, but were gaping open once again.

I felt Ethan everywhere I went, but it was different. Instead of the grief from before, or the hole that he’d ripped in me, it was a better feeling. Maybe this was the acceptance stage of mourning. I didn’t know, but I did know I was still angry. Ethan shouldn’t have died. I shouldn’t have lost my brother. We should’ve still been a family.

The last part was still off-limits to me. I didn’t think about my parents. I couldn’t. Every time I did, the same hysteria and rage bubbled inside of me, but that had also changed after that night. I’d been shut off from what they had done to me. I was angry with them. Duh. That was a no-brainer and I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that, but I’d been numb to their damage. Since Jesse’s house, I couldn’t do that anymore.

I felt my rage towards them, but it was banked. It was always there, in the bottom of my gut. It was simmering but manageable. Because of that, I snapped at people more. Beth got it a few times when we had dinner in the cafeteria. Jesse got it too. Hannah just snapped back at me. It didn’t seem to faze her. The only benefit was that Jamie watched how he talked to me. I knew most of it was because of that time in the cafeteria, when I let him really see the storm warring inside of me, but I lashed out at him a few more times when we finished our project.

Cord was quiet around me. Jesse told me that Cord blamed himself for my outburst. It happened after his dig at Jesse so he figured two plus two equaled him. It didn’t. The truth was that I didn’t know why I snapped, but I had and things hadn’t been the same since. For me.

“This blows. Let’s go.”

Jerked back from my wandering thoughts, I stared across the table. Hannah threw her leg up on it and leaned back. Stretching her arms up and wide, she arched her back and sent a wink at a table of guys behind us.

“Shhh!”

She flipped off the girl, at the table beside us.

“Do not get us banned from the library,” Beth warned her cousin, slumped down in her own chair as she peeked over the edge of her book. “I need this place to survive the midterms this week.”

“Whatever. Robbie’s having a party. Who wants to go?”

I became engrossed with my laptop while Beth jerked back down underneath her book cover.

Hannah sighed in disgust. “You guys suck.”

Beth smirked back. “We may suck right now, but we’re going to have passing grades next week. You won’t and you’ll be crying your misery to me over a beer.”

“At least I’ll be drinking.”

“Drinking and failing. Do you want Tiffany to have more ammunition over you?”

Hannah pointedly ignored that last curve thrown to her. She straightened in her chair, arched her neck out, and sent another flirty glance over her shoulder as the edge of her shirt slipped down to bare her arm. She didn’t pull it back up as she muttered to us, “I’m more in the mood for Club T.”

I glanced over. Beth was sitting next to me and she froze at the club’s name. I’d gone back a few more times with them to learn that someone was there, someone that Beth searched for and disappeared with for an hour each time. Hannah would go to the dance floor, grind against guys. I would hold down the base at a table nearby with our drinks on a tray, ready for Beth and Hannah to grab. When Beth was done with whatever she did, she’d return and keep me company. I had been told that Beth had an itch to scratch when she went there, but it was more than that. Beth was seeing a guy, who was always at Club T, who was only at Club T. I could imagine Hannah in my place as she’d pump her cousin for information, and when none was given, she’d smirk as she taunted, “Growing more and more curious. Who’s the dick you crave?”

But Beth didn’t rise to the bait. She slunk back in her seat and Hannah’s disappointment was noted. She snapped, “Jeesuz, you are pissing me off. I never took you guys for being nerds.”

Beth sent her cousin a dark look. “Do not start quoting your sister at me.”

“Oh. Sorry.”