I felt Dre’s eyes on me until the bike was well out of sight, the engine nothing but an echo through the trees.

And then she was gone.

For good.

Of course, fate is a nasty evil bitch, because it was in that moment, one of the shittiest of my life, after a confusing, yet fucking hot, unexpected threesome with one of my best friends, that I realized that the girl driving away wasn’t just some girl I was saving from my twisted ass.

She was the girl I was in love with.

The girl I would always be in love with.

Until my very last breath.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

DRE

Hatred is easy.

It’s love that’s hard.

It wasn’t the betrayal that hurt the most. It wasn’t the lies or the deceit. It wasn’t even the way he’d made me feel more used than Conner or Eric ever had.

The way I felt had nothing to do with the bitterness that settled in my throat, so thick I was practically gagging on it.

No.

The thing that hurt the most wasn’t the way things ended at all.

It was the way it all began.

It was the love.

I didn’t want it anymore. It shouldn’t of even been there anymore so I wished it away with everything I had, but no matter how much wishing and praying or meditating I did, nothing worked. Even though betrayal had moved in, love refused to pack its bags and get out.

Fucking squatter.

I wanted so badly for anger and rage to be my primary emotions and so I focused on his bitter words that ended us. The way he looked at me with no remorse in his eyes. The way the door echoed as he slammed it shut. But I couldn’t stay in the darkness too long, the light always finding its way inside my thoughts, and soon I was remembering the warmth of his skin against mine the first time he touched me, the way he looked at me before he finally kissed me, the way he made me laugh in a time in my life when not a god damn thing in the world was funny to me anymore. No, love didn’t magically turn into hate just because we want it to, because it’s easier.

I learned very quickly that it turns into something else. Something much much worse.

A broken heart.

Little did I know that the real breaking was yet to come and the greatest lesson of all about love, I would be learning all too soon.

Love never dies.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

PREPPY

Mirna’s house had been sitting vacant since that night it all went to shit. I’d still come by from time to time, although I hadn’t used it as a GG since Dre left. All of the furniture was gone. All of the pictures. It had been over a year since Dre set foot in the place, yet I swore I could still smell her there.

She was happy. She had to be. That’s what I told myself anyway, in order to go through the motions and pretend like nothing was wrong. Her happiness was what kept one foot in front of the other, and the sometimes-fake smile plastered on my face.

Real smiles came in the form of King getting out of prison and him actually getting a girl. Or stole a girl. However you wanted to look at it. Doe was her name. She didn’t have a memory but she had a great set of tits and an attitude to boot, and I think that she was my friendship-soulmate in a way, although I never told her about Dre. I never told anyone. I told myself I was fine and the plan was to try to believe my own lie until it became true.

After Dre left town I’d come for my plants. There on the counter was my folder. She’d done it. She’d forged every single document I needed, but it was all for nothing. The judge assigned to the case denied my petition before a hearing was even called. Before I could utter a single fucking word. When the lawyer I was using told me the judge’s name who wouldn’t even grant me a hearing, it all became clear. I actually knew him. Well, I knew his sister. All I did was fuck her in a pool. A public one. With people around, but apparently word had gotten back to him and the cock sucker must not like voyeurism because the gavel crashed down on my case, crushing any hope I had left of saving Max from the system.

I was high as a kite when I got in my car, and filed the fake docs with the clerk’s office. It wasn’t necessary. It wouldn’t change a damn thing. But I did it, anyway. Maybe because it made her work not for nothing. Maybe because filing the documents made her more than just a memory, it made her real because her time with me seemed more and more like a fading dream.

But it was all too late.

In the movies the end of a person’s life is slow moving, each fraction of a second drawn out, seeming more like hours as they take their last breaths and watch the highlight reel of their lives play out before their eyes while some kind of Titanic-esque violin music plays in the background.

It’s all bullshit.

Death is quick.

Too fucking quick.

I remember walking with my friends to go into the meet with Isaac. On the way I saw this dark haired girl with innocent cheeks, and for a second I thought she was Dre. She was staring at me too, but when Dre’s face faded it was replaced by the wide eyed look of another girl. One I was pretty sure had been on the sharp end of a Preppy/Bear fuck session a time or two.

The reality of my own death was a searing pain ripping through my gut, followed by a sense of doom as I bled out onto the concrete.

I didn’t fade away, I dropped out of consciousness with lightening speed. I barely had time to register the horror on my friends’ faces, who all seemed to be floating around above me like they were above the surface, while I was being dragged down to the dark depths below.

I reached out, wanting to grab them, wanting to hold on to this life.

But it was too fucking late.

For most people death was the end.

For me, it was only the beginning.

CHAPTER FORTY

DRE

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…

Mindlessly, I bounced my pen on top of my open text book in such quick succession the pages vibrated, lifting at the corners. I shuffled my feet, crossing and uncrossing my ankles, wishing away the constant feeling of restlessness that only seemed to intensify with each passing day.

My desk was pushed up sideways against the only window in the classroom, although there was no view to speak of. Nothing but a brick wall. The small space between buildings was just large enough to allow in the rain that had just started to fall, beading up and sliding down the thick glass. The clouds overhead shifted, casting the already muted light of the room in a wash of gray. With the new lighting the image in the window shifted, and suddenly I was no longer staring at the brick wall but at the reflection of a girl.