"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 about 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
Ihated 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.