“How are you not freaking out?” I ask, reaching both hands up to adjust the high pony I've gathered my hair into. “About the girls, I mean. It's all I can think about. Heather, at that school, with all those rich fucks …”

Aaron smiles at me, and the shape his mouth makes, it can only be described as the color of a summer sunset or a hug you didn't know you needed until warm arms wrap around you and hold you close.

“What you're doing with Heather,” he begins, stepping forward and touching his thumb to my lower lip. Even just that simple touch resurrects so many good memories for me and so many wishes for the future. That's how powerful first love can be, a transcendent force so powerful it could defy gravity itself. “Is what I wanted to do for you all along. Nantucket, remember?” Aaron winks at me to soften the blow, but he's right. He is so fucking right. Sending Heather away keeps her safe, and I'm the only one that suffers.

“Fuck,” I murmur as he chuckles at me. “You're right, I know you're right, but that doesn't make it any easier.”

Aaron leans down toward me, brushing his sweet mouth across mine, smelling like sandalwood and roses and future hope.

“It should,” he whispers, moving his lips from my mouth to my cheek and then pressing a gentle kiss there. “Because it means you've learned to truly put somebody else first. You miss Heather, but she's in the best possible place she could be. You kept her safe by sacrificing your time together. It's not an easy thing to do.” Aaron pauses and looks up, running his tongue along his lower lip as he notices Trinity glaring at us from her position near the bus. “Pretty sure we’re making everyone late,” he says with another laugh, one that very clearly says I don’t give a shit if we are.

Oak Valley Prep students might like schedules and punctuality, but Prescott students just play shit by ear. We do things on our own fucking timeline. After all, we operate assuming ours is shorter than other people’s.

“Well,” I start with a roll of my eyes, letting Aaron take my hand in his good one and pull me toward the bus. “You wouldn't want to inconvenience any of Oak Valley Prep’s finest.”

We move carefully across the icy driveway as Trinity mutters something under her breath and climbs onto the bus ahead of us.

Everyone stares at us from their seats, dressed in designer clothes and looking like they're on their way to a movie set instead of a rustic lodge on the outskirts of the city.

I stare right back at them, this strange chasm opening up between us that promises me we have absolutely nothing in common. These students, they might as well be from a different planet. I’d probably have more in common with an alien from Mars than I do with the student body of Oak Valley.

I take a seat next to Aaron in the rear of the bus, trying my very hardest not to burn a hole in the back of Trinity's head with my violent stare. She’s sitting next to my husband, and she’d do best to remember to keep her hands to herself.

Aaron curls his fingers through mine, and I lean toward him, resting my head on his shoulder. If I have to sit here and watch my husband pretend to be interested in another girl, I may as well do it resting against the side of a man I love just as much.

“Don't worry, Bernie,” Aaron breathes, nuzzling into me. “Eventually, you'll get your chance to show that girl exactly how you feel.”

He's right, yet again, but like I said before: it doesn't make it any easier. Sometimes, the right thing feels so wrong that it hurts. I keep that in mind as the bus pulls onto the street we make the three hour drive up to the lodge.

Rogue Elk Resort is a busy place, this soaring building with log walls, wood ceilings, and old fir floors. Everything is decked out in plaid or printed with bears; it's not my aesthetic, but I do my best to appreciate it. Students from four different schools make up the crowd, half of them interested in hitting the slopes while the other half are most concerned with sneaking away to fuck.

Looks like teenagers will be teenagers, regardless of income bracket.

Since we’re not officially part of the school group, we're not beholden to their schedule, one that seems to consist of planned meals, group activities, and scheduled excursions to ski or snowboard. Frankly, if I had to participate in that crap, I'd likely consider myself trapped in the ninth circle of hell.

“I cannot believe Victor talked me into coming on this,” I say as I lay out an outfit for dinner on the bed in our shared room. The boys and I have two connecting suites with only two beds, but considering everything that's going on, it doesn't seem safe to split up. We’d all rather share a room than risk being caught off guard.

“Would you have rather he come by himself?” Aaron asks with a shit-eating smirk stretched across his full lips. He’s relaxing in a chair near the fireplace, his chestnut hair falling over his forehead in just such a way that I can’t possibly find it in myself to be pissed-off at him. “Spent the weekend with Trinity while you sat at home and pined after him?” Aaron laughs as I flip him off, but he's not entirely off base with that.

There is no way in fucking hell that I would have let him go on this trip with Trinity without me. After our talk in the closet the other day, I’ve come to realize that it isn’t Victor that I don't trust: it's myself. And I'm going to do my best to change that.

“Good point,” I admit reluctantly, turning around to look at Aaron and crossing my arms over my chest. He studies me with the careful fragility of somebody who's in love, somebody who, when they look at you, stares at you like it might be the last time, every time—just in case. I move over to him, curling my fingers together behind his neck and playing with a few loose strands of hair as I straddle him. “The thing is: I hate skiing, you're too injured to snowboard, and I'm not about to spend my time hanging out with prep school assholes. So, what do you think we should do?”

Aaron gives me a heart-stopping grin before running his fingers through my ponytail and giving it a little tug. “I can think of a few things we could be doing,” he whispers as he puts his hands on my hips and pulls me just a little bit closer to him.

“So, Aaron Atlas Fadler, you want to fuck me, is that it?”

“I wouldn't say no …” he says, drawing out the word for a moment. With a grin, and a very un-Havoc-like squeal from me, I let him pick me up and carry me over to the bed. He manages it just fine, even with the medical boot and the cast. I’d say it was because he’s so close to being done with both of them, but we know that’s not it at all.

It’s because he’s a badass.

“You thought of me,” I whisper as he braces himself above me with his one good hand. Looking down at me with green-gold eyes, I can see that he knows exactly what I mean. You thought of me when you made the choice to break your hand, when you attacked a man in the woods with his own gun, when you took a chance on carpooling with David Benedict. All of that, for me.

“I thought of you,” Aaron agrees, and then he pauses, like he’s been thinking about something for awhile and has just now made a decision about it. “That night …” He trails off. We both know which night, the one where I fucked all five Havoc Boys, one after the other. “When I told you not tonight after you put your lips near my ear … What were you going to say?”

Shit.

“You know what I was trying to say,” I tell him with a dramatic roll of my eyes. But he just lifts an eyebrow and stays where he is, waiting for me to answer the question. Aaron might seem like the nicest of the group, but he’s definitely one of the most stubborn, too. Sometimes, he’s a little too stubborn, a slave to his own morality. But it’s an endearing trait, too, and very likely the one that saved both our lives. Too damn stubborn to die.

“Maybe I’ll go out and find one of Trinity’s pretty friends to flirt with—just to gather intel, of course.” He smiles to soften the blow of the joke, but I know he could, if he wanted to. With his tattoos, that hair, that smile … It wouldn’t be very hard.

I glare at him, but my body is aching; I just want him to touch me.

“I was going to say …” I pause to gather a breath for courage. Like I said, intimacy issues. Lots of them. “That you’re a part of me, and I can’t live without you. That’s it. Seriously not a big deal.”

“Telling someone they’re a fucking part of you isn’t a big deal?” he chokes out with a laugh. “Oh, Bernadette.” Aaron presses his mouth to mine, even as I consider kneeing him in the junk as hard as I can. And then that’s it for me, there’s no more resistance after that. It’s not even worth pretending that I’m not wet and hungry for him. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispers as he balances on his forearms and reaches between us to undo his pants. “You’ve always been a fucking part of me.”

Two hours later, we find ourselves sweaty and disheveled and grinning like fools at a table in the dining room. It’s swanky as fuck in here, but it doesn’t feel any safer than a dive in south Prescott. People are still duplicitous; they still covet and crave and desire.

My afterglow only lasts so long as it takes me to spot Victor and Trinity, sitting at a table of their own in the corner of the room. Victor stares at Trinity with that endless dark gaze of his, and she stares back at him like he’s something to be obtained, something to be conquered and consumed. What she doesn't understand is that a man like Victor Channing can never be tamed.

What she doesn't understand … is that he isn't looking at her like he wants to consume her in a carnal sense, he's looking at her like he's planning on how he might kill her one day.

Oscar joins me and Aaron at the table, sliding into the seat beside mine and throwing that sharp silver gaze of his across the room until he spots James Barrasso. It seems that I'm not the only person in the restaurant who’s staring at Vic and Trinity. James can't seem to take his eyes off of them.