“Knight always wants to play with her, even when Vaughn and I play a different game. And Luna doesn’t even play. It’s ridiculous. She just stands there, being stupid.”

I took a step forward, but it wasn’t necessary. Edie was next to Daria in a heartbeat, and the look on her face…fucking priceless. She had the potential to be as daunting as her father. She just didn’t want to be.

“That’s enough, Daria. What you’re feeling right now is jealousy. It’s okay, we all do sometimes. But what’s not okay is how you chose to act on that jealousy by taking it out on Luna and her favorite toy. I think you owe her an apology, don’t you?”

There was silence for a moment. Daria twisted her fingers together, looking horrified and embarrassed, pulling at her pink tutu dress. Luna was watching her from the crook of Edie’s neck, her hands around Edie’s shoulders.

“It’s true.” Melody sighed, staring at me in an I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-her expression. I shrugged. Not my problem.

Emilia walked out of the kitchen for the first time since we’d gotten there, holding a bowl of fruit salad. She put it on the table and rushed to us, wiping her purple hair from her face.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

Melody filled her in. Daria apologized, and Luna finally consented to let go of Edie and go with Emilia to wash her face.

Mel, Edie, and I stood in a small circle afterwards. The sun made everything more angry and heated, and between my anger and Melody’s obvious embarrassment, I knew we could explode pretty quickly.

“I think I’m going to go have that lemonade now,” Edie trailed off, turning around and walking into the house. Mel stared at me skeptically, and for the millionth time that year, I thanked God I was the fucking Mute and she didn’t expect an actual answer.

I walked into the house looking for Luna and Emilia. I trusted Vicious’ wife. She and Rosie had this thing about them. They made you feel at home, even when you clearly weren’t.

I passed by the two empty bathrooms on the first floor, about to walk up the stairs to the bedrooms when I stopped by the stairway. Edie was in Vaughn’s playroom, which was full of toys. Trucks and soldiers and whatnot. She was standing by a slide coming out of a giant castle, fingering something small in her hand. I squinted, trying to see what it was. It was a toy soldier.

She looked…sad. For the first time, I actually saw it on her. The wariness. The despair. She looked wrecked, and I’d always been too busy to notice, because this wrecked soul happened to have an amazing ass and a gorgeous pair of tits and a father I loathed. Fuck.

There was no excuse for what I was doing. For me walking into that room and closing the door behind us. For me striding over to her with chaos dancing in my chest, watching her as she lifted her eyes from the toy, reading everything that was inside of mine.

I could say it was because she’d protected my daughter, but that wouldn’t be true.

I could say it was because I saw her layers as she held that toy soldier in her small hand, but that would be bullshit, too.

I did it because I had to. Because fuck the consequences and Jordan Van Der Zee and everything standing between us. For the first time in five years, I put my lips on another person’s and kissed her. Hard.

My mouth coming down on hers was like riding a bike. It came to me instinctively, but at the same time, felt so fucking different I almost choked on that kiss. My hand cupped her cheek and drew her close, and my tongue darted out to open her mouth. She moaned into our kiss and clung to my face as if she’d wanted to do this since the day we’d met. I held both her cheeks and deepened our kiss, letting the strange, strange notion of my tongue dancing with another’s sink in. It was so fucking wet and intimate. I wanted to eat her.

“Tide,” I breathed, sinking my teeth into her lower lip and closing them until I heard the familiar whimper of joy. “You’re such a fucking tide.”

“Seahorse,” she retorted.

“I wish.”

“You are.”

“Maybe,” I said, sounding unsure for the first time in a long time.

“I’m not your tide, Trent.” Sorrow laced her words, and I knew she was right. She wanted my neck. Bad.

“No. You’re my Delilah, Edie, and I’m your Samson. You want to ruin me, destroy me, strip me of my power, and betray me. I should stay away from you, but I want you too fucking much. And when it’s all over, when all that’s left of us is sweaty flesh and shattered minds and torn hearts, you will remember me as the man who made you cry, and I’ll remember you as the girl I had to break to stay afloat.”

We stared at each other, almost smiling. What a fucking way to break my rules, with a girl who was both at my mercy and tasted of betrayal. Brushing my thumbs over her cheeks, I crashed my lips into hers, kissing her with abandon and passion and regret. I kissed her with everything I had that was worth taking. We nibbled and bit and made this kiss our fucking bitch, knowing there probably wouldn’t be another one. Doing what I’d been wanting to do since I’d seen her across Dean’s lawn standing next to her father, sneering at the world like she was ready to declare war on it.

I was opening up to someone who wasn’t my parents or my three friends, feeling the walls of something disastrous closing down on me.

Our lips were swollen and our eyes were hooded when we were caught, in the middle of the colorful playroom, propped against a plastic castle with a slide. The door swung open and Vicious leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, examining us with boredom. Knight and Vaughn were standing next to him, each of them hugging one of his thighs, watching us without really understanding what they were looking at. “You said you were careful. No chance at getting caught.” My friend threw my words back at me mockingly.

My urge to deny everything was crushed by the impulse to claim her. I dropped my hands from her face, but only so I could tilt my body toward his.

“You need to leave.”

“You need to come up with a good plan before her father kills you,” Vicious retorted calmly.

“What I need”—I looked down, trying not to curse in front of the kids—“is your cooperation. Before I snap.”

That made Vicious take a step back. Before he closed the door, I heard him say, “I think it’s time to make some popcorn, kids. These two are going to give us the best show this town has to offer.”

I LIKED ROSIE THE BEST.

They were all nice, but Rosie was the one who truly got me. She was wearing a Queens of the Stone Age shirt and ripped jeans, cradling her son, Lev, in her arms and nodding at me.

“Yup. That sounds like our Daria.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but hell, the kid is cruel. I’m not sure where to find an identical seahorse for Luna.” I plucked a grape from a fruit bowl in the middle of the table.

Rosie took a deep breath, her lungs straining for it, like her airway was blocked. After Vicious had caught Trent and me making out in his son’s playroom, he’d asked us to try not to hump each other on his property. Trent didn’t go down without a fight, telling Vicious everything there was to say with a look that could kill. We’d walked out of the room together. For a second, it looked like our hands were going to meet.

But they didn’t.

The buzz from that kiss still gripped every part of my body. I felt it on my swollen, stung lips. They throbbed, hummed, became alive. Almost like an entity separate from my body.

Rosie leaned across the table toward me when she spotted Emilia and Melody walking in our direction with bottles of wine. I knew I wouldn’t be offered a glass and that alone made me remember just how inferior I was to those people, solely because of my age. “What’s going on with you and Trent? He always struck me as mysterious and quiet, but also kind of dangerous.” Rosie wiggled her brows.

“Does Emilia know him well?” I asked, partly to evade the question, but mostly because I was eager to find out more about him. Rosie shook her head, shooting me a look that told me that I was not off the hook.

“I doubt anyone knows him well, his best friends included.”

“Knows who?” Emilia sat next to me, squeezing my shoulder and smiling at me. “Thank you for joining us today, Edie. Luna really loves you, and I enjoy seeing her shine.”

God, she was perfect, even in her vintage baby blue Alice in Wonderland dress and yellow cardigan. No wonder Vicious was so infatuated with her.

“We were talking about Trent. Surprising, right?” Rosie kissed her son’s blond head, and he stirred awake, immediately reaching for her breasts.

“Like father, like son.” Rosie rolled her eyes, popping one boob out by lifting most of her shirt. I looked the other way, knowing it was perfectly normal—a mother feeding her infant like nature intended—but I still felt like a stupid, immature teenager.

“What about Trent?” Mel chimed in, sitting at the table with us. Luna was on the other side of the garden with him, and suddenly, this felt a lot like suburbia’s answer to Sex and the City. Mel cracked open a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, one for her, and one for Millie.

“Bitch, you’re breastfeeding.” Rosie frowned, and when Millie arched an eyebrow, she added, “What? Lev doesn’t understand a word yet. I’ll get rid of my bad mouth by the time he hits one.”

“As if.” Mel rolled her eyes, taking a generous sip of wine. She, too, had little Bailey, who was even younger than Lev. “I’m pumping and throwing it away. Bailey is mostly on formula. The nurse said she doesn’t know how to latch well, which is weird, considering her daddy has no problem in that department.”

“Thanks, Gross Central.” Rosie smirked.

“So what about Trent?” Mel repeated. “I tried to fix him up with a friend of mine. He is hopeless. He screwed the date up on purpose.”

Flutters. Butterflies. Smile fighting to sneak in. I knew it.

“He didn’t want to go on that date,” Emilia said in his defense. “I think it’s because of Val. He’s never been in a relationship before, and I think what happened with her made him give up on the idea. Which is sad.”