“Screw you, Clay!” she yells. “I have family too, and they’re not the Jaegers whom you think you can bully.”

“Stay away from her or else.”

“Or else what?” she fires back. “You going to take another video of us? Well, enjoy yourself, because when she graduates, and I go to college in New York in the fall—oh, did she tell you about Dartmouth? As luck would have it, we’ll be that close to each other…” And she gets in my face, taunting me, “And then I can fuck her every weekend where you can’t get a hold of her.”

My eyes go wide, burning.

“We’ll be gone, and we’ll laugh about how sad you were.” She laughs. “Or are.”

I grit my teeth together.

“You don’t deserve her attention,” she says, “and pretty soon she won’t think of you at all!”

“Ugh!” I slam my hands into her chest, and she crashes into the wall next to the doorway. She cries out, falling to the ground, and I spot the garbage can next to her and grab it.

I hesitate a moment, a sob stretching my throat so tightly it hurts. Fuck it. I lift it high and dump everything on her head, and she screams as remnants of gumbo and chicken noodle soup smear all over her.

“Clay!” she cries.

I drop the can and clutch her jaw in one hand and the back of her neck in another, bringing her face up to mine. “Look at me,” I grit out. “Look at me!”

She raises her eyes, whimpering. “Stop.”

“Shut up,” I say, tears welling in my eyes, because I know I’m losing. I’m going to lose her forever. “Her team spots her. Do you understand?” And then I lower my voice, pressing my forehead into hers hard. “I spot her. If I have to repeat myself again, I will do damage you can’t come back from. She is seventeen, a minor, and…”

Mine.

Megan coughs, and needles prick my throat, because she doesn’t deserve this, but it can’t happen. Megan doesn’t deserve her. And Liv doesn’t get to have someone. She doesn’t get to forget about me.

She stares at me, clearing her throat as something crosses her eyes. “You want her,” she pants. “That’s what this is about. Oh my God.”

Tears spill.

“You’re a…a…”

And I throw her down, ready to hit her until she can’t say the words loud enough for anyone to ever hear.

“What the hell?” someone bellows.

I look up, seeing Liv standing in the doorway as I hover over Megan on the floor.

Liv runs up, flipping on the light. She takes in Megan and me and dives down to pick up her friend; Megan shivering like a scared rabbit as she grapples onto Liv.

Liv turns to me. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

Her brothers spill into the house behind her, and I grab the flag from the table and bolt out the back door and into the yard.

Patting my hand over my mouth and singing, I dance into the forest. “I got the flaaaaag,” I call out. “Come and get it!”

I dart back toward the village and Callum’s car, but in moments, Liv is on my tail. I feel something muddy hit the back of my knee, and I’m on the ground, flipping onto my back and looking up at her.

She comes down, pinning my wrists to the ground.

“Get me off the ground,” I order.

“In the dirt is where you belong!” she spits out. “You’ve never been uglier to me. How could you do that to her? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I don’t answer, clenching my teeth so my chin doesn’t quiver.

I know she’s right. The walls close in, and sometimes I feel like I want to die.

“That money and that house doesn’t make you clean,” she says. “It just provides a shield of defenders who are only there because they hope to get something out of you. They don’t love you. No one loves you!”

She rises, and I pause, her words sinking so deep I can’t breathe.

In a fog, I climb to my feet.

“What, am I supposed to treat you like glass because you have a dead brother?” she bites out. “I’m supposed to make an exception for your behavior, even though a toddler has better fucking manners than you do?”

I clutch the flag in my fist as she advances on me and backs me into a tree.

“I swallow your shit,” she growls, her cheeks flushed, “because you’re not important enough to spare an effort, but I’ve reached my limit. I’m tired of hearing that I’m not good enough. That I deserve to be treated like garbage, because of who I am or where I come from or who I want to be with.”

I blink away the tears, steeling my jaw.

“That I can’t have that. Or that’s not for me, or I’ll never have that life,” she continues. “A lifetime of being told I’m wrong for your world. Of not seeing myself in your school hallways and represented in your town.”

“You won’t find what you’re looking for in the back seat of your car either!” I grit out.

She nods, looking like she has more to say, but deciding that it’s not worth it. She looks at me, several breaths passing before she drops her gaze and murmurs, “Or at Marymount, I guess.”

I narrow my eyes. “What does that mean?”

She’s been there almost four years. She’s all of a sudden realizing she doesn’t fit?

She meets my eyes again, swallowing and sounding calm, her anger suddenly gone. “It means I don’t have anything to prove. I don’t know why I ever thought I did. Especially to you.”

Because…because what happened in the locker room wasn’t one-sided. She felt it, too. “Because you want to touch me,” I tell her.

She scoffs, tears glistening in her eyes. “Is that what this is about?” she inquires. “Don’t think what happened in the locker room was real, just because I kissed you back. I was angry and full of a lot of steam to blow off, and pretty much in fucking shock too, but I don’t want you, Clay.”

No?

“You’re like vanilla,” she says. “I mean, yeah, it’s ice cream, but it’s not really an option when there are other choices that taste better.”

She turns away, and I grab her, but instead of yanking away from me, she grabs me back and presses me into the tree, its bark digging into my back.

She glares.

“Don’t say that,” I whisper.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t…” I don’t know how to explain. “I can’t… I can’t…”

I don’t want you. I can’t want you. It’s just…

So I say the only thing that I do know for sure. “I can’t leave you alone,” I tell her.

That’s all I know. I need to feel it again.

My hair falls in my face, but I can smell the remnants of her watermelon lip gloss. “Ask me to touch you.”

Please. I want her to want me to touch her. I won’t force her like last time. Ask me.

But she just shakes her head slowly, and I don’t know what it means.

I place my hands on her waist. “Ask me.”

But just then, a low hiss pierces the air somewhere behind her, and we both freeze.

My pulse echoes in my ears, and I peer over her shoulder as she turns her head, both of us spotting a glowing pair of eyes low to the ground about ten yards away.