Her voice cracked, and my heart hurt for her. I saw the way Jagger flinched at the sound of it, and I wanted to slap him for being so stupid. For not even giving them a chance to have something special. Instead, he just stood there, not saying a word or reaching for the girl who could have loved him with every fiber of her being if he’d only let her.
“I fucking knew you two kissed!” Cannon exploded as he pushed past me to get to his best friend and sister. Grabbing Jagger by the shoulder, he swung him around and punched him dead in the face. Jagger fell on his ass but didn’t try to get up.
Cannon stood over him, seething with anger. “Stay the fuck away from my sister.” Then he turned Shaw. “And I told you, keep your distance from my best friend. You’re acting like a fucking slut right now, Shaw.”
Shaw growled something I didn’t understand and drew back her left hand. When her fist connected with Cannon’s jaw, he stumbled and fell face first beside Jagger. “And you’re acting like a fucking prick, asshole.” She gave both guys a disgusted look. “You know what? You two deserve each other. You’re both pussified idiots.”
She stormed out of the room, and I stood there for a moment, taking the whole thing in. Part of me thought of taking pictures to send to Luca later so we could talk shit about the two dumbasses on the floor, but I changed my mind when the girl Jagger had been making out with hit him in the face with a pillow from the couch.
“You were only making out with me to hurt that girl?” she demanded.
He shrugged, still not saying a word.
“She’s right. You are a pussy. I’m out of here.” She threw another pillow at his face and then stepped over Cannon as she walked out of the house with her head held high.
Everyone who was in the room and witnessed the whole exchange went back to doing whatever they were doing before the incident happened. I shook my head at the two of them and went in search of Shaw.
I found her in the kitchen with a bottle of spiced rum in one hand and a can of Diet Coke in the other. She took a drink of the soda then poured a shot of rum directly into her mouth. I nearly groaned, wondering if I was going to have to drive her car home later. I had my license, but I didn’t like driving, which was why I’d told my parents I didn’t want my own vehicle yet.
I grabbed myself a Diet Coke and then leaned back against the counter beside my best friend. “So…you kissed Jagger last weekend?”
She exhaled slowly but after a moment, nodded. “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t tell you. He spent last weekend at the house. Saturday night, after Cannon went to bed, we stayed up watching movies together. You know how it’s been with us. The flirting and everything. Then he kissed me and I…” She took another shot of rum from the bottle and chased it with a drink of soda. “I thought he was picking me over Cannon. That he felt what I feel.”
I put my free arm around her. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t talk to me all week. Wouldn’t return my messages or voice mails. I knew he was feeling guilty, but I thought he would get over it. Cannon wouldn’t be pissed for long, and even if he was, why did it matter if we were happy?” She snorted and took another shot. “Then when I talked to Mia yesterday, she asked if I was going to this party too since Jags was going to it. But apparently he set this up so I would catch him kissing someone else.”
“I’m so sorry,” I told her as I hugged her side. “Guys can be total douchebags.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. After taking another shot, she dropped the bottle on the counter and tossed her now-empty can into the recycling. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out her keys. “I’m not leaving yet. If that asshole wants to show me we don’t belong together, I’ll show him exactly what he’s going to be missing. But you’re going to have to drive us home.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said with a tight smile, already dreading the drive. In the dark. During Friday night traffic. Fuck.
I stuck with just Diet Coke for the night, but Shaw hit the rum hard. It was her usual choice of hard liquor, and it always brought out the wild side of my bestie. I stayed close to her, making sure she didn’t do anything she would regret when she was sober, and tried to talk her into going home every twenty minutes in the hope she was ready to go. Her curfew had been extended this year, but her parents were out of town for the weekend, so it wasn’t like they would know if she got home on time or not.
“Stevenson!” I turned from watching Shaw dancing on the living room coffee table with some other girl to find Remington walking into the room. I smiled at the senior as he came over to stand beside me.
Remington had moved to Santa Monica over the summer, and he’d spent the first week of school flirting with me. But when he’d asked me out, I’d told him about Luca. He was a nice guy, though, definitely good company, especially when I was in a house full of people I mostly didn’t like to begin with.
I lifted a brow at him as I glanced around. “I didn’t think this was your scene.”
He shrugged his leanly muscled shoulders. He was on the swim team, and I’d seen him running on the track several times in the past few weeks. Remington was a little over six feet tall, with dirty-blond hair and the clearest blue eyes I’d ever seen. They looked almost like crystals at times, and the way they were surrounded by thick, light-brown lashes made them appear mystical. A girl would have to be blind not to see how good-looking Remington was, but even though I thought he was hot, I was too caught up in Luca to pay much attention.
“Yeah, well, I could say the same about you.” His eyes flitted to Shaw. “Cage is drunk, huh?”
“For a while now,” I agreed grimly. “You missed the blowup between her and Cannon earlier. She laid his ass on the floor. But she’s so drunk, she can’t even feel her swollen knuckles right now.”
He grinned, showing his movie-star quality, even white teeth. “I knew she was a badass.”
I laughed. “You don’t even know just how badass she can be.” I glanced back at Shaw then sighed. “Can you watch her for me for a second? I need to pee, and I don’t trust anyone else in this room to keep her from making bad life choices.”
“Go. I got this.”
I gave him a quick hug in thanks then headed for the downstairs bathroom. The first-floor guest bathroom was occupied. I had to go pretty badly and I didn’t want to leave Shaw for long, even with Remington watching out for her, so I went upstairs where there were two other guest baths.
The first one I came to was full of other girls doing their makeup. They offered to let me come in and do my business, but I couldn’t pee in front of people I didn’t know. Luckily, the second bathroom was empty, and I quickly locked the door behind me.
When I came out a few minutes later, I was determined to get Shaw to go home. I was tired, and I wanted to text Luca. Even if he was asleep in his hotel room, I could still tell him goodnight and ask him to call me in the morning since his game wasn’t until six Central time.
As I walked out of the bathroom, my mind on how I could convince Shaw to leave, a hand caught me around the waist.
Startled, I yelped just as I was pushed up against the wall outside the bathroom. Lifting my head, I met Cannon’s aggressive eyes. They were bloodshot, and I could smell the booze on his breath even as he lowered his head.
I was so surprised, I didn’t react until his mouth landed on mine. When he kissed me, I started to fight against him. “Stop,” I cried, but his lips crushed mine even harder.
It was an angry kiss, as if he were punishing me for something, and I fought against him, trying in vain to push him off me. I couldn’t believe what he was doing. This was Cannon, the boy I’d grown up thinking of as my older brother. The guy who’d always had my back just as much as Shaw did. Our moms were so close they were practically sisters; they were the godmothers of each other’s kids.
I trusted Cannon to never hurt me, yet there he was, kissing me by force. My lips felt bruised and raw, and with how much power he
was using to keep me restrained, I knew I was going to have fingerprint bruises on my body. I tried to make as much noise as I could in the hope someone would hear me, but the music playing downstairs was too loud to hear anything above a shout.
Tears spilled from my eyes, and I tried to kick out, but even drunk, Cannon knew my tricks. He shifted his lower body so that my knee couldn’t make contact with his crotch and kissed me even rougher. My teeth tore against the inside of my bottom lip, and I cried out in pain as blood filled my mouth.
Then he was jerked away from me. Through my tears, I saw Remington punch Cannon in the face, and he landed at my feet.
“What the fuck were you doing?” Remington shouted at him as Cannon tried to catch his breath.
“She kissed my best friend, so I kissed hers!” Cannon yelled, wiping his mouth. When it came away red, he blanched then looked up at me. That was when he realized what he’d done, and he turned green. “Violet… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”
I turned away from him, my tears only coming faster. I felt sick, and shock was starting to set in. Cannon had just broken my heart, and I couldn’t even look at him.
Remington wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his body, and I pressed my face against him. But then I remembered the blood on my mouth and pulled back. “I got some on you,” I muttered lamely.
He cupped the back of my head, pressing me back into him. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s only a shirt.”
Shaw was stumbling her way up the stairs as we started down them. When she saw my face, her face clouded over. “What happened?”
“Ask your douchebag brother,” Remington told her in a hard voice.
“Vi?” Shaw sounded less drunk all of a sudden. “Oh God, Violet. You’re bleeding.” She grasped my hands, her fingers shaking. “Tell me what he did.”
“He…” I sucked in a deep breath. “He said since you kissed his best friend, he was going to kiss yours. And he… He hurt me.”
Fire blazed high in her eyes. “I’ll kill him.”
“No,” I cried when she started to release me. “Please. I’ve had enough tonight. I just want to go home. I don’t want to even think about your brother right now.”
Behind me, I heard Cannon call my name, and I shivered against Remington. “Please,” I whispered, my voice choked with emotion. “Please, let’s just go home.”
“You’re in no shape to drive, and I can’t…” Shaw’s voice quivered. “I’m so sorry, Vi.”
“I’ll take you both home,” Remington offered. “But you’ll have to come back for your car later.”
“I don’t care about the car,” Shaw told him.
He drove us to my house, because there was no way I could handle going to Shaw’s when Cannon could come home at any time. I couldn’t even stomach being around him. I wasn’t sure if I was more hurt or angry with him, but I knew if I saw him again anytime soon, I would do something I’d end up regretting.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too far past my curfew when Remington pulled into my driveway. I turned to face him and tried to smile. “Thanks,” I murmured.
He touched his thumb to my painful, swollen bottom lip. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll live,” I said with a tiny smile.
“I’ll see you Monday,” he said, returning my smile.
With a nod, I got out, and Shaw followed me. Remington waited until we were on the porch before reversing out of the driveway, and I unlocked the door. As we entered the house, Dad stuck his head out of the living room. “Hey. I thought you two were staying at Shaw’s tonight.”
I pushed Shaw up the stairs, hoping Dad didn’t smell the booze on her. I tried to keep my face turned away, not wanting him to see my mouth. I’d tried to clean off the blood myself with some tissues in the car, but I could still taste it and wasn’t all that confident it hadn’t smeared on my chin again.
“Changed our minds,” I told him as I started up the steps behind my friend. “Night, Dad.”
“Vi, wait…” I kept walking. “Are you okay? You’re…”
“I’m fine,” I told him as I practically sprinted up the stairs behind Shaw. “Love you.”
I got to my room and shut the door before locking it. Shaw had fallen face first onto my bed, already snoring. She’d really overdone it with the rum earlier, and even though she’d been pissed at her brother, the booze had caught up with her on the ride home, and she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.
I walked over to her and pulled off her boots, then walked into my bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. There wasn’t any blood on my face, thankfully, but my lips were swollen, especially the bottom one, and there was a bruise forming around the outline of my mouth.
Fingers trembling, I carefully touched my tender lips, and fresh tears blinded me. Luca was the only person ever to kiss me until now. My mouth had only known the kiss of the man I loved, and now…
Swallowing a sob, I walked blindly back into my room and found my phone. I needed to tell Luca. This wasn’t something I could keep from him. It wouldn’t be right to even try. He was going to be mad, and I was sure Cannon was going to be a dead man very, very soon, but I wasn’t even sure if I cared if Luca killed him. Not as upset as I was.
I checked the time and cursed when I realized it was going to be the middle of the night in Mississippi. But I didn’t want to wait. It would only make him even angrier if I kept it from him for even a second longer.
“Hello?” Luca’s sleepy voice filled my ear.
Just hearing his voice made my tears fall faster. “Hey,” I whispered.
“Baby?” I heard him moving around for a moment and imagined him sitting up. “Babe, what’s wrong?”
“I… Oh God. Something…happened.” I swallowed the knot in my throat and closed my eyes, but all I could picture was Cannon’s aggressive eyes, and I quickly opened mine, fighting a shudder.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I answered honestly, scrubbing the back of my hand over my tear-streaked face. “Not really.”
Chapter 21
Luca
I tried to clear my head of the sleep fog and hear what Violet was saying. She was upset, and I could tell she was crying.
I only caught a few major words out of everything as she sobbed out the story.
Party.
Cannon.
Kiss.
Those three words kept echoing in my head, and I woke up completely.
“So, you went to some party tonight,” I gritted out. “And you and Cannon kissed?”
There was a short pause on her end, and then she sniffled. “That’s all you took from what I just told you?” she demanded angrily.
“That’s all I fucking heard,” I roared, and Marsh groaned. A second later, his pillow hit me in the face.
“If you’re gonna yell at your girl, take it somewhere else,” he grumbled.
Cursing my friend, I grabbed the shirt I’d tossed at the end of the bed before falling asleep and grabbed my keycard before stomping out into the hall.
“I called to tell you what happened, and it seems like you’re accusing me of…of cheating on you!” Violet cried.
“Didn’t you?” I seethed as I took the stairs down to the lobby and walked out into the humid darkness.
“You really didn’t hear anything I said,” she whispered. “You think I would actually cheat on you? With Cannon?”
Angrily, I scrubbed my free hand over my face. “Isn’t that what you did, Vi?”
“No, you asshole! That’s not what happened at all. He… And I couldn’t…” She broke off as another sob left her, and the sound cut through me.
“Tell me again. Make me understand,” I pleaded. “Were you drunk, and it just happened? Maybe… I don’t know, maybe I could overlook it.”
“Overlook it?” she repeated, her voice suddenly sounding lifeless. “Yeah. Sure. That’s exactly what happened.”
“I have to go,” she said in that same emotionless tone.
“No, wait. Violet!” But she’d already hung up.
Fuck. Something wasn’t right. I knew I must have missed something major, but I was hurting at the thought of Violet’s lips on someone else. We needed to figure this out.
I called her back, but it went straight to voice mail, telling me she must have turned off her phone. Cursing, I called Shaw’s phone, hoping she would let me talk to my girl. It rang and rang, until finally, it went to voice mail. I hung up and tried again, but it went straight to voice mail, and I knew she must have turned her phone off too.
“Goddamn it,” I muttered and called the only other person I knew I could depend on.
“Sup, bro,” Lyric answered. He sounded wide awake and happy as hell, the complete opposite of how I was feeling right then.
“Where are you?” I asked as I paced in front of the hotel.
“At a party in West Hollywood,” he said with a laugh. “Where are you?”
“Ric!” I growled. He knew where the hell I was. “Something happened with Violet. She called me and told me she kissed Cannon.”
“What the fuck are you on?” He laughed so hard he could barely breathe all of a sudden. “That is the funniest thing I have ever heard.”
“I’m not fucking kidding!”
That shut him up. “Then maybe you heard her wrong!” my twin yelled at me, sounding pissed. “Because Violet wouldn’t do that to you, dumbass.”
“She was upset, and I barely heard what she was saying, but she admitted that she was at a party and drinking, and she and Cannon kissed.” I felt like I was going to be sick.
Violet’s lips had been on someone else’s. She’d let someone other than me kiss her. Those were my lips, my kisses. No one else had the right to taste that sweetness but me. When I got my hands on that motherfucker, I was going to rip him apart.
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