My heart thudded to the floor. What the fuck? Alone? Again? With him?
I knew I should have threatened him further the other night. Before Piper and I had left the races, I shot him a glare and told him to lose her fucking number. He was bad news, and I didn’t trust him.
My pulse drummed beneath my skin as I started t
o head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Christian called out, but I didn’t answer.
Just as I was pulling my keys out of my pocket, I collided with something small. My hand shot out to steady the person in front of me, and when my palm felt the soft skin underneath me, I instantly knew who it was.
“Piper?”
Her vivid green eyes were wide with shock. “Jeez! What?”
My head snapped over to Hayley as she stood back beside Christian with her arched eyebrow raised high. The grin on her face had me grinding my teeth. I knew what she was doing. She knew something was going on between her best friend and me, and she was trying to catch us in it. Hayley wasn’t as easily swayed like my brother was. She wanted a reaction out of me, and she knew she’d get it by awakening the jealous beast inside me.
Christian snickered as he looked from me to his girlfriend, then he shook his head and dragged Hayley away by the hand.
Piper looked from my face down to her arm where my hand still rested. “Why are you still holding my arm?”
My hand dropped immediately as I looked away. I felt trapped. On edge. I wasn’t exactly nervous to race tomorrow, but I was definitely worried about Piper being involved. I felt like things were slipping out of my control.
I slowly slipped my keys back into my pocket and began walking past her. Before I got too far, I whispered in her ear, “We need to talk. Find me later.” And then I headed straight for the keg.
Some malty beer should help calm my worries—at least for tonight.
Piper was becoming a staple in my head more and more as time went on. Especially now that I knew she was mixed up in some bad shit. My worries were at an all-time high, and if I let her overtake every part of my brain, that meant there was room for mistakes, and I had my own secret to worry about, too.
Chapter Fifteen
Piper
The deck railing was smooth along my palms as I held onto the edge, looking out below as my friends gathered around the bonfire that Eric so excitedly shouted about moments before. The fire roared to life in hues of orange and red as he poured gasoline over it, everyone yelling in their loud drunken manners.
Ollie was standing back, observing Eric throw some type of paper into the fire and periodically watching his brother and Hayley stare at one another with that intense connection they’d always had. Even from above, I could tell Ollie was struggling with whatever he was thinking about. The glow of flames danced along his high cheekbones and along the side of his jaw. His light hair was disheveled on top, as if he had run his hand through it before coming outside.
Ollie was attractive—and not in the way that most of these guys were. He was painstakingly beautiful. His smooth face, his deep-blue eyes, his smile that literally lit up a room. Whereas his brother was broody and dangerously hot with a smirk, Ollie was more of the glowing, made-straight-from-heaven, flawless type of beautiful.
He made my heart skip a beat. Whenever he shined that flirty smile my way, my stomach would dip low, even more so when I tried to ignore it. But the other night, in my kitchen, was different. He wasn’t his usual charming self, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Sleep never came after he’d left. I kept tossing and turning in bed, wondering what would have happened if I had inched just a fraction closer to his body, how my body would have reacted if I had felt his lips on mine again.
It was a distant memory, but I would never forget the way kissing Ollie felt.
His kiss ruined me. I knew, after that night, I’d compare every kiss after to his.
I wondered if he remembered how it felt to kiss me. Was I like all the other girls he’d kissed? Or was I different, too?
Almost as if he heard me, he swung his attention up to the deck, and he landed on me. Half of his face was shadowed by the midnight sky, but the other half was glowing.
He slowly looked away, but before I knew it, he was making his way up the hill and over to the deck stairs.
No one else was up here besides me. Everyone was down around the fire or locked away in a bedroom somewhere, fooling around just like Ollie and I had done a year prior at Andrew’s.
“Hey.”
I kept my attention on the bonfire, almost too nervous to look Ollie in the face. Things had shifted between us after he came to my house. The truth was spewed, and I still wasn’t sure what to do with it. Ollie read me like I was his favorite book, and all I wanted to do was rip out every single page.
“Hey,” I said back, ignoring that pesky little dip in my belly.