“Let me tell you what we’re not going to do.” His words hold no trace of a threat. He’s not trying to scare me anymore. He’s stating facts. “We’re not going to pretend like you have any fucking leverage over me when it’s clear as shit that your brother had no idea I was back from camp.”
Fuck.
“I’d also bet a kidney your parents don’t know their little girl is living alone with a boy, do they?” His breath tickles my cheek.
My mouth falls open at his assumption, but I clamp it shut, refusing to give him an answer. Only, he doesn’t seem to need one because he scoffs.
“That’s what I thought.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” I croak.
“You want to know what I think?” He twists a strand of my black hair around his index. “I think it changes everything. I think it means I don’t have to be nice to you or pretend for one fucking second that I want you here. In fact, I don’t even have to worry about your snitch ass ratting me out anymore.”
I try to come up with a hundred counterpoints but can’t find a single one.
Because he’s right. He’s got me backed up in a corner—metaphorically and literally. The possibility of me telling Xavier Emery about Finn hooking up with his girlfriend was my only advantage. Without it, Finn is free to return to his old ways.
“So, why don’t we make a deal?” He releases my hair.
I’ve given up on breathing like a normal person at this point.
“You don’t tell my best friend I know what his girl’s pussy tastes like, and I don’t tell your parents their daughter is a dirty fucking liar, how’s that?”
I don’t speak for a long moment, attempting and failing to calm my racing heart.
“Deal? Or do I need to call your daddy?”
I pretend to think about it, well aware that I have zero ammunition right now.
He grows impatient. “Last chance, Gem.”
My heart pulsing in my brain, I break one of Hollywood’s biggest rules: Never negotiate with terrorists. Granted, Finn isn’t a terrorist, but I swear, right now, with the way those merciless eyes observe me, like he has every intention of setting my world on fire and dancing upon the ashes…
He sure as hell feels like one.
“Deal,” I choke out and push him away.
He barely stumbles back a step, and I squeeze my way past him to reach the stairs, growling stomach be damned.
“Oh, and Gem?” he calls a second later.
He’s never going to remember which gemstone I’m named after, is he?
I stop in my tracks but don’t look at him.
“My friend Theo will be staying with us for a while.”
I don’t make a sound.
“Unless… you got a problem with that?” he baits.
He’s testing me.
Making sure I know where my place is.
I want to rain hell down on him, but I know I can’t refuse. Well, I could, but it wouldn’t do squat. I have the short end of the stick now. If I snitch on him, he could lose his best friend—it’d piss him off, but the guy clearly doesn’t love anyone, so he’d get over it—but if he tells on me?
I could lose my parents’ trust, and after everything my dads did for me, from plucking me out of a terrible home as a baby to giving me a great life, I couldn’t stomach it.
“Fine,” I grumble.
That’s when he gives me a look. One that swaps the blood in my veins for ice. His eyes are still packed with hate, disdain, and resentment, but this time…
This time, there’s also a glimmer of interest.
A drop of curiosity that wasn’t there before. He looks at me like I’m a ticking time bomb he finally knows how to detonate. And as I glide up the stairs with my luggage, I know…
I’m in for the worst summer of my life.