I shook my head. “No, that’s not right.” My voice came out weak and confused. The timeline was wrong. So very fucking wrong, because the girl in most of those pictures wasn’t a nearly sixteen-year-old Mads Clarke. They were me. Now. At eighteen.
The only pics I was sure were from that night were the ones of us together. It was crystal clear they had all been taken without my knowledge or consent. Sterling was living up to the bad boy I pegged him for but so much worse. This went beyond bad boy. This was stalking!
And blackmail.
My nostrils flared. “You set me up.”
If I expected a denial, I was sorely disappointed. Sterling owned his crazy. “So what if I did? You wouldn’t have given me what I needed otherwise.”
I honestly still didn’t know what he wanted, my head too busy whirling with pictures and tequila, rum, and vodka. “You’re not a nice guy.”
“Oh, and you’re a nice girl? Are you, Splash?”
One photo of me had been irritating. Multiple images spelled catastrophe. “Who the hell are you trying to hurt? Me?” I studied his face, trying to figure out his angle. He wasn’t easy to read, but what I did see gave me pause. “No. Not me,” I muttered more to myself as I continued to scrutinize his expression. Then who? Someone close to me, obviously. One of my friends? But they didn’t give a shit about some images of me with a guy. There was only really one person who would be hurt the most.
Dread stretched tight inside me, and my mouth went dry.
Micah.
Alarm churned like sour milk in my stomach. “I won’t let you hurt him.”
He stared at me hard now, all traces of humor and smugness at having the upper hand gone. “You really do deserve a better boyfriend.”
And he deserved a kick to the nuts, which I was seriously contemplating. After his phone met the bottom of my shoes, of course. My resolve to get those pictures strengthened, and so the awkward battle for the phone began. It became a game of cat and mouse, and to any onlooker, it probably appeared as if we were flirting. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. He dodged and ducked my hands as I grabbed and jumped for his phone, chasing him around the sidewalk area and into the edge of the street.
Sterling chuckled at another one of my failed attempts at snagging his phone, and I swore he was enjoying this. The last thing I wanted was to cause him any type of enjoyment. I had to resort to a new tactic because this was not working. If I could catch him off guard…
The back of my heel hit the curb, causing my equilibrium to go off-balance, and I started to fall backward, my arms outstretched in search of something to grab, something to save myself from hitting the ground.
Sterling’s hand clasped around mine and yanked me forward. The momentum sent me tumbling into his chest, my nose bumping into his hard form. A curse went off in my head as I gathered my bearings, but my heart never got the chance to calm down.
A heartbeat later, a deep voice that wasn’t Sterling’s said my name. “Mads?”
My blood went cold.
Micah had Sterling up against the wall a second later. “Stay the fuck away from her.”
Sterling’s shoulders lifted, his chest rose, and the veins in his neck pulsed, but his anger didn’t hold a candle to Micah’s quiet fury. “I think you got it all wrong, man.”
I stepped forward, but a hand landed on my shoulder, keeping me from intervening. “You don’t want to do that,” Brock warned. “He needs to do this.”
Do what exactly? Beat the living shit out of Sterling? Not that I didn’t think he needed it, but it wouldn’t solve anything. I could tell Micah that this form of intimidation wouldn’t work with Sterling. It shone in his amber eyes. If anything, the slight hook of his lips told me Sterling craved the fight as much as—perhaps more than—Micah did.
Time slowed as I waited to see what would happen next. A girl came out of the bar and shrieked, but I barely noticed her, not with my attention fixed on Micah and Sterling.
A cold mask descended over Micah’s features. “Do I?”
“She’s drunk,” Sterling started his defense, and I couldn’t believe my ears. The jerk wasn’t trying to pin this situation on me. Fuck no. Yes, I was drunk, but not drunk enough to believe his bullshit. Besides, the shit with the photo had more or less sobered my ass up really quick. But he continued spewing lies. “I was only trying to—”
Micah's fist slammed into Sterling, hitting him right on the corner of his mouth. “I don’t want to hear your fucking excuses.”
Sterling’s face jerked slightly to the side from the impact. He kept his gaze downward, working the pain I was sure throbbed on his jaw. Blood beaded at his lip, bright against his creamy flawless skin.
If Micah hadn’t hit him, I would have. My fingers were balled together at my sides, nails digging into my palms.
Sterling spit a pool of blood at Micah’s feet, his back still pressed into the bricks. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Undercurrents of violence and tension built between them like a volcano about to erupt. “That’s where you’re wrong. I should have done it sooner,” Micah snarled, nostrils flaring.