When I saw her heading upstairs with Nate earlier, something inside me snapped. My plan was working, which I should’ve been happy about, but all I felt was a tidal wave of rage and regret.
It wasn’t actually about Kinsey, I reasoned. It was the mere principle of the situation. I’d seen her knocking back drinks all night, and Nate—who was completely sober—was taking full advantage of her clumsy, intoxicated state.
Guys did shit like that at parties and clubs all the time, but that didn’t make it okay. The way I saw things was simple: if a girl genuinely wanted to fuck me, she wouldn’t need any mind-altering substances in her system to aid in that decision. Any man who disagreed with that was a coercive creep.
Kinsey might be a dirty skank who was actively trying to fuck my dad, but at least shewantedto do that when she was sober, as ridiculous as that might sound. I couldn’t say the same about her and Nate, however, and no matter how I tried to spin it, watching a drunk girl getting tricked into sleeping with a guy was never going to sit right with me. It didn’t matter who the girl was or how much I despised her.
Oh, yeah?A smug little voice filtered into my mind.If that’s all it’s about, why did you kiss her?
I groaned and raked a hand through my hair. Fuck… that kiss. Why did I let it happen? I’d never let my dick control me before I met Kinsey, but the second her lips touched mine, I melted like a fucking candle.
Why the hell did she even kiss me in the first place? She said it was an accident; that she thought I was someone else. But she was looking right at me when she grabbed my head and pulled my face toward her. How accidental could it possibly be?
“It was dark,” I muttered to myself, catching my irate reflection in the window on the other side of the room. “It was dark in her room, and it meant fuckingnothing.”
I wasn’t even going to think about how much I liked it. No, I definitely wouldn’t consider how badly I was still craving the sweet taste of her lips, the feel of her warm breath on my face, or the heavenly sensation of her fingertip stroking my jaw.
Fuck. Stop it, moron.
I had to think about something else. Anything else.
I blew out a relieved breath as my mind mercifully switched to another train of thought. I’d fucked up badly tonight, no doubt, but I could still gain some sort of benefit from the situation.
And I knew exactly how to do it.
I steeled my jaw, left my room, and quietly slipped back into Kinsey’s bedroom. While she was drunkenly passed out, her cell phone was up for grabs. Most people had face or fingerprint unlocking on their phones these days, so hopefully, I’d be able to use that to access Kinsey’s cloud account and delete that fucking video she’d been holding over my head for the last few days.
I crept over to her bed and looked down at her. Her chest was rising and falling in long, deep breaths, and her eyelids were barely twitching. Unless I yelled or smashed a glass right next to her head, it was doubtful she’d wake up anytime soon.
I knelt down to grab her purse from the floor. Her phone was shoved in a little side pocket, and it was dead when I pulled it out. I quietly shuffled over to the bedside table and found a charging cable.
While I waited for the phone to switch back on, I watched Kinsey sleep through narrowed eyes.
Why did she have to be so fucking beautiful? Out of all the things I hated about her, that was by far the most infuriating one. I knew I had to stop letting it get to me, though. If she ever kissed me again, I had to make it crystal fucking clear that I wasn’t interested.
Great. Now I was thinking about kissing her again. For fuck’s sake…
Her phone finally lit up, letting me know it had enough juice in it to work. I unplugged it and held the screen over her face, silently praying the light wouldn’t wake her. Fortunately, she didn’t stir, but much to my chagrin, the phone remained locked. Face unlocking wasn’t set up on the device, or it required her eyes to be open in order to work properly.
Time for Plan B.
Slowly and carefully, I peeled the duvet back and gently took Kinsey’s right hand in mine. She let out a little moan and kicked one leg out to the side, but she didn’t wake up. Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, I isolated her index finger and placed it on the lower middle part of the screen.
It worked.
I slumped down next to the bed and scrolled through Kinsey’s apps until I found her media gallery. True to her word, there was a video of me and my friends at the top. I couldn’t actually watch it without risking her waking up from the sound, but the image in the thumbnail made the subject clear enough.
I deleted the video, and then I opened her iCloud app and deleted the other copy she’d uploaded for safekeeping. I doublechecked to make sure it was definitely gone, and then I put the phone back on charge and pulled the duvet back over Kinsey’s body. With that, I turned and headed for the door, not allowing myself another glance at her.
Try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss we shared earlier. More specifically, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way I eagerly kissed her back after she pulled me into her embrace and planted her lips on mine.
Thank god she had the sense to stop that fucking insanity before we took it any further… because I sure as shit didn’t.
9
Kinsey
The last twoweeks had been a complete nightmare.