“Are you ignoring me?” I ask, intentionally raising my voice to be heard over the blasting store music. Why they turn it up so high is beyond me. Maybe to make you feel like spending money is some kind of blowout party.
Turquoise eyes finally meet mine, Emily’s signature grin tugging at her lips.
“I heard you. And I don’t agree. In less than two years, I’ll be married. It’s not like I can start a real relationship with anyone. So why can’t I keep going like this?”
Ava takes the dress from Emily’s hand, her expression tight as she gives us a fake smile. “I’ll go try this on.”
Immediately feeling like shit for starting a conversation that led to the topic of Mason, I fight the urge to run after her and apologize.
Emily and I glance at each other and back to Ava, both of us feeling helpless to comfort her.
It hasn’t always been this hard, but now that the engagement is official and a three-carat diamond sits on Emily’s finger, the love triangle has become a sticking point in what used to be an easy friendship between the three of us.
I love Ava and Emily like sisters. We were raised together, learned to walk together, went through school together, got in trouble together. You could have surgically stitched our skin together and it would have been fine. We were that attached at the hips.
Until college.
While I was shipped off to an all-women’s college, Emily traveled the globe, and Ava went to Yale.
The morning I received Ava’s text that she’d hooked up with Mason, I knew it was the beginning of the end. I immediately called her to remind her of every reason Mason was a bad idea, yet she assured me she wasn’t falling in love.
Fast forward ten years later, and here we are. Shakespeare himself couldn’t have written a better tragedy. The sad part is, it should have been avoided. Emily and Mason have been promised to each other since before they left the womb.
Ava knew that.
But it didn’t matter.
In a way, I’m almost jealous of her experiencing a love like that. Even if it’s poison and will ultimately destroy her.
I’ve certainly never had it. The only boy who’s ever held my interest happens to be the one who hates me. The same one with emerald green eyes that were bruised and swollen on the day I met him.
Frowning, Emily rounds the clothing rack and chases the image of that boy away, her turquoise eyes replacing his, her voice sliding into my thoughts before I can remember what he’d once said to me.
“I wish I could wrap Mason up in a big red bow and give him to her. Not that I have any idea what she sees in him. He’s one of the most arrogant jerks I’ve ever met.”
“They all are,” I comment while pretending to look through the clothes again.
If the Inferno boys have a claim on anything, it’s the arrogance that drapes them all like a second skin.
“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t have given Gabriel your phone number. He’s not worth your time. None of them are. The only thing those men are good for is ripping your heart out.”
I laugh at that. “Says the girl sleeping with two of them.”
“That’s been going on since high school. They started it. Plus, it’s different. With my situation, I have very few options except to have a good time while I still can. No strings, you know?”
Her assessing eyes are on me again a second later. “Has he called you?”
That’s a question I don’t want to answer, not with the way she’s looking at me like I’m an idiot.
And maybe I am.
I’m not stupid enough to believe that Gabriel has changed enough to defend me against his friends. Especially not against Tanner. But if I’m lucky, I’ll beat him at his own game and somehow make the price they want something I can choke down easier.
Why Tanner even asked for the information on my father, I don’t know. The only thing I can assume is that Tanner wants to destroy me. I’ve done a lot to piss them off, our war one that was mostly fun but went a little too far at times. The entire situation is a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and none of it makes sense.
It was insane of me to go to Tanner for help in the first place. But at the time, it was the