Devil's Pass (The Harlequin Crew #.5) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,10

pressed my back to a tree and dragged in air as I tried to breathe. But my lungs weren't working and my heart was breaking, falling to pieces like shards of glass as it pierced everything inside me. I'd wanted her before I could even remember I wanted her. She'd been my girl. But she'd been their girl too. I'd been able to accept that when we were younger, it had made things tense now we were older, but it had never affected our loyalty to one another. I'd wanted her to choose me almost as much as I hadn't wanted her to choose me. Because if she had, I would have been responsible for fracturing our entire group. And now that was what was happening. She was choosing Maverick. Offering her body to him. Letting him touch her in all the ways I'd hungered to.

My head spun and I felt sick, but most of all I felt angry. Rage filled me to the brim until I could sense my father's blood pounding in my veins, and taste some of the fury he'd spewed for so many years. I was blinded by the hurt and I didn't know what I'd do with it. Didn't know how to deal with it.

I started running toward the fence, squeezing through the gap and grabbing my bike, fighting the urge to kick Maverick's motorcycle to the ground and break it like I wanted to break him in that moment. He was my friend, how could he do this? How could he claim her?

The truth spoke as a cold voice in the back of my head and I knew I couldn't hate him for this. Because I would have done the same if she'd chosen me. I would have claimed her and kept her as mine for the rest of eternity if she'd wanted me. But she didn't. She'd discarded me. But even now I knew the truth, I wasn't prepared to let go of her. I wanted to fight until my last breath for her.

Maybe my father had been right. Maybe I was nothing. Maybe she'd seen that too.

I soared down the hill, having nowhere to go. No home I wanted to return to. I couldn't call JJ or Fox. I couldn't tell them what I'd seen. I wouldn't be responsible for breaking their hearts. That was on Rogue and Maverick now. This clearly wasn’t the first time they’d gotten together like that. You didn’t go from nothing to screwing in one night so there must have been more, stolen kisses, secret meetings – was this why she hadn’t come to meet me in the arcade last week when she said Mary Beth had almost caught her trying to sneak out? Was that a lie? And what about when Maverick had said his bike broke down the week before that? I didn’t think anything of it in the moment, but had the breadcrumbs been there this entire time? Were they just lying to our faces every damn day, hoping we wouldn’t find out? Well if that was how they wanted to play it, if they wanted to keep this as some dirty little secret between them, then fine.

I made it to the beach, throwing my bike down in the sand as I stalked off to delve into the shadows under the pier. Where the newly awoken monster in me wanted to dwell. And where the darkness could feast on my broken heart.

F ollowing our way too lengthy, way too naked conversation, I had done the somewhat mortifying and yet seemingly fair thing and flashed Maverick my tits one more time. I gave him a couple of minutes to stare the way I’d been staring while I blushed so savagely that I was certain I must have looked like a beetroot then I snatched the clean t-shirt he'd found amongst Chase's stuff and dragged it on to cover myself up again. It had a skeleton riding a motorcycle on it which had been Chase's go-to look since he'd outgrown the Power Rangers. I however refused to outgrow the Power Rangers ever and Maverick got a look at my Green Ranger panties when I was forced to ditch my paint covered shorts too. I had no shame either. Green Ranger for life. And anyone who didn't agree was wrong. Fact.

Luckily, Chase was going through a stage where he thought it looked cool to wear shirts like three sizes too big for him so the thing fit