I tell Jackson?
A small part of me wondered if he would believe me this time.
The door to my room opened, and Caiden sauntered out, a pleased expression on his beautifully awful face.
I swear I saw the devil in his gaze when he saw me. There was a violent energy buzzing around him as he stalked towards me.
I’d never felt more like prey than I did at this moment. I could almost see the giant fissure across Caiden’s features. Like the monster inside had finally broken through and Caiden was at last manifesting who he really was.
The night of the crash, he still hadn’t showed me this part of himself. Looking at him now, I could see that his actions that night had been from rage, pain…disappointment. He’d lost his mind temporarily.
But this version of Caiden, the version prowling towards me like a specter of madness, every move he made was carefully, sinisterly planned.
He pinned me against the wall before I could move. I cringed as I smelled sex and Melanie’s perfume all over him. He traced his nose down my neck and then licked me savagely across my cheek. A whimper burst from my lips, and his mouth widened into an awful sneer.
“I tried to do this the nice way. I tried to get you to forgive me and see that this was all just a misunderstanding. I gave up two years of my life for my little indiscretion. It seems like you could have given me a break, you know?”
I shivered from the feeling of his breath brushing across my skin. He leaned in even closer. I steadfastly stared at the wall behind him, convinced that if I looked into his dark gaze, something bad would happen. Like I might burst into flames.
“I still remember what you taste like, LyLy,” he whispered as dread curled down to my soul. “Every girl is just a stand-in until I get you back.”
He backed away then and gave me a wink before he turned and strolled down the hallway, whistling softly to himself.
My legs failed me then, and I slid down the wall, hitting the ground with a thud as I tried to hold myself together.
He’d been lying this whole time. He remembered.
I paced in my room. Melanie had stalked out while I was having a panic attack on the floor in the hallway. The look she’d given me was pure hate. I forced myself not to shiver at the warning shot she fired at me as she passed by.
She didn’t say a word.
But she didn’t need to.
I’d be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of the semester…if I slept at all.
I finally decided to text Lane, see if she wanted to have a girls’ night. I needed to talk with someone about what happened, and I didn’t want to distract Jackson on such an important weekend. It wasn’t in any of his Rutherford files that he was bipolar, and I didn’t want to risk anyone finding out by telling him something that might trigger him while he was at the camp.
Lane was all for a girls’ night, and I headed out to her room as soon as she replied to my text, keeping my eyes averted from the part of the hallway where Caiden had touched me.
“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Lane demanded as soon as I stepped foot in her room. Lane had two margaritas waiting and a pizza on the way. She had music blaring from her computer on her desk, a band called the Sounds of Us that we’d recently discovered.
The girl was the absolute best.
“I had a run-in with Caiden,” I explained slowly, grimacing as the scene played out almost in slow-mo in my brain. “He was fucking Melanie in my room, and I walked in on them.”
“Whaaat?” she shrieked. “Melanie, as in the traitorous bitch who lives with you, Melanie? And Caiden, the guy who saved you and has sworn his undying love for you, Caiden?”
I nodded. “It gets worse.”
“I’m trying to think how it could get worse. Did they ask you to join in?”
Caiden’s dark gaze flickered across my thoughts as he’d moved in and out of Melanie. The way he’d said my name as he came.
I shook at the memory. “I was caught off-guard, obviously, and he saw me and totally started to say my name as he orgasmed. He didn’t take his eyes off me the whole time.”
Lane’s lips curled into a smile. “I bet Melanie loved