Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,67

free and eyeing the bloody teeth marks in my flesh. Bitch.

"I didn't cry for any of you," she snarled viciously and I got to my feet again.

"Liar," I said coldly. "If you hurt my friends again, I'll hurt you back, ghost. I promise you that. You fucked up Fox so good that I'm already feeling vengeful, and JJ's never been the same since you left. Ten years is a long time, but apparently it wasn't enough to mend what you did."

"What I did?" she scoffed. "You were the ones who forced me to run."

"You were the one who kept running," I snapped, my voice echoing off of the walls and she just glared at me with venom in her eyes. "You're the worst thing that ever happened to us, ghost," I said through my teeth. "And mark my fucking words, I'm not going to let you happen to us again."

"H ey," Fox's voice drew my attention as I lay in the admittedly waning sun beside the pool and I cracked an eye open so that I could look at him.

I had my headphones in and Let You Love Me by Rita Ora was playing, making me feel relaxed for one of the first times since I'd shown up here. And by my headphones, I of course meant that I'd stolen JJ's phone from his pocket just before he'd left for the club earlier and had found his headphones in his room when I not so accidentally wandered in there instead of into my own. I may or may not have also had a quick look in his nightstand drawers and closet for his key, but of course I hadn't found it. All that I had found were condoms. So many condoms I had trouble believing he'd ever actually get around to using all of them and was caught between being impressed and intimidated by the hoard.

Luckily me and JJ had always had the same taste in music and it looked like that hadn’t changed in the years we’d spent apart, so I didn’t even have to bother making up my own playlists. And he still used his own birthday for a passcode too so I had instant access to his cellphone. He wasn’t quite dumb enough to leave any information on it though, but I had found an insane number of female contacts listed with descriptions like ‘Karen with angry husband’, ‘Olivia with the perky tits’ and ‘Backdoor Jennifer’. Looking over them had made me feel kinda uncomfortable so I’d turned my attention to the music and had only read like six of his filthy text convos. There was stuff in those that was enough to make me blush and I’d thought I was pretty sexually diverse in the things I’d tried. Maybe not though.

"We're having a party tonight. I got you a dress to wear. Come on, we don't have long to get you ready." Fox turned and walked away like he assumed I would follow along at his heels. But that would happen exactly never and if he wanted me to play nice tonight then he was about to be severely disappointed.

I pulled my headphones from my ears and dropped them alongside the phone as I got to my feet then turned and walked away around the edge of the curved pool.

Fox looked back over his shoulder at me just as I climbed up onto the diving board and arched an eyebrow at him as he frowned at me.

"I don't want to dress up for some dumb party," I said. "So just open up the front door and I'll be out of your hair."

"That's not how this works, hummingbird," he replied, striking a low blow with that nickname which sucker punched me somewhere just south of my heart. "I say jump, you say how high."

I rolled my eyes at him and dove into the pool. The warm water enveloped me as I sank into it and started swimming, loving the feeling of my body gliding beneath the surface and aching for a taste of the sea even more than I had been before. I'd seen the surfboards the guys kept in the garage when JJ had dragged me out to get food with him again last night and I was seriously aching for some time on the waves. But I wasn't going to ask any of these assholes for anything, so I'd have to figure out how to get my own board once I got my ass out