Sweet Sorrow (Kiss Starter: Cambridge High Mayhem #3)

Chapter 1

Trace

Another one bites the dust. Figuratively and literally.

Smirking, I watch one of my best buddies, who swore up and down he’d never let a girl sink her claws into him, wrestle a tall, hulking kid to the ground for staring too hard at his girl, Rue Lee, with hunger in his eyes.

I have to give it to Rue. She is looking mighty fine in a pair of loose blue jeans that hang low on her hips, and those tube tops girls love to wear, revving us guys’ engines. Vroom, vroom.

Rue catches me eyeing her and tips her chin. What a bad move on her part. It only draws my attention to her dainty bare shoulders and slender arms.

Why isn’t she wearing a jacket or more layers? It’s the dead of fucking winter, and not even the bonfires we’re huddled around, or the whiskey shots we’re slamming that go down smooth but sow fire in our bellies, will warm her. I stand to offer her my hoodie, then change my mind.

Malice will rip me a new one for encroaching on his territory and doing what’s his to do—keep his girl safe, including keeping her warm.

With the kid in a headlock, Malice locks his gaze on Rue. A look I know well passes between them. I’ve seen it on Seven’s and his girl’s faces when he asks her to do something, she refuses, and now they’re facing the fallout of her defiance. Malice and his girl are in a similar situation.

He must’ve asked her to dress for the weather, and she refused. I’m glad I’m not dealing with shit like a girl’s disobedience and defiance. My attention wanders to the quiet, timid girl sitting in a camping chair across from me.

Sorrow Sophia. My lips curl. The girl with two first names who lost her mother to an overdose and her father in a fire.

The same coward who’d claimed Sorrow ran away when she was fifteen but had kept her prisoner in their house, away from the world.

What Kyle Sophia hadn’t counted on was Leigh Kim, the new girl in town, burglarizing his place.

Sipping my beer, my attention cuts to said girl sitting sideways on Seven’s lap with her arms around his neck. She’s not interested in the wrestling match. Leigh’s mouth is near her guy’s ear, and her fingers are in his hair.

What she’s saying to Seven must be NSFW.

Seven’s eyes widen before his fingers fan over and dig into her hip.

I cluck my tongue. Had someone told me a year ago that my boys would be led by their dicks by girls I never thought they’d look at once, much less twice, I would’ve told them to eat a bag of dicks.

Now look where we’re at. Seven is with the new girl, and boy, does she keep him on his toes. Leigh is a head case with a habit of borrowing things that aren’t hers. Malice, the moody punk, finally stopped fighting his attraction to his babysitter, Rue Lee, and made it official with her.

Their fates won’t be mine.

Resting my elbows on my knees, grasping the beer bottle’s neck, I stare straight ahead. I placed my chair across from Sorrow for a reason. Someone has to keep an eye on the little mouse, or else a hungry predator will swoop in and snatch her away.

There’s also my father’s threat. If anything happens to her, he’ll kick me out of the house, stop paying me my weekly allowance, and take away my brand spanking new gun-metal-gray truck.

The fire left Sorrow without a place to stay. Having turned eighteen with half the school year left, she had nowhere to turn to, so my parents offered her the guest house. Sorrow lasted a night before asking to move into the main house without giving a reason. She didn’t need one.

My parents would do anything for her. My mother has a bleeding heart, and my father feels guilty about Sorrow’s father’s spiral from business partner to a level of crazy no one could understand except her.

Before I could mentally prepare for having a girl my age in the house, bam, Sorrow moved in.

Her bedroom is on the opposite end of the house from mine. We rarely run into one another in my parents’ four-thousand-square-foot house. She stays in the bedroom. I keep to my room or the home gym. Out of sight, out of mind.

Except, no matter the time of day, whether we’re alone in the house with my parents, or it’s just me while she’s at her therapy appointment, I can feel Sorrow’s quiet, nervous presence in the walls, on the furniture, and on every surface.

I understand the reason she’s that way. It’s part of her trauma of having to walk on pins and needles around a mean drunk.

She sees me in a similar vein as her father. Except I’m not a monster. I’m a predator, she’s the prey, and I haven’t decided whether to gobble her whole or toy with my food when I catch her in my clutches.

Shelving the dark thought to revisit later, I turn my attention to Malice and the dude who made the colossal mistake of eye-fucking Rue.

Malice has the guy pinned on his stomach—it’s the reason he’s a great offensive lineman—and the guy’s arm yanked back in a position that looks ungodly unnatural.

I cup my hand over my mouth. “End it already!”

This lesson of Malice’s is getting long-winded. I take another sip of my beer when I’d rather down the bottle and grab another, but I’m driving.

Smirking, Seven lifts his beer bottle and echoes my sentiments. “Yeah, bruh. End it. You’ve made your point.”

And then some. Malice could’ve ended this shit show with a sock to the kid’s face and a knee to the gut, but he’s extending the fight for one of two reasons, or both—he’s showing off for his girl, and he’s making the guy suffer.

A gut punch and a sock to the face are too quick and easy a punishment for the kid’s transgressions.

Malice eases up on his death grip on the kid’s arm, gives him a good shove, and stumbles to his feet. In one smooth execution, he whisks his hooded sweatshirt over his head and wraps his girl in it. She’s so small she is swimming in it, but hey, she’ll be warm.

Then Malice does something I expect because the dude is cool. He extends his hand and helps the motherfucker off the ground.

“Are we good? You gonna look at my girl with respect from now on and not like a piece of meat?”

The guy nods boisterously. Thank fuck. I’m done with the guys eye-fucking Rue, and horn-dog Malice going ballistic over it.

Doesn’t he understand that Rue and her friend Leigh are looked at as challenges because they’re the rulers of Cambridge High’s girls? It wasn’t what Rue was wearing.

Jocks are looked at as royalty, and Malice and Seven’s reputations on and off the field precede them. Seven is one of the best quarterbacks on this side of the state, and the same with Malice as an offensive lineman. Steal their girls, and the thieves would also be stealing the king’s crowns.

Settling in front of the fire for the rest of the party because I’m too worn out to do much else, plus I have a little mouse to keep an eye on, I pick up my chair, set it back farther from the fire, and stretch out my legs.

My boys and I are finished playing ball for the year, and there’s no need to study. We just started winter break—the reason for the party—and have a good two weeks before classes begin again. It’ll be another year of my parents missing Christmas.

They’re in Europe, and their absence is a godsend. I’m not like some of the kids at school who are in similar situations and miss their parents. Nope. Christmas is my least favorite holiday. Bah humbug.

With my parents gone, I’ll get a fat deposit in my checking account. It’s their guilt-trip present. Plus, there’s no need to get a tree, decorate the house, or do all the other fancy shit other families do for the holidays.

I aim to do nothing.

Malice takes a seat next to his girl. Rue curls up to him and says something near his ear. Then they rise as one and call it a night. I watch them leave with a smirk. Makeup sex is second only to angry, jealous sex. Not that I know anything about that.

As soon as a hookup or friends-with-benefits situation starts to involve jealousy and the girl wanting a commitment, I’m out.

There’s no need to feel bad or sorry for the girls.

I make my intentions clear—no-strings sex—and they agree.

Until they catch feelings and the situation implodes into this shitstorm I’m prepared for but they’re not.

The girls think their tears and hysterics will convince me, but I dig my heels into the ground.

Why waste time on a relationship in high school that will end when we graduate and do whatever eighteen-year-olds do in their quest to become adults?

Seven sticks around. Not for the joy of cooking wieners over the fire or for the tasty s’mores. He’s staying because his girl isn’t leaving. Leigh’s friend Sorrow hasn’t asked to go yet, though she caught a ride with me to this party.

The short ride here was done in uncomfortable silence. I’m expecting the same on the drive home.

Sipping my lukewarm beer, I study Sorrow with hooded eyes. The guys avoid her at school. Parties too. When she’s not with Leigh, the kids part like the Red Sea as she walks down the halls. They give her a wide berth, and I understand the reason.

What do you say to a girl with the kind of tragic past she has? A past defined by her tragedies? Because up until she came out of that house fire like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Sorrow Sophia hadn’t existed. Her mother had homeschooled her.

When her mother had overdosed and the authorities had asked about Sorrow after seeing her pictures in the house, Kyle said Sorrow didn’t want to stick around where her mother had died, and run away.

What God-fearing, truth-seeking police department would believe that scumbag’s lies? Didn’t they understand that Sorrow needed help rather than to be forgotten after such a tragedy?

What high school boy wants to take on the baggage that Sorrow carries—a weight of tragedies piled on top of the other? What tragedy will befall her next?

When you’re given the unfortunate name Sorrow, isn’t it expected that something bad will take place? Who the fuck names their kid that?

Setting the bottle near my feet, I slouch in my seat, tug the bill of my baseball cap lower over my eyes, and keep a watchful eye on my little mouse.

How does a person start a conversation with someone who has faced so much loss at our age? My cat died when I was twelve, and that’s as far as my experience with death goes.

Our limited interaction, including at Midnight’s Friendsgiving party, where Sorrow and I lay side by side on the bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms while she dealt with a headache, was just casual conversation.

Nothing deep. Nothing mind-blowing. I limit our talks to her classes, where I’m driving her next, and what she’d like to order for groceries.

Sorrow sits with her elbows on her knees, staring at the bonfire as if she’s the only one here instead of surrounded by partygoers dancing and belting out the lyrics to the music pounding from the speakers hanging from tree branches.

The large dirt clearing, flanked by tall trees, with a nearby path leading to the tree and rope swing that kids clamor to during the summer, is a popular spot not only for local kids but also for those from surrounding towns.

To think we drove by Kyle Sophia’s place, not realizing he kept Sorrow on a tight leash. To think he holed her up in the basement of their house while we kids partied it up like there wasn’t a care in the world.

It’s a good thing that motherfucker is dead.

Dead?

What is wrong with me? I would never wish a parent’s death on my worst enemy. Sorrow needs her father. He could be the worst father in the world, but even the worst of human trash can be redeemed, can’t they?

Sighing, I cross my ankles and stare at Sorrow with my hands tented in front of my mouth. Her long black hair falls around her oval face like a curtain and flows down the front of her buttoned-up black shirt like a waterfall.

She’s tiny like a baby bird and too thin, with skinny arms and fragile bones. Sorrow isn’t the most beautiful girl, but she does stand out with her glacier-blue eyes, tragic past, and attitude of not caring. Sorrow doesn’t give a damn what the world thinks of her.

At least, that’s how she acts on the outside.

Deathly quiet. Stoic. Doesn’t speak a lick to anyone except Leigh.

I’m guessing Sorrow is a hot mess on the inside.

Had she not been, if she were more my type—loud, overconfident, gave a fuck how she looks—I’d make her an exception to my one rule: Keep my options open.

My parents didn’t when they were eighteen and nineteen, and look where that got them—settling when they could’ve been with someone they really wanted to be with rather than sticking around because they made a mistake—me.

Jesus H. Christ, I won’t go down the path Malice and Seven are going—all in love and shit and going on and on about what a great time they’ll have at Dumas University with their girls in attendance. I’m not sure I’ll go, but it’ll be the bomb to experience with my boys.

Bonus? I can have it without a girl tagging along as my girlfriend.