7. Everest
A ll three of us watch her leave, and I don’t have to look at the guys to know they are pissed at me.
They are always pissed at me when it comes to her, and I wish I could say I cared, but I don’t, because when it comes to Aurora Gray I have no fucking limits.
I never have. She’s fucking in me, a part of me, a very essence of my own fucking being, that if you cut her, I would be the one to bleed.
For ten years I stood by her side and put her first, until last year when I chose myself, chose my best friends, and cut off our addiction.
A year is nothing for most people, not when we still have our whole lives ahead of us, but for someone like me, for someone who can recall every moment of nearly all of his life at the drop of a hat, it feels like a fucking lifetime.
I still remember the last time I felt her gentle and easy touch, what she wore the last time she looked at me like I was still worth something, and how she sounded when she said goodnight to me the night before I left for college.
Our plan was for us all to drive down here together, my mom and dad, her and me, but when she woke up the next morning I was already gone.
I had already said my goodbyes, told my lies to my parents, and disappeared into the dawn.
When the first call came I almost broke, when the second came I dug my nails into my palm so hard I almost broke the skin, and by the third I was ready to drive myself off a cliff.
The texts weren’t much better, they started all happy and confused, but soon turned to panic and anger, each word like a knife to my gut.
That knife was only twisted when she realized it wasn’t just me ignoring her, but them too.
I cut her off, but worse, I cut them off too.
Griffin is the first to glare at me in contempt, his anger burning bright and bold, and oh so obvious as always, but it’s the cold, detached look in Harden’s stare that catches my eye.
Most people would presume he doesn’t care, that he doesn’t have a stake in any of this, or even want one, but that’s because they don’t know how to read him.
Just because he doesn’t always talk, doesn’t mean I don’t hear his thoughts loud and fucking clear.
When it comes to their feelings toward my sister, they are both an open fucking book, one that I have been forced to read since the moment we met.
“Was that really fucking necessary?” Griffin’s question is gritted through his teeth, the adrenaline from the game still running through his veins, as his jaw tightens.
When my eyes finally meet his I can tell he’s furious with me, probably enough to hit me if I were any other person, but instead he remains rooted in place, waiting for an answer to his question.
An answer he already knows, an answer he’s heard so many fucking times that I’m sick of repeating myself.
“I’m just trying to make this easier on all of us,” I spit back, my chest rising and falling in the fury of having to have this conversation for the hundredth time.
“Or do you want her sitting front row at our games, watching us play, cheering every time we score? Do you want things to go back to how they used to be?”
He’s not stupid, he knows exactly what I mean, they both do, and I know full well they don’t want to go back to how things were before last year.
The bond between us was unfathomable, unbreakable, until it wasn’t, and if I hadn’t been the one to ruin us, she would have.
Something she never would have been able to live with, so instead I bear the weight and blame of it, so she never has to.
“I’m not allowed to want what I want, am I, Monroe?” he fires back in contempt, and if I allowed myself to feel anything anymore I might flinch beneath his harsh tone.
“Not if you want to keep breathing.” I let my threat hang in the air between us, and when he shakes his head with a humorless laugh, I move my attention to Harden.
“What about you? Anything to add?” I know he won’t answer, not with words anyway, and from the way he’s looking at me, I half expect him not to answer at all.
If you let her go, if you let her leave, you’ll lose her forever. He signs, and I know he doesn’t just mean if I let her leave FU.
The problem isn’t that we all want her, that’s always been the case, no matter how much it fucking angers me. The problem is who she is to me.
When my dad first told me he was getting remarried, I didn’t think much of it.
My real mother died during childbirth, I don’t remember her, so it’s not like I ever felt that him dating someone new would be stepping on her toes, if anything I thought it would be nice.
I was finally going to have a family, and when he told me I’d be getting a brother and sister too, it only made me happier.
That happiness continued when I met my mom, our instant connection was so easy that I knew she was the one for my dad, and that happiness only grew when I met Archer.
I can still remember him calling me mountain man for the first time and ruffling my hair.
I remember thinking this is it, I am finally getting a proper family, my dad will finally be happy again, but then my eyes caught Aurora Gray’s for the first time.
Her blue stare, so similar to mine, was striking even then, and the smile that lit up her face took my breath away.
I knew in that instant that there was something different about her, and if I’d known what that feeling would eventually become, then maybe I would have backed off.
If I could go back I’d sacrifice both my mother and brother to escape her, I’d erase my father’s happiness, but unfortunately life is cruel, and the girl with the ocean blue eyes and perfect smile still haunts me to this day.
What haunts me even more, is that if I weren’t such a selfish prick, then my best friends could have her.
Neither of them are her brothers, her family, and I know they’d both be good to her, good for her, but that thought hurts even more than anything else.
So she might not be able to be mine, but she certainly won’t be theirs either. Not now, not ever.
“I lost her the day she became my fucking sister, Haze, I thought you’d know that by now.” I don’t bother hanging around to wait for either of them to respond, we’ve had this conversation before and I’m sure we will have it again, but right now I need a drink.
Anger and adrenaline pulse through me as I head back toward the locker room, and Graham doesn’t meet my stare as I stalk back into the locker room, my warning about Aurora having clearly worked.
And that should be enough to placate me, but it’s not, not when it comes to her.
Nothing is enough when it comes to her, not proximity, not distance, not fucking anything.
It’s why I lose it, gripping him roughly and shoving him away from his locker, but it’s Griffin who appears at my side, smashing his fist into his face before I can.
Cries of shock ring out around us, but he doesn’t stop, he can’t.
Like me, he’s in too deep, and sometimes when you're drowning you need something to pull you back. He hits him again and again before letting him drop to the floor, and I should let him be, but I can’t stop my foot from coming up and slamming down into his side roughly, repeatedly, breaking at least one of his ribs with the force of my kicks.
It’s only once Griffin’s knuckles are covered in his blood, and Graham is crying in pain beneath my foot, that him looking at her with interest is marred completely in my mind, with the sight of this pathetic fuck crawling and covered in blood.
I’m not surprised Harden is the one to pull us both off, no one else dares to get close, not when Coach roars my name across the locker room, demanding my presence in his office.
Graham is panting heavily on his knees, spitting blood on the floor, and it takes everything in me to stop myself from slamming my foot into his ribs again, as I step over him, and take Coach’s full attention and wrath, leaving Griffin behind.
Not that my best friend protests or tries to argue with me, he knows I deserve the blame. I hit Graham for wanting what’s mine, Griffin hit him so he didn’t hit me.
The attack costs me a week’s suspension and a screaming match from Coach, but as I leave his office and flex my shoulders, I feel nothing but relief, because that prick's pain will never compare to mine.
After that I make quick work of getting showered and changed, before heading home to party.
The house is already spilling with people when I arrive thanks to our first victory, and even though a few of my teammates eye me warily, I ignore them all.
I pour half a bottle of whiskey down my throat in the hopes it will heal the numb feeling inside of me.
It doesn’t, though it seems both my best friends are doing the same.
Harden is sitting in the corner, his gaze pretty much fixed on me, pointedly ignoring the two girls trying and failing to get his attention, and Griffin is playing beer pong with Bishop, pretending to entertain the hoard of girls around them.
They act like I’m the bad guy, but they both agreed to this, we made the decision to leave her behind together, which means we all have to pay.
It also means more alcohol.
By the time Holly finds me, I’ve almost drunk the other half of the whiskey bottle and it doesn’t take much for her to coax me upstairs, ignoring my best friends’ disapproving glares.
She’s one of the better lays I’ve had since arriving at FU, and one of the only ones I’ve ever let come back for more, a fact she more than enjoys.
She seems to think it gives her some sort of status or claim over me, and usually I enjoy the mindless fucking that comes with being with her.
Burying myself in someone irrelevant became my escape when I left New York, well, before that if I’m being honest with myself, and it used to work.
Or at least that’s what I told myself, but as her lips trail up my neck toward my mouth, bile burns at the back of my throat.
And when she pulls back, I don’t see eager brown eyes desperate to please me, no, I see disappointed blue eyes, tainted with sadness and burning with questions.
I flinch at the sight of them, and Holly pulls back in confusion.
“What’s wrong, baby?” she asks, her voice both breathy and whiny, and it makes me recoil slightly, especially as her hand trails down and palms my cock through the fabric of my jeans.
“Need me to take the edge off?” She purrs out her words at the same time she drops to her knees, ripping at my belt and zipper, and I will my cock to feel something, anything, but it’s no use.
I don’t want her. I never have.
“No, I’m not in the mood.” My words are low, paired with the thump of the music, since we didn’t even make it to my bedroom, but I know she hears them, yet still she keeps going.
“Come on, Ever, when have you ever not wanted your dick sucked,” she laughs, wrapping her hand around my base and trying to coax my cock to life.
“No, not tonight, Holly,” I try again, but she still ignores me, looking at me from beneath her lashes with a sultry smirk, as her tongue laps against my flaccid tip.
“You know I always get you off.” I feel her words against the skin of my shaft, but before she can lean forward and suck the tip fully into her mouth, she is ripped away from me.
When my drunken eyes flash up, I find Harden shaking with rage, staring at Holly like he wants to fucking kill her, before his hands rapidly sign something she would never be able to understand.
He said no.
“What the fuck is your problem, Harden?” she screeches, as I fumble to tuck myself away, much to her dismay, and as she wobbles back to her feet, he takes a forcible step between us, blocking her from me.
She doesn’t get a response to her question, which only makes her scoff, glaring between the two of us, and when I don’t come to her aid, she rolls her eyes and storms back downstairs.
Harden turns back to me, but I’m already making a beeline for the bathroom as the whiskey in my stomach expels itself.
I’m not sure if it’s because I drank too much, or because Aurora’s eyes are still branded at the front of my mind, but either way I throw up until I can barely breathe.
Harden stays with his back against the locked door, not leaving me alone for a second, not even to get the bottle of water that he texts Griffin for.
By the time he helps me to bed, a thousand unsaid words have passed between us, but as usual only one thing matters.
The same thing that plagues me every night when I try to sleep.
Her.
His fist slamming into my wall is the last thing I remember, and I’m not even sure if it’s real or not.