Chapter 2 #2
I glance at my twin, only to regret it when I see the cold way he watches her. I could never do that. Not in a million years. She’d see right through me. Cash, however, looks at her as if she’s not even there, and seeing that sends a chill through me.
“Congratulations, I guess?” Jessica continues. “I hope it was worth it.”
Worth it? She thinks I played her? That I had some agenda? Stringed her along? Fucked her and threw her aside?
I exhale slowly. Controlled.
Keep it together.
Across the lot, Maverick scratches his jaw, watching me with a confused look. Whatever questions he has can wait for another day. I just want to get out of here. I need to punch something.
“You know what?” Jessica wipes her face with trembling hands. The hurt beneath her words is impossible to hide. I finally allow myself to look at her and it hits like a punch to the gut. Jessica looks breathtaking tonight in a dress and heels. She hates dresses, which means she wore it for me.
“I may be poor, but at least I’m free. Can you say the same with all that wealth suffocating you?” She spins around and locks eyes with me. I almost go to her, but a subtle shake of Cash’s head in my periphery makes me stay rooted to the spot.
I hate seeing her cry. Hate the way her bottom lip trembles with emotion. And I hate that I fucking did that.
Well, it was technically my brother, but I came up with this plan.
Rain rushes over to comfort Jessica, and they disappear into the crowd. Maverick announces his race is next, and Cash helps Cassidy down from my car. He shoots me a worried look before exchanging a few words with Maverick.
Everyone keeps moving like my world didn’t just implode.
I finally unclench my fists and notice the bloody crescent moons in my palms. Something pinches behind my ribs, squeezing until my lungs burn.
I didn’t expect it to hurt this much.
Each inhale trembles, my eyes sting, and my chest feels split down the middle.
“What the hell was that? Why did she smack you?” Cash asks Noah when he joins us, his cheek still red.
“Nothing I didn’t deserve,” he mutters with a tight expression, glancing over his shoulder again. The girls are gone.
They look at me, and Noah reaches out to grab my shoulder again to ask if I’m okay, but I’m sick of that question.
Of course I’m not fucking okay.
I sent the girl I love straight into the arms of guys like Jackson. They’re close. I bet he’ll be more than happy to be her shoulder to cry on.
Screw this.
I need to get out of here before I blow a fuse and hurt someone.
Once I’m back in the car, ready to drive God knows where, Cash knocks on my window.
With the push of a button, it rolls down. He rests his hands on the frame and studies me with a silent intensity that honestly makes me fucking uncomfortable. It’s like he can see right through me, and maybe he can.
After all, he’s my twin.
Like it or not, we shared a womb for eight months.
“What?” I bark when the silence stretches too long.
“How are you holding up?”
I wish they’d stop asking me that.
Up ahead, Maverick drives up to the starting line, his taillights flashing in the dark.
On any other night, that’d be me, revving my engine, but my head isn’t in the game tonight.
“Come on, man,” Cash says. “You’ve gotta give me something. I’m worried about you.”
“What do you want me to say?” I tear my gaze from the gathered crowd. “That I’m fine? Is that it?”
Before he can respond, the passenger door opens and Ava slides in uninvited, her skirt riding up her smooth legs.
Cash’s expression darkens as his gaze flicks from her to me. “What the fuck are you doing, Kane?”
I ignore him and turn the ignition. The engine roars to life, vibrating the ground beneath his feet.
My mask snaps firmly into place as I meet my brother’s worried stare with a cocky smirk—one he sees straight through, because he’s mastered it himself. “I’m fine, Cash.”
Beside me, Ava gasps and squeezes her thighs together.
Women everywhere love the vibrations.
Smirking at my brother, I rev the engine.
“Don’t do this, Kane,” he warns, voice low. “You’ll regret it.”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?”
A muscle tics in his cheek. “You’re self-destructing.”
Ava pops her gum and trails her acrylic nails up my thigh. Her touch repulses me, but that repulsion feels strangely good, like a razor blade to a vein.
After all, I deserve to feel like shit for what I did.
“I’ll see you at home,” I tell Cash, then drive away, leaving him staring after me in the rearview mirror.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re still on the road—me, lost in my messed-up head while Ava types on her phone. I don’t know where the fuck we’re heading when she puts her phone in her purse and runs her fingers through the wispy hair at the back of my neck.
“You’re tense tonight,” she says, scratching my skin with her nails.
Uneasy, I fight the urge to bounce my knee.
The feel of her fingers on my neck does little to ease the tension. If anything, it worsens the nausea.
I glance at her, letting my eyes drift to her plunging neckline and bare thighs, then back to the endless stretch of blacktop.
What the hell am I doing?
“What’s wrong, Ravencourt?”
In my peripheral vision, she parts her thighs and shifts her skirt higher up her thighs. Why the fuck is she in my car? I should have kicked her out back there.
So why didn’t I?
There was something in my brother’s disappointed face that made the ache deepen. I had to do something.
“Look at me, Kane,” Ava coaxes softly, her voice sending a cold sweat across my neck.
No, this is wrong.
With a sudden turn of the wheel, I pull over to the side of the road before I can crash and kill us both.
I need a moment to gather myself, and Ava’s too close. Her flowery perfume and body lotion fill the air. It’s impossible to breathe.
I shove the door open and stumble out. By the time my mind catches up, I’m deep in a farmer’s field, slapping aside tall cornstalks.
What the hell am I doing?
I’m losing it.
“Kane?” Ava’s voice, somewhere in the distance.
I pace on the spot and try to figure out why I almost lost my cool back there, just because Ava tried to seduce me. She’s an attractive heiress with killer tits and legs, and she’s not the first woman to flash her pussy as I was driving. I know how these things go.
How they always go.
One thing leads to the next, and before you know it, her head is bobbing in your lap while you’re squirting your load down her throat.
And it was that knowledge that made me pull over to escape the damn car.
I turn around to keep pacing, but I bump into a cornstalk, which I swat out of the way.
This is ridiculous.
I did what I had to do back there. It would be even more selfish of me if I didn’t protect Jessica from Beverly and my twisted legacy. I’m nothing more than my father’s puppet in whatever political game he’s playing, and anything that stands in his way is cut down.
I can’t let that happen to Jessica.
Besides, what right does Cash have to judge me when he’s slept with half the town? I’m not constantly on his case. He said I’d regret this? Regret what exactly?
I’m not Jessica’s boyfriend anymore. Not unless I want the senator’s wife to release that recording, and not unless I want Jessica to get on my father’s radar.
He’s right when he said she’s my weakness.
But I was too blind to see it, or maybe I saw it but wasn’t ready to accept it.
Weakness must be cut from the flesh.
Weakness has no place in the Society.
Ava is the one I should want. My father would approve. And more importantly, it might actually get Beverly off my back because there’s no way Ava’s father would tolerate me sleeping with another woman behind his daughter’s back before we’re even married. Reputation is everything in our world.
Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
“Kane?” Ava’s soft voice sounds behind me.
I slowly turn to see her watching me unsurely, then she steps closer, rubbing one arm. “What’s going on?”
I’ve never seen this side of her. Ava always carries herself with a confidence that commands the presence of every room she enters, but now she’s glancing around the tall cornstalks like she’s eager to leave.
Who can blame her? I’m not exactly acting like I’ve got my shit together.
“Show me your breasts,” I order, ignoring the crushing weight pressing on my chest.
The little voice telling me to stop.
Her expression shifts, like she can’t believe I just said that. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
The edge in my voice makes her pause, though briefly.
With her eyes on mine, she obeys, slowly lowering her spaghetti straps before pulling down the front of her dress.
After all, it’s what her father would want. For her to marry a Ravencourt, because she’s just as much of a puppet as I am on this chessboard. And saying no isn’t an option.
The voice in my head gets louder, yelling at me to look away, but I don’t because I have to do this. I have to cut out my weakness. It’s the only way to protect the girl I love.
Ava’s tits bounce free, heavy and pale in the moonlight, and she holds her breath, waiting to see what I’ll ask of her next.
“Don’t do this, Kane. You’ll regret it.” Cash’s voice echoes in my head. I shut him out and force myself to look at her breasts and gentle curves.
“You’re self-destructing.”
Shut the fuck up!
“On your knees,” I bark, unbuckling my belt.
“Kane?” Ava sounds unsure and not at all like the panting girl who egged me on at Thanksgiving.
“On your damn knees.”