“I’m fucking terrified.” His lips are just inches from mine, and I’m waiting for him to kiss me when the footsteps coming down the stairs pull us apart. Without even looking back, I pass through the kitchen doorway into the hallway and toward my room. I can feel his eyes on me as I walk away.

My body is still buzzing from the contact, the nearness. As I get ready for bed, I can’t get his face out of my mind. Coming home to realize Hazel wasn’t any better knocked the wind out of him, and the pain was evident. He was trying to avoid reality, desperate for a distraction—me.

I want to follow her to her room. I want to just fuck out the tension between us. If I let it go and scratch this torturous itch, then I will be able to focus on Hazel, the shop, the initiative—or at least that’s what I’ve convinced myself.

But there’s something about this girl that tells me once won't be enough. It’s her playful smile, the fierceness in her eyes, the way her personality is not contained in her small frame. I want to break her, have her lying beneath me, succumb to my will, breathless and addicted to only me.

Sex wouldn’t change anything between us, not really. Savannah and I are fire and kerosene. We would still be ruthless competitors, and I wouldn’t hesitate to strip everything from her if I caught her trying to hurt Hazel. These things would only make us more dynamic physically, knowing full well that sex is all that it is. Insatiable, no-strings-attached sex.

But I won’t. It’s not the distraction I need. Staying focused on the shop and Hazel is far more important. And if I let this girl in, even just physically, there’s no telling how far we would go and how fucked up in the head I would get.

Instead, I go to the office and sit at the small desk, pulling out the letters sent to Hazel from the city. This initiative was launched after Spring Break, and it was in response to another teen death from a drug overdose. The rich part of Wicked, the ones who come to the beach seasonally with their investments and their summer homes want a city that matches their vision, nothing too real or dingy. They want perfection, and instead of finding the dirtbags who traffic drugs into town, they think they can solve the problem by taking down real, hardworking establishments like my shop.

They also know that Logan works there, and Logan was one of their main targets when all of this came out. But this is a brotherhood, and I don’t let my brothers go down without a fight.

Thinking about the guys, makes me realize I haven’t spoken to Rafe all week.

I take out my phone and pull up our most recent group text, typing a quick message.