“Courtney,” Evan sneers. “Go away.”

“Are you joking? Don’t tell me you want her too?”

“She’s my friend and my stepsister.”

“She hates you,” her gaze travels over all four boys. “All of you, she always has. I thought she was just playing hard to get back in high school, but you really don’t want anything to do with them, do you?” she laughs gleefully.

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh, this is brilliant. The great Sebastian Lockwood can’t get the girl he wants to want him back.”

“Fuck off, Courtney,” Sebastian warns.

“Oh I’m going, for now. But when she runs again, you’ll need to come begging on your knees to get me back,” she laughs. “Starling, this has been fun. I was going to threaten you again, but I don’t need to warn you away from him, you don’t want him anyway. Bye, babe, have a good night.”

“Bye, Court,” I smirk, thoroughly amused.

“She threatened you?” Clay demands.

“We had a grand reunion yesterday where she advised me she’d had you all and that her and Sebastian were practically engaged and I shouldn’t bother trying to get his attention,” I giggle.

Strong hands grab me and I’m turned into Sebastian’s chest. Tipping my chin back he forces me to look at him. “I never fucked her.”

“I don’t care if you did,” I shrug.

15

SEBASTIAN

“I don’t care if you did.”

Her eyes are earnest and almost laughing at me and I fight the urge to haul her into the trees and fuck her until she’s screaming my name loud enough for everyone at the party to hear. She looks beautiful, but the emptiness in her gaze pisses me off. She should care if I fucked her best friend. She should be angry, furious even, but instead she’s impassive, disinterested.

Worry that I really did break her flows through me. It wasn’t my intention, I just wanted to punish her, to make her come back to me, to make her confess what I knew… that she wanted me as much as I wanted her. But I think I went too far. All those years ago when I told her I’d take everyone important from her, I never meant it. But when she didn’t come back, when she refused to fall in line, I was too far gone, too heartbroken that she would run from me that I acted harshly.

The friend was always going to have to go, even knowing I was with Starling, Courtney propositioned me within hours of me first publicly claiming her friend. I told the guys to play with her a little while I cemented things with my little bird, but it turns out the rich girl, who befriended the poor girl, was just a shark, setting things up to make her friend the bait when she needed it. She confessed to Evan one time that she’d seen the way I watched Starling right from the start, seen the way the others followed her and monitored her and then just bided her time, knowing it was only a matter of waiting until I staked my claim.