I couldn’t take her crying any longer, her pain. I pulled her into me and held her and smoothed her hair and told the most basic lie I know, that everything was going to be okay. And she pressed against me, wrapped her arms around me and placed her face in the crook of my neck, still sobbing. And then she pulled back just far enough for us to lock eyes, and then our mouths connected like we needed each other’s oxygen to breathe, shedding our clothes like molting skin. And I’d never been so hard in my entire life or her so wet and while it might have been the millionth time I’d entered her it felt like the first time. We screamed and thrashed like animals, and she clawed my back and I bit her neck, and together we came so hard the pleasure was nearly pain.

Something about this couch, I’m telling you. A place where alliances are formed and fates are sealed through the joining of flesh. I wish we could have taken it home.

We were back together. And the shit I’d done with Malia didn’t matter, because that hadn’t been me. Or at least not the conscious me. And while it might haunt my memory banks and give me cold sweats at odd hours, so do dozens of other fucked-up things I’ve done before. Can’t do anything about it now, so why dwell. Deal with the shit at hand.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

I relayed my end of the story. All of it. The whole bit about Malia, though I framed it like it had all been one big setup. Which I believe it had. Photos can be doctored. Hell, Cassie’s a master of Photoshop herself. There was no need to drive the wedge of real infidelity between us at that time. It’s us against them; we needed to be united.

We dined on Triscuits and had the last of the Teddy Grahams for dessert. Both of us were ravenous following the washout of adrenaline. Cassie wanted to return for Rox right away, but I knew that was a bad move. One, it was too dark to make it safely through the woods. Two, we needed a strategy, not just serve ourselves up on a silver platter.