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A half smile grew on his lips. It was hard to stare at them and not remember what they’d been doing mere moments before. “You’re not so different from the rest. You might be poor, you might be the first girl at Hillcrest, but you’re not special. There’s nothing special about you.” Jarring, mean words, spoken directly from the heart.
But he was right. To Sawyer, I was nothing. No one special. Just another girl with another horny vagina.
Here’s the thing, though—Sawyer didn’t know me. He didn’t know what I’d been through to get here. He had no idea the things I’d seen. He thought he could hurt me by calling me names, telling me I was worthless, nothing special? The words slid right off me, not sticking in place. Name-calling was not a way to get to me. I was beyond such juvenile, pointless things.
I gave him a full-blown smile, a full grin of my lips. His eyes dropped to my mouth to watch it form, and I was slow to release my hold in his hair. “You’re right,” I said. “There’s nothing special about me. I guess that’s the difference between someone like you and someone like me.” I traced his square jaw, watching as his muscles tensed, his teeth grinding. “I know I’m not special, but the sad thing is…you don’t.”
Every hint of lust was gone in his expression. Good. Sawyer had to know who he was playing with here. The hands holding my ass and my side loosened, but I didn’t step away, not quite done talking yet.
“You don’t realize how ordinary you are, besides the money. Do you think you’re the first person to lose a sibling? Do you think you’re the first person who’s ever lost a friend? Nothing about you or your situation is special, Sawyer. Nothing.” Now I took a step back from him, exposing the slight erection pressed against his pants. I suspected it was fading at a rapid pace. “I hope I’m there the moment you realize it, too.” I gave him a wave and a smile as I left the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I stood there for a moment, allowing myself a split-second of satisfaction.
It felt great to put someone like Sawyer in their place.
Chapter Thirteen – Travis
I knew this party would be fun. How fun? Well, I hadn’t known that until I saw Ash arrive, looking both simple and devastating in tight, body-hugging jeans. She had a nice body, that was for sure. It was a body that often got lost in the clothes she wore. Such a shame, too.
I moved on the peripherals of the party, mostly keeping to myself. Most of the girls who’d be hooking up tonight had already chosen their targets, or they’d already been chosen by the guys. Sawyer would have his pick of the crop, so to speak, just as he always did. Sometimes he took more than one girl up to his room. It was his way. I couldn’t blame him. Sometimes you needed to release that pent-up energy. What better way than sex?
My eyes trailed Ash to the kitchen, watching as she disappeared for a few minutes. I imagined her getting a drink, but then I saw Sawyer head that way, too. He saw her. Of course he did. He was nearly as in tune with his need for vengeance as I was with my need for…
Well, I needed a lot of things, none of which were important right now. If my family taught me one thing, it was that there was a time for everything. Sometimes biding one’s time was the best course of action to take. My family was a unique sort of crazy, and I was one of them.
But I was getting off track.
Right. Back to Ash and Sawyer.
I reached into my back pocket as I waited, pulling out a cigarette and sticking the nub in my lips. I didn’t light it; Sawyer hated it when I lit up in his house. While I was here, I played nice. No one would say I didn’t play nice on occasion. Playing nice wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I did it when necessary. Thanks to my upbringing, I had a lot of masks I wore. One of them I wore nearly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
I was never myself around these other students, and I was never myself around Sawyer. I knew his kind well enough. My family had money too, but it was a different kind of money. Blood money. Sawyer’s family got rich off of making drugs cost so much families went in debt to get them. We weren’t from the same breed of money.
Soon enough Ash exited the kitchen. She didn’t carry a drink, and she looked like she was purposefully trying to keep her cool, which meant she must’ve spoken to Sawyer. Or Sawyer spoke to her. Either way, it must not have been a fantastic, stimulating conversation. I bet I could’ve given her exactly what she needed.
But tonight wasn’t my night. It was Sawyer’s. And since it was Sawyer’s night, I hung at the edges of the party, watching the whole thing like a hawk, eagle-eyed and alert under the bored face I wore. When Sawyer left the kitchen, trailing after Ash, I followed him, but not too close that he noticed me. To more than half of these people, I was invisible, which was both a relief and intensely aggravating.
Sometimes all I wanted was to be seen for who I was. I thought Sabrina had seen me, but she didn’t. She was just like the rest of them. Ignorant, unaware, stupid. I’d even go so far as to say plain dumb.
Was Ash the same? Would she wind up like all these other faces, blending together in my head? None of these other people mattered. Not the girls in the skanky dresses or the guys with their hard-ons while they danced. Sawyer mattered to me, a little, but not much. For the moment, I cared about Ash, mostly because she was a curiosity to me. A curious curiosity that simply kept growing ever more curious.
For example, why did she come to this party? What was she hoping to achieve? I wanted to get her alone, away from Sawyer, and with any luck that would come later. Right now, as I watched Sawyer and Ash start to dance together, I had something else I needed to do.
With the cigarette still unlit and hanging off my lips, I reached into my jeans and pulled out my phone. My eyes watched Sawyer force Ash to turn around, pressing their fronts together as they swayed and grinded on each other. She brought her hands up to his neck, and for a quick moment, it looked like they were together, like they were bonding.
I didn’t like it. Sawyer wanted to use her in his revenge against Declan? That was fine, at first. Then I met her, saw her, spoke to her. She was so much more than a pawn. She was a fucking queen, and I wouldn’t let that king sweep her off the board in an illegal move.
I scrolled through my phone, finding a contact I hadn’t texted or called in quite some time. Nearly a year, actually. Friends tended to fade away when death happened. It was a harsh fact of life. I opened a new message and lifted my phone, snapping a picture of Sawyer and Ash together, her arms around his neck, a look of adoration on her face. As if Sawyer’s handsome looks were getting to her.
It’d be terrible if it was true. I had to find out if Ash was even worth my time.
Once the picture loaded into the message, I typed out Sawyer’s address and hit the send button, putting my phone back in my pocket before I received a response. Maybe I wouldn’t even get one. It was fine; I didn’t need a response to know that he got it. Declan wouldn’t be too happy seeing Sawyer and Ash together.
I slowly made my way from the group of dancing bodies and emerged into the backyard, sitting on one of the patio’s many chairs. No one else was out here, mostly because the mosquitos were a bitch. But with the smoke, they usually stayed away. One advantage of smoking, at least. I lit up finally, feeling my lungs fill up with the faintest traces of tobacco.
With the moon hanging high overhead, I wondered if I was purposely sabotaging Sawyer’s chance at wooing Ash to our side. Granted, I wouldn’t put myself on Sawyer’s side—not really—but he didn’t know that. The mask I wore around him was the best mask of all. The mask of a friend who would do anything for him. Sawyer was so caught up in his own grief, not to mention totally haughty, that he didn’t think to question me.
I didn’t want to get in the way of Sawyer’s taste of revenge, but I also enjoyed seeing him seethe and plot. It was fun, having a miserable friend, watching him spiral downwards into the black abyss. He’d sooner shoot himself in his own foot than let Declan and his need for revenge go. Sawyer would dig his own fucking grave, and I wouldn’t stop him.
No, if anything, I’d watch.
