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Lev
Scout doesn’t flinch when I pull her from the car and carry her into the house. I don’t even know if she’s aware of her surroundings, but she certainly isn’t here with me. She’s broken.
I climb the stairs to her room, but I don’t set her on the bed. Instead, I walk straight into the bathroom and run the shower, helping her under the spray. I want to scrub clean every fucking fingerprint from her body, douse her in bleach to strip away every place he touched my girl. I want to go back to the fucking school, back to that moment, and beat his motherfucking head in.
The only thing keeping me here, keeping me from turning into a fucking savage, is that Cub needs me right now, and unless she sends me away, I’m staying by her side. The team will know I’m missing. Coach will be pissed—Saint, too, because I stole his car—but none of that matters. The devil himself couldn’t drag me away right now. Even if it means I have to come clean with my brother.
Scout’s legs are shaking so hard that she can’t stand without me propping her up, so I undress and climb into the shower with her. As her naked body is pressed against mine, it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve done this. Long before they were having sex, Scout and my brother would spent hours holed up in our tub. They’ve spent so many nights together that seeing her cuddled into his side through our adjoining bathroom became the new norm. I quash the anger that rises in my belly, its bitter aftertaste poisoning me, right to my core.
From head to toe, I wash her with expensive body wash that makes her smell like roses. Ordinarily, this would be my ultimate fantasy, but nothing about this situation is remotely sexual. Scout grabs my hand as she sobs and glides it between her legs. I yank away as if I’ve been burned.
“I don’t want him to be the last man to have touched me.”
I press my lips against her hair. “He won’t be, but Cub, you’re not thinking straight.”
“My mind has never been clearer. You don’t want me now. Is that it? I’m sullied goods—just like Justin said. You don’t want to touch me.”
She tries to push past me. I grab her shoulders and spin her so her back is up against the wall, her arms held firmly against the tiles by my hands.
“I will never stop wanting you,” I hiss. “Do you hear me, Cub? Never. I may be an asshole, but I’m not dumb enough to think this is something you actually want right now.”
“Shall I go and see Nav then? Maybe he can give me what I need.”
I growl, low and menacing, and I know she regrets her words because tears pool in her eyes and her face crumples. I pull her into me, wrap my arms around her as tightly as possible, and kiss the top of her head as her body heaves with sobs.
“Cub, I’ve made a fucking mess of everything in my life, but I won’t fuck this up. I’ve wanted you for too long to ruin it with a quick fuck in the shower to erase the memory of that sick cunt’s hands on your body. When I fuck you, when I touch you again, it will be because you beg me to, because you want me to, because you need me to. But it sure as hell won’t be after something as traumatic as assault.”
“I’m ruined, Lev. Everyone knows. He and Charleigh made a tape, and sent out a blast to the whole school.”
“What?” I stare down at her as the as the water beats down on me. “Cub, what are you saying?”
“They filmed us having sex in your kitchen, in the guidance counsellor’s office, in the park the night of Justin’s party. Everyone saw. Everyone knows ...”
Fuck!
Scout sobs, loud, raw, gut-wrenching sounds that force my heart into my throat and I think about all of the ways I could have—should have—killed Justin Hearst.
***
I JOLT AWAKE. SCOUT stirs in my arms and rolls over and I rub my eyes with my free hand. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I think a part of me was waiting for Saint to come home and tear me a new one for taking his baby without permission. Oh, and accidently making a sex tape with his sister that was blasted all over Scarsdale High. I figured when he came home, he’d be angry at me, but he could stay with Scout while I went to find Nav.
I yawn and shift onto my back, careful not to wake Cub. Rustling fabric makes me turn my head. Nav is sitting in the armchair not three feet from us. A near empty bottle of Jack dangles from his fingers. I sit, and realize I’m stark fucking naked and am not covered by Scout’s lavender duvet. I’m not covered by anything at all, and my twin brother is watching me with the promise of murder in his eyes.
“Hello, brother,” he slurs, and the bottle falls from his hands to the plush carpet with a thud.
“What are you doing here?” I grab one of Scout’s twenty silk cushions to cover my junk.
“That’s my line.” He laughs and pitches forward in the chair. His breath turns my stomach. How is he sitting upright at all with the liquor he’s so obviously consumed—unless of course he’s started using that shit as cologne now? “Or it might have been my line, if you weren’t fucking my girlfriend.”
I swallow. Not because I feel guilty for taking back what’s mine, but because once upon a time Nav was my whole world. He was the other half of me, before Scout Taylor ever moved in next door. And now? Now he’s a stranger, a person with whom I shared a womb and DNA, but there’s no love lost between us. At least I can stop pretending Scout is anything but mine.
“Let me get dressed and we’ll take this outside.”
“Why bother?” he says, clearly unfazed that he might wake Scout. “She’s already fucked us both. Why not just make a party of it?”
I get to my feet. Naked or not, I will fuck up his face if he doesn’t shut up. Cub doesn’t need this shit.
“You know I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to talk to the two of you first, but then I saw the video. I couldn’t not watch. I couldn’t look away. And do you know what I realized, brother?” He says the word as if it’s poison in his mouth. “I realized that all of the hate between the two of you was likely not hate at all. It was love. I was just too fucking stupid to see it.
“Know what else I realized?” His eyes drift over my shoulder. I glance behind me. Scout is awake, leaning against the bedhead with her covers pulled up around her neck. Her eyes are puffy and tears stream down her face. “I realized you’d lied to me. You’d been lying to me and to yourself for years. You let me think I was the one to take your virginity when really, my brother got there first. From the looks of the video, he got there before me, and has been there many times since. What kind of slut tricks a man that way?”
I surge forward, barreling into my brother and slamming him up against the wall. An ornate mirror cracks behind us and shatters on the floor. I lay into my twin, pounding my fist into his gut as he laughs like a fucking maniac. Scout screams. Somewhere in the back of my mind I register her bedroom door opening and Saint, King, and River pile in and tear me away from Nav. It takes the three of them to pull me off him and in the end, King alone wrestles me to the door because he’s so much bigger than I am, but not before I swing a few times and connect with his jaw. He pushes me out of the room and gets all up in my face.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I shove at King’s chest.
“No can do, brother. He’s not the enemy here.”
“He just called my girl a whore.”
“Three hours ago, he thought she was his girl. Cut the guy a little slack.” He arches a brow. Fucking asshole. Always so fucking calm.
“Eat my goddamn dick, King.”
Saint moves through the door with a beaten and bloodied Nav leaning on his shoulder. They stop to glare at me, and I want to knock them both out, but King shoves a hand against my chest—he doesn’t even seem at all fazed by my nudity.
Saint ushers my brother toward the stairs.
“Did you know she was assaulted and almost raped tonight?” I call after them.
Saint stops walking and turns so abruptly that Nav loses his footing and almost topples down the stairs, but he clutches the banister until his knuckles turn white.
“Who?” Saint demands.
I clear my throat and meet my friend’s eyes. “Justin Hearst. Right after he sent out the video on blast, he followed her into the parking lot.”
Scout is at the door now, glaring daggers at me. “I didn’t want him to know. You promised me you wouldn’t tell.”
“Peaches?” Saint’s eyes brim with tears as his long legs eat the space between him and his sister. “Are you okay? Did he—”
She shakes her head, and I’m not sure which question she’s answering. Saint wraps her in his arms, and she breaks down all over again. Envy rips through my gut, not because he’s hugging her, but because he’s perhaps the only person in the world who can make her feel better, because he can take away her pain better than I can, and because I’ve never been more aware of my shortcomings as a boyfriend, a brother, and a human being in general as I am right now.