Chapter 135
Kara
Every molecule of air vanished from the room. My lungs forgot how to work.
No. No fucking way. That's not—he didn't—
I stared at her, then at Blake, whose face had gone carefully blank in that way that meant he was hiding something huge. Asher and Cole had gone absolutely still, like predators who'd just scented blood.
"You were fourteen," I whispered. The words felt like broken glass in my throat. "I was... we were just..."
"I was eighteen and furious," Vivian admitted. "I thought he was just distracted. Then I found his sketchbook."
She pulled out her phone, swiped through her photos, and turned the screen toward me.
It was a pencil drawing—delicate, obsessive in its detail. A girl in an oversized sweater sat hunched on stone steps, knees pulled to her chest, her face turned away so only a curtain of tangled curls was visible. Snow dusted her shoulders. She looked... small. Lost. Utterly alone.
That's me.
"That's the back door," I heard myself say. My voice sounded far away, like I was listening to someone else speak. "The morning after... after they locked me outside."
The morning I'd woken up with frostbite on three fingers and hypothermia so bad I couldn't stop shaking for two days.
The morning Blake had stepped over me like I was a piece of furniture.
Blake's pheromone exploded—fire-and-leather mixed with something acrid and self-loathing so thick I could taste it on my tongue. She wasn't supposed to know. Not like this.
You drew me? You fucking DREW me while I was dying?
"He filled an entire sketchbook with drawings of you," Vivian said gently. "That's when I understood. He wasn't just distracted. He was already yours. He just hadn't figured it out yet."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. My brain was short-circuiting, trying to reconcile the boy who'd called me a fat worthless sow with the boy who'd apparently been obsessed enough to draw me.
What the actual fuck. What the absolute goddamn FUCK.
---
The ride home should have calmed me down. Instead, the alcohol turned my blood to lighter fluid, and every bump in the road sent fresh sparks through my system.
I sat in the back seat between Blake and Cole, Asher's knuckles white on the steering wheel as we carved through the snow-heavy darkness. The heater was cranked to maximum, but I was still shivering—from cold or shock or rage, I couldn't tell anymore.
For the first fifteen minutes, I said nothing. Just stared out the window at the blur of snow-crusted pines rushing past.
My mind kept playing Vivian's words on loop: He called me Kara. Twice. In bed.
He was thinking about me while fucking someone else.
He drew pictures of me looking broken and sad.
He KNEW. They all knew I was suffering and they just—
Then I laughed.
It came out harsh and broken, nothing like actual humor. More like the sound a dying animal makes. "So I'm supposed to get used to it, right? Your fan club. Your harem of exes who all think I'm a charity case who fucked her way into a tiara."
"Kara—" Asher started.
"Vivian was nice," I cut him off, my hands shaking so hard I had to ball them into fists. "She actually tried to make me feel better about being the school punching bag. But the others? They called me a group-fuck charity orphan. They said I spread my legs for all three of you because I'm so desperate to be noticed."
My voice cracked, but I forced the words out anyway. "And where the hell were you? Blake, you were chatting with your ex like old friends while I got verbally shredded. Cole, you had three girls hanging off you at the snack table like ornaments. Asher, you spent ten minutes talking to Natalie-fucking-whoever while she had her hand on your arm the entire goddamn time."
Blake's growl rumbled through the car like distant thunder. "Those girls mean nothing—"
"But I have to smile and nod when they surround me like vultures?" I was yelling now, the alcohol stripping away every filter, every carefully constructed wall. "You lost your shit when my photo had Tyler's scent on it. Cole almost killed him. But I'm supposed to what—thank your exes for the heads-up that you used to call me a fat worthless pig?"
That you fantasized about letting me freeze to death.
That you wished I'd never been born.
The SUV swerved slightly. Asher corrected with sharp precision, hispheromone going so sharp it made my eyes water.
"You're drunk," he said, his voice too calm, too controlled, too much like he was handling an unstable explosive. "Emotional. When we get home, you'll sleep this off, and tomorrow—"
I shoved at the door handle.
The car was still moving—maybe fifteen miles per hour as we navigated a curve—but I didn't give a single fuck. The door flew open, arctic wind shrieking into the cabin like a banshee.
"KARA!" Blake roared.
Asher slammed the brakes. The tires screamed against ice-slick asphalt, the SUV fishtailing before lurching to a stop that threw me against my seatbelt hard enough to bruise.
I tumbled out into knee-deep snow, my ridiculous heels immediately sinking. The cold was instant and vicious, slicing through my thin dress like razor wire made of pure winter.
Good. Let it hurt. I want it to hurt.
Behind me, three car doors slammed in rapid succession.
My white-musk-and-first-snow scent detonated outward—sharp, defensive, laced with fury and alcohol and something that smelled like lightning about to strike. I felt their answeringpheromone erupt in response: black ebony thick as smoke, fire-and-leather explosive enough to taste, mint-and-ozone crackling with deadly focus.
"Get. Back. In. The. Car." Asher's Alpha Voice could have peeled paint off walls.
I whirled on them, snow clinging to my bare legs, my whole body shaking. "Or what? You'll drag me? Lock me up? Remind me I'm just the tumor you wanted to cut out and throw in the fucking trash?"
Blake flinched like I'd struck him. Actually flinched, like my words had physical weight.
Good. Let it hurt you too.
---
Blake caught me before I made it three more steps—just scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. I beat my fists against his back, but it was like hitting granite.
"Let me DOWN, you bastard!"
"Not a chance in hell, Princess."
Don't call me that. Don't you fucking DARE—
He carried me through themanor's front entrance. I caught a glimpse of two guards snapping to attention before they wisely found somewhere else to be. The main hall was dimly lit, just a few sconces throwing shadows across marble floors that probably cost more than my parents' entire debt.
My parents who abandoned me. To these assholes who made my life hell.
I hate everyone. I hate EVERYTHING.