Rory
Where is Eva?
Cole! What the fuck did you do to her?
She didn’t show up to class today.
Eva never missed class. Ever. Not even when we’d kept her up all night, when she could barely walk the next morning, when Tristan and I had marked every inch of her perfect skin?—
Stop.
Rory
Why the fuck aren’t you answering my messages?
Because I was trying not to remember the sound Eva made when she came apart between us. Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw her green gaze looking up at me like I’d fucking hung the moon for her, like Ideservedher.
Lies. All of it.
My phone rang, an unknown number. I ignored it.
Unknown
This is Sage.
If you don’t pick up, you’re going to regret it.
Sage was the only one of Eva’s friends who truly terrified me. She seemed sweet most of the time, but every once in a while, I got the feeling she’d look just as sweet committing murder and dismembering the body. I called her back before I could think better of it.
“What do you want?”
“Where’s Eva?”
“What the fuck do you mean, where’s Eva?”
“What the fuck do you mean, what the fuck do I mean? She missed all of her classes today.”
All of them?
I’d punished her more than once for choosing academics over everything else, and by everything else, I meant me. Med school was going to be her ticket out of that shithole neighborhood, her father’s redemption, her entire future.
“How the fuck is that my problem?” The words tasted like poison on my tongue, but I forced them out anyway.
“You’re dating her, aren’t you? Was she at practice this morning?”
Dating.If only it were that simple. If only we’d been dating instead of whatever the hell we’d been doing. Using her. Blackmailing her. Falling for her.
Fuck.
“Why are you calling me and not Tristan?”
“Because I’ll feel guiltier about sending him into the river with cement shoes than I will you.”
Wait. Her friends didn’t know we’d broken up? That Eva had betrayed us in the worst way then quit the team?
“I haven’t seen her since she quit.”
“Eva quit? What the fuck did you do to her?”