relieved that there wasn't anyone else in the elevator when we got on. Beau pushed me to the back of it, caging me between his arms as he dipped his head to kiss me again. God, he was a good kisser. He knew just the right amount of pressure, just the right amount of tongue to use to make my knees weak.

"Fuck," he groaned, and it sent lust pooling between my legs. At least until he followed it up with, "Nessa."

I immediately pulled back, dread sinking all the way to the tips of my toes.

"Did you just groan your friend's name while kissing me?"

Words seemed to get caught in Beau's throat. "Oh God, no," he eventually managed to spit out. He even laughed a little bit. "I'll admit...that, uh, came out wrong, though."

"You think?" When I went to take a step back, he grabbed my wrist.

"Get back here, sweetheart. I was groaning Nessa's name because I realized I'm her ride home, and I just ditched her. But I'm pretty sure she's in good hands at the moment."

I had mixed feelings about his explanation. It was hard to make sense of them, though, because he took that moment to cup my face and kiss me again.

"Do you always think about your friends when you're kissing other girls?" I asked, trying to find it somewhere in me to care when his lips were brushing against mine, tender and soft.

"No." Beau chuckled. "But there's something you need to know about me, Collins," he whispered.

"What's that?"

"I'm the kind of guy who makes sure everyone else is taken care of first."

I swallowed. Something about the way he said those words made my insides feel tangled and confused. And I could see it being true, too. Earlier, he hadn't even taken a sip of alcohol until he was sure that everyone else would be okay.

His lips started to trail to my jaw and then my neck. I arched back, letting him suck on a sensitive hollow, making me see spots in my vision.

"How about I take care of you now, huh?" he breathed.

I didn't know how to say no to that.

—

Something had died in my bed. I realized it the moment I woke up. Probably like a feral cat or something. Maybe it had slipped in the door one night when we came home.

Yawning, I rolled onto my back and—

Oh, yeah, no. That was my breath. That was definitely my breath that smelled like something had died. Gagging on the taste of my own cottonmouth, I flung myself out of bed.

Only to step on a human body, sprawled out on my floor.

A garbled cry, messy black hair, a glimpse of a tattoo, and a fit torso.

Beau. Beau was on my floor. Beau had slept on my floor?

"I usually just prefer a nice, soft alarm sound, but I suppose a kick in the balls is good, too," he groaned, hiding half of his face in his pillow.

"Oh my god. I am so sorry, Beau. So, so sorry." My apologies came out in crackly gasps, and I tried to swallow past the dryness in my throat. But that made me remember the thing that had died inside this room. Which was my mouth. I quickly clapped a hand over it.

When Beau finally turned onto his back and looked up at me, he immediately frowned.

"Are you going to throw up again?"

Again?

Oh, shit. He was right.

I had the terrible, awful gift of being able to remember the things I did when I was drunk. Never once had I blacked out. And it was a blessing, but mostly a curse.

I threw up last night. A lot.

Beau had saved me from going home with some guy named Steve and then made me drink like a gallon of water in the kitchen before stroking my back while I threw up the entire contents of my stomach for hours.

I shook my head.

No, I wasn't going to throw up. Actually, I felt pretty good, all things considered.

"Why are you covering your mouth then?"

"Because my breath smells."

He laughed, waving away my concern. "That's what happens after you become a vomit volcano. Why do you think I slept on your floor? I didn't want you to choke on your own eruption in the middle of the night without anyone knowing."

I truly wished it was possible to die from my own embarrassment. Because I would welcome death in exchange for this.

As if our relationship wasn't already strained enough. As if I hadn't already put Beau through the wringer these past few months, now I had to add cleaning up vomit and sleeping on the floor to the list of things I owed him for.

Since apparently I couldn't gross him out anymore at this point, I dropped my hand and sighed.

"You could have slept in the bed with me. It's big enough."

Beau tensed. "Yeah, no. I don't think I could have."

Right. Because I smelled like a dying animal. I forgot.

"Well, then." Beau pushed up into a sitting position, and his blankets—which I recognized from his bed—fell to his waist. Indecision rooted me to the spot. Was it more awkward if I averted my gaze? More awkward if I didn't? Fuck, I needed a book on how to live with his guy. Luckily, Beau didn't seem to notice. "I have our first snow club meeting in less than an hour, so if you think you're good, I'm going to go get ready."

His eyes searched my face, and for some reason, the hands at my sides shook a little.

He really wanted to know. He was waiting for my answer, and he really wanted to know if I was okay.

"I'm good," I said, a little breathless.

Beau nodded, and then, after balling up his blankets and pillows, he walked to the doorway. I was ready to watch him walk away, but then he paused and peered back at me.

"Look, I don't know what you remember about last night."

Everything, Beau. I remembered everything, and it was awful.

"But there's one thing that I need to make sure you know."

Oh, god. There was literally an endless list of things that he could bring up right now, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear any of them.

"Beau—"

"I don't hate you, Collins."

"Oh."

"And yes, we're friends."

"Oh."

For crying out loud, stop saying oh.

After giving me a warm smile—way warmer than anything I had received in the past months from him—Beau was gone.

Okay. This was good, right? Beau and I...we could be friends. This would work.

It had to.

***

We need to talk.

Just like that, the art studio seemed a whole lot colder. None of the windows were open, and yet I could have sworn I felt a breeze blow through.

You can talk to my lawyers, Denver.

We both know that you ran out of money for lawyers a long time ago.

I hated that he knew that. I was hoping he didn't.

Thanks for that reminder. It was exactly how I'd wanted to use my dad's life insurance, too. On lawyers who couldn't beat yours.

Not my lawyers. My family's.

Same difference.

Collins, I want to talk to you as a courtesy. As a friend.

This was not what I needed to get through my hangover. I'd come to work on my Studio Art project because I needed a little space to process yesterday's events and detox in private. Now I was processing a whole lot of other things I didn't want to be thinking about.

We stopped being friends when your family tried to sue me and send me to jail.

I was the one who got them to pay off the DA's office and drop everything. Come on. You've gotta know they never would have otherwise.

Goddamnit. He shouldn't make my blood boil and my bones ache after all these times. Sometimes I hated him, and sometimes I missed him, and it was the worst of feelings. Because I wasn't so sure the person I missed was actually there anymore. But then he said things like that, and it got me wondering.

But that was after you lied to the police about what really happened. I never would have been charged at all if you hadn't done that. Too little, too late, Denver.

My phone stayed silent for a few minutes, and I hoped to God that was the end of the conversation. But the harsh vibrations made me jump before I could get back to drawing.

I just wanted you to know that my mom is pissed you left town. That wasn't part of the deal.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

I dropped my pencil in frustration, not knowing how I was supposed to get anything done now.

There were two separate events in high school that changed my life. That's two too many tragedies for a teenager whose prefrontal cortex wasn't even close to being developed.

The first was when my dad died.

The second was the accident.

It took a lot to heal after losing a parent. A lot of counseling, a lot of support. A lot of stupid decisions. And yeah, some of those decisions involved Bren Hadaway. But it was sort of cathartic sometimes, finding new ways to feel something other than pain. And we made it through. It would always hurt to some extent, but we made it through.

Until my whole world came crashing down a second time.

I hated being in cars. It was sort of a miracle that I didn't pass out last night when Beau placed me into his SUV. Maybe the alcohol helped. And knowing it was Beau behind the wheel.

It wasn't so much the accident itself that haunted me, though. It was terrifying, of course. But the aftermath was so much worse.

The guilt, the sickening guilt of knowing I had a part in the death of someone else. Of knowing that if I hadn't gotten in my car with Denver that day, his dad would still be alive. Of knowing that a part of my best friend died that day, too. And I was partly to blame.

But not totally to blame. Because his dad, James Bailey, was drunk. At least two times over the legal limit to drive. And he was also the one who came out of nowhere that night on the road to the movie theater. But that didn't stop the Bailey family from using the billions of dollars they'd accrued with their investment firm to play with my life ever since. They owned me now.

It was easy enough for them to vilify a troubled teen, a reckless teen. A teenager whose phone data showed she was using her cell at the time of the crash.

It was Denver, though. He was on my phone, looking up the movie times and texting our other friend, Will, who was meeting us there. I wasn't on my phone, but my best friend told the police otherwise.

Sometimes I wondered if the Bailey family cared more for what people said about the accident than the accident itself. Although, at the same time, I knew I shouldn't fucking say that. I knew it affected Denver. God, I knew that. And of course I knew that his pain was why he'd done what he did. That, and his family's influence. As someone who had lost their dad, I should understand that more than anyone. But it was so hard to compare my dad, an upstanding military veteran, with his dad, a cruel, greedy billionaire who knowingly got behind the wheel drunk.

All I wanted was to put that accident behind me. To stop the memories from dredging up. To put a silence to the push and pull of my brain.

But it didn't look like that was going to happen.

And if the Bailey family was planning on coming at me now, I didn't have a single penny left to defend myself. Not that my money ever really made a difference. They had enough to do whatever they wanted.

I stared at Beau.

Well, at the drawing of Beau.

So handsome, even on paper.

I'd let things get out of control last night at the party. I was so ridiculously grateful he'd carried my ass home when he did, even though it was embarrassing to think about now. Not to mention my confession in the car.

He was going to try to figure it out now, wasn't he? He was going to want to know what my thing was that I was hiding. And even worse, he was going to try to help. Because helping was what Beau did.

I couldn't let that happen.

With a massive sigh, I started to pack up my things. There was still a chunk of the drawing that I needed to finish, but I couldn't concentrate now. It was hard enough without a model, let alone with a raging headache and all these thoughts bouncing around in my brain.

Crossing the campus at dusk was sort of magical. I wasn't usually someone who romanticized things; I'd seen the world rear enough of its ugly head to know better. But there was contentment in my bones here at OSU. A bit of freedom and stability. And people I adored.

When I stepped into the apartment, it was dark and quiet. I listened carefully, wondering if Beau was just hiding like he usually did or if he was really gone. But I didn't hear any faint music, and the crack beneath his door was utterly black. He wasn't home.

Exhausted and ready to pass out, I dragged my feet into my room. And froze.

A pair of rainboots sat in a shoebox on top of the bed. They were matte black with a designer label I didn't recognize. And a note sat on top.

It's going to rain tomorrow.

✨

things are a little bit ✨complicated✨

let me know if you have any thoughts!

xoxo Amelie