My fake ID barely got me through the door.

The bouncer gave it a once, then a twice over, until finally I breathed a sigh of relief and he allowed me into the club.

Bought on a whim when Ben had wanted to take me out on the town and get me drunk for the first time after my eighteenth birthday ten months prior, the fake had been burning a hole in my wallet just begging to be used, and what better time than the night that he'd broken up with me?

My brother and his wife and their perfect, happy family growing by the minute wouldn't miss me, considering I'd told them I would be out to dinner with Ben and would most likely stay over with him, something that I'd been allowed to do once I turned eighteen.

Eli hadn't liked it because he didn't want to think of his little sister as having any kind of sex life whatsoever, but V had convinced him.

She had been a bright light in our family that brought us out of the darkness while we did the same for her after her family trauma. Dark recognizes dark, and damn if I didn't corner the market on darkness festering inside of me.

The instant the cool New York air and bustling city lights were zapped by the humid, smoky air of the club and filled my body with a buzzing, energized glow, I could finally let my walls evaporate into the numb place of my mind where my problems existed.

I didn't partake in drinking often, but after the night I'd had? I'd take a girly vodka drink over feeling the after effects of that breakup any day.

I had thought to call my best friend from the moment I'd moved to New York, Phoebe, just as our favorite song started playing over the loud speaker, but the moment the alcohol stung my veins, I wondered what the point of that would be.

To allow her to commiserate with me? To have her try and cheer me up when 'happy' was the farthest thing I wanted to be in that moment seemed more like torture, when all I wanted to do was wallow in self pity and maybe lose myself in a stranger.

I'd never done it before, but how hard could it be? And if he was a creeper, well...I was a blue belt in a martial arts specifically for self defense, so I wasn't all that worried, especially since I knew the cardinal rules of partying.

1. Never leave your drink unattended or accept an opened drink from someone, even if you know them.

2. If you go home with a guy, take a picture of his license plate and screenshot his social media and send it to your best friend.

3. CONDOMS.

I also had a special app on my phone that, if I opened it and pressed the button three times, it would call my first three emergency contacts, the police, and send my location to the police as well, so, I had most of my bases covered.

I went out alone more often than I cared to admit...

It was easier that way, being alone.

When Ben was out of town or Eli and V were doing their separate things, being a basketball superstar and a musical superstar, respectively, I had taken to going out by myself while Evie stayed with V's grandparents.

For some reason, I'd always been a bit of a loner. Maybe it was due to the fact that I'd never had anyone who truly understood what it meant for me to have a childhood as rough as mine. It wasn't like I'd been seeking out support groups for something like that, but my best friend had lived a privileged and beautiful life in the suburbs with loving parents in the happiest of homes.

I was in one of those now, so why didn't I feel happy yet? Was there a set time for the happiness to set in, was I like an easy bake oven, just waiting for the timer to ding and announce my happiness for the world to see?

Or was I just too damned by the sins of my past, of my father, for me to ever see the forest for the trees and face the demons that seemed to grow and evolve with me as I grew older, turning from nightmares and flinching from affection to panic attacks and the inability to be vulnerable with anyone?

The song switched over to something more sultry and, as I paid for my second vodka cranberry and gulped it through the thin black straws that had garnished the glass, took to scoping out those dancing and hovering near the edge of the floor, searching for someone to share the night with.

A tall guy wearing a ball cap caught my attention, so down the hatch my drink went and just as I turned back to the dance floor he was there, cute brown hair flashing in the strobing lights and I couldn't make heads or tails of what he was saying as the music reached a fever pitch, swirling in my ears as the alcohol tugged me to the middle of the floor, my hips writhing along to the beat and in tune with his hands as they trailed down to my hip.

Numb.

I was so very, very numb.

Instead of tingles and fleeting butterflies in my gut, all I felt were cold hands that were more resembling that of a dead corpse than a living human, and still I threw my hands around his neck and continued to sway with him to the tune of a song that was a staple in clubs like these.

"I'm going to go get us a few drinks, don't go anywhere," he instructed and I simply nodded while another man who stood close by moved in, and I didn't say no when he began dancing with me, only to be scared off by something behind him, behind us.

Before I could turn around and face the new player in the game, however, strong, muscular arms banded around my stomach and tugged me back into a hard chest, the overwhelmingly enveloping scent of his ocean air cologne clogging up my nose as I fought to take a breath of something that wouldn't drown me in its depths.

His stubble crested over the side of my cheek as I tilted my head up and to the side to try and catch a glimpse of the man who'd shaken me out of a stupor that I could've seen myself getting lost in for days, weeks, even months.

Never had I been brought out of my steep numbing curse so quickly, so when I turned in his arms and lifted my face to his to get a better look, of course the lights chose that moment to strobe and flare and flash pitch black, and the man took the fact that I'd offered my face up to him as a cue to kiss me, not like I was arguing with it, though.

Lightning struck my core upon first contact of our lips.

I'd never kissed anyone besides Ben before, and the stark contrast was so abrupt and startling that I started to believe that I couldn't kiss correctly at all and this stranger would pull back and start laughing at me because of my apparent inexperience, but that was not the case at all.

Strong hands gripped my waist and ground kneading fingers into the thick swells of my hips, eliciting spine tingling chills to erupt upon my skin and for a flush to begin over me, every nerve ending standing at attention as if he'd just flipped the 'on' switch to my body.

This was so different than anything had ever been with Ben.

With him, it was sweet and slow and safe, and almost boring.

This? This was exhilarating. I had no idea who this stranger was that was kissing me with a fierce passion that could rival the greatest of heroes...or villains.

There was a hint of danger lurking beneath the surface, one that shouldn't have excited me, but call me masochistic or a morose voyeur, but on the dirty dance floor of a club making out with a complete stranger as he held me in an almost-too-tight embrace, I felt the most alive than I had in years.

The shadows lurking behind my eyelids vanished, replaced by something compelling me to want to push further, to run my hands through the short hair at his scalp, to trace the lines of the abs that I just knew were hiding underneath his crisp undershirt, to find out just how defined that line was that led to what was tucked away in his pants.

But, of course, the man from before knocked into us, causing my mystery man to put himself in front of us, blocking me in an almost protective way as the previous man argued with him over me, but then it was as if I was seeing clearly for the first time.

Like a haze had been yanked away from my eyes, none other than Matthew Thornberry, my brother's best friend and the man I'd loved for half my life became outlined as the lights switched with the songs, and my heart beat so hard in my chest it almost caused my stomach to reject the alcohol I'd downed so quickly, the nausea brimming up inside of me.

What would he say or do once he realized it was his best friends 'kid' sister he'd just been grinding up on? Had been kissing with such fervor that it felt like we could've ripped each other's clothes off right then and there on the dance floor?

So, I did what I always did in Matthew's presence.

I hid.

I ducked behind the nearest pillar in the room, holding my breath as I watched him search the club for me and safely slipping away once he trekked towards the women's restrooms on the other side of the club.

A sick part of me was happy that he hadn't given up looking for me once I first disappeared, like this small piece of myself that I'd unwittingly given him had meant something to him, too, and he wasn't going to let me get away without a fight.

But there was a niggling sense in my stomach that something would be forever changed between us, and I couldn't forget the fact that I'd have to see him yet again in less than twenty-four hours, at a dinner that he was supposed to be attending to meet my boyfriend.

I couldn't imagine what would happen if he recognized me, but one thing was for sure.

If he didn't recognize me immediately, I would never let him know that it was me that he had kissed. It was a secret I would take to my grave, as was the fact that he was the first person that I had ever loved.

Maybe it was a combination of the abuse forcing me to place a romantic attachment on one of the only people who'd ever shown me kindness back in those days when he and Eli had been childhood best friends, the fact that he'd always been close by after a nasty night of my father berating me verbally, doing things when my mother or Eli wasn't around.

Matthew had always been there with a kind word and that smile, so broad and sweet, a twelve year old boy tending to the six-year-old's cut up arm that he must've thought happened from a bike crash or some kind of accident.

Always something simple and inconspicuous, but it was the little things, like the heartbreak I'd experienced when Eli had betrayed him with the steroids in his locker, even though I knew he'd only done it for me.

After experiencing the abuse for himself, Eli couldn't allow me to stay in their care without being close by, so in order to get into one of the best basketball colleges to help him pursue his career and one day get me out for good, he had to find a way for Matthew's chances at the very same school be ruined. How Matthew had ever forgiven him, I didn't know, but his gift for compassion must've outshone his anger at the situation.

Still, there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there was something more than the kiss that had occurred in the club tonight.

Something strong and finite had taken place between the two of us, and I had a feeling that we were on a collision course towards something inexplicable and damning, something that had the capacity to destroy me once and for all.