Page 56 of Framed

Tears welled in my eyes as I shook my head adamantly, angrily. He closed the distance between us once more.

“You can’t call me that. You don’t get to waltz in here and pretend like you didn’t treat me as if I was some kind of ghost, as if I didn’t exist to either of you.” My voice cracked and I hated it. I was mad and I hated it. I hated the raw emotions he could set off like a bomb.

That’s the thing about bombs. They always went off at the most inconvenient times. You were scared, alone, and then boom. Explosion. People always talked about the area of impact but never about the surrounding debris. About the falling foundations or the thinning structures. No one talked about finding your way back from an explosion. How difficult it was to pick up as if the rest of the debris didn’t block your path forward.

Hewas blocking my path. He was my debris and my bomb, but he was also my foundation and structure. And I hated it.

“How long?” It was the way his pleading eyes wrinkled that made me cave. I hated it.

I hated how my chest ached and I hated how my mouth moved to answer against all of the protests in my head. “Sophomore year,” I finally told him, my voice barely above a whisper.

A second passed. Two. Until he finally said, “Secret for a secret?” His voice mirrored my own, so low I barely caught it. A sob lodged in my throat at the words I hadn’t heard in so long. The words that brought the three of us together. I couldn’t do this…I can’t go back. Secret for a secret.

I’m smarter, I’m stronger.I couldn’t, no, Irefusedto allow him back in.He hated me.

Hastily, I blinked back the tears, swallowed the lump in my throat, and steeled myself for his response.I could do this. I wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth but at the very least, I could prepare myself for the worst, for his secret. Or at least, I thought I could. I doubted anything in the world could’ve prepared me for his next words.

“Me too.”

Then he did the last thing I would’ve expected. He pressed his lips into mine.

chapter twenty three

Xavier

HowdidInotsee it?

How did I not know that Scarlett was also being blackmailed with these notes? Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she tell Naomi? What did they say? Had they warned her away from us as it did for me?

If so, she was braver than both of us combined because she didn’t let that deter her. For months, she still tried to reach out to us. Pled for us to speak to her regardless of what the faceless coward behind the notes had to say.

And we abandoned her. Acted like she didn’t exist. I guessed that made us cowards in our own right.

She called me that night. The night she found Naomi. I never told anyone. For a while, I wanted to believe the gossip. That she was involved in the murder of my sister, her best friend, because it was easier. I didn’t have to face the fact that I lost the only girl I ever loved to the town my sister had always loved.

Then I got another note that warned me away. That said if I didn’t keep my distance like they instructed, she’d end up like Naomi.

I didn’t know why I believed it or why I didn’t question it back then. I was scared shitless that something would have happened to her too.

But now I knew she too was a victim. And she went through it alone.

Thischanged everything.

The kiss was slow, tentative at first. She doesn’t respond right away, and for a moment, I considered stopping. I shouldn’t have kissed her without her permission… but then she opened her mouth, silently granting me access, and the last thread of my control snapped.

Our mouths tangled. It was rough. It was raw. At this moment, we weren’t Scarlett and Xavier. We didn’t have names at all. We were two souls who had been forcibly separated. Two souls who were desperate for one another. Two souls who could never have each other.

Until now.

This kiss said all of that and more. It was sloppy and out of control. Two people dying to get a taste, desperate for more. The note slipped from my hands and I took that moment to tangle my fingers into her curls. They were soft, and a handful, just like I had always imagined.

Her arms wrapped around my neck and I got lost in her. The feel of her body against mine. Her sweet aroma. Her sugary sweet lips. I got lost in all things Scarlett Rose, just like I thought I would.

She moaned and I pressed into her harder wanting there to not be any space between the two of us.

All at once, Scarlett shoved backward, away from me. I was left panting, my hands empty where she’d been, my entire body on fire with heat that no longer had anywhere to go.

Scarlett ran a hand through her hair, half turned away. She felt what I just did, I know it. Yet by the time she turned back around, a hard mask had fallen across her features again. She was different now. Hardened by years, and whatever had happened to her in that prison.

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