Page 66 of Manhattan Tormentor

I need him gone.

“Show yourself out, yeah?”

I expect a comeback. A ‘fuck you’at least and he gives me nothing but silence as he places the wet towel on the back of the stool and swings into his jacket.

Feeling oddly cold when he closes the door without a word.

At Brooks’ house party later, I’m stoned out of my mind. Slouched on the sofa in the games room, I half watch the host sitting on top of her daddy’s ten grand pool table while a guy tries to get his hand under her little skirt.

“Who was it?” Bates asks, passing me his joint. I toke twice, holding in the smoke before blowing it out. “Who was what?”

“The chick you were banging earlier when I came by.”

Theno onelie is ready in my mouth. I’m more surprised that I go with, “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Holy shit, are you nailing a teacher like Fierro?”

Even though it’s not the same Fierro he’s talking about, hearing the name puts a bonfire into my gut.

Thankfully, Bates, who is as high as I am, doesn’t shut up. “How fucking lucky is he that he got to bang Sloan? I bet she’s filthy, she looks like a bible basher but bet she knows some dirty stuff. And Fierro is the one that gets her. Life is unfair. She needs a real man, not a Fierro.”

It’s been the talk for the past few months about how Sloan mysteriously left after only one semester. We don’t know for sure she’s in a secret relationship with Lachlan Fierro, but the gossip is rife.

I don’t care. I can only deal with one Fierro at a time.

I’m not there long before Sofia tracks me down in the basement. She sashays over, swinging her hips in the small skirt, and she plops onto my lap. Bates smirks histold ya solook. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Here I am.” I span her waist to lift her off me.

She’s not put off and grins at me, pouting her already too big lips. A gift from her mom for her sixteenth birthday.

“Mav, it’s my birthday in less than a month.”

“Sure, yeah.” I say bored. Don’t care.

“My eighteenth birthday,” she stresses, pressing her mouth to my ear.

And then what she’s saying penetrates, and the chill cools me down to the bone.

Fuck.

She’s excitable as she jabbers on and on. All inaudible words I don’t take in because I realize it’s less than a month when my father expects me to fulfil his handshake deal with her rich daddy and become engaged to her.

Fuck my life.

I am not high enough for this.

“Bates, hit me.” I say over her blonde head and my best friend reaches into his inside pocket, lights up the joint and passes it over.

There’s no level of stoned I can reach to forget the shitstorm coming my way soon.

I try to reach it, anyway.

C H A P T E R 18

Sage

“What do you want?” A husky voice speaks into my ear and a hot mouth sucks on the lobe. I shudder from exertion.

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