Page 47 of Make Me Pretty
Gabe’s sharp whistle rings too fucking loud in the small confines of my car. My head swivels in his direction, findinghisgaze locked on my screen as he peers over my arm, dark eyebrows lost beneath his hair.
My thumb hits the lock button, turning the screen black instantly. “What the fuck are you doing?” I snap as I drop my phone to the cupholder. My hand burns from where I held it. Knowing what’s on it. Inches away. I sink my nails into my skin.
“Little dude’s kinky,” is what Gabe says in response. “I dig it.”
“Yeah, you fucking would,” I snap, slamming the car into reverse, then drive, peeling out of the lot. I keep my teeth firmly planted into the fleshy muscle of my tongue as I drive toward Gabriel’s fuckingmansion.
The only sound permeating the car is the ferocious tapping of my fingers against the cracked leather of the steering wheel. “CAN’T LOSE YOU” by Night Lovell comes on, so I crank the volume until I feel the heavy thud of the base in my bones.
Just knowing those photos of Abel are right next to me, so damning, makes my body thrum with a deep, rapacious hunger to break him down until he’s nothing but a dirty mess again.
God, I fucking hate him.
Or maybe I just want to.
He has burrowed so deep beneath my flesh, his tiny fingers are picking at my frayed insides. Digging, searching forsomething he can grasp onto. And he found it, just by showing me his tears that night. So small and vulnerable.
It was all a goddamn show—but the worst part is, I already knew that. I just didn’t care.I don’t carebecause nothing has ever felt as good as hurting Abel. Watching his pale, milky skin flush scarlet in the shape of my hand. His lips stretched wide until they’re bloodless. Throat so full he can’t take in any air…
To be ugly and messy and ruined. Made pretty by me, my hands, and my cock.
Abel’s like a science experiment gone wrong—the concoction of mutated genes shoved inside one entity, warped and mismatched. And yet, in spite of it all… he’s gorgeous.
The epitome of kryptonite for a guy like me.
The vibrating music fades as a song ends, leaving the silence between me and my best friend all too staticky. When the next song starts, making me jerk at the sudden strum of a guitar, Gabe turns it down.
“Wanna tell me why you’re so pissed?”
I bite my tongue. “I’m not?—”
He scoffs loudly. “Don’t fucking tell me you’re not, dude. That’s insulting.”
I blow out a breath as I pull into the long, circular drive, stopping in the center in front of the double doors.Tryingto gain traction on whatever the fuck it is that I’m evenfeeling.
“Can’t fix what I did if I don’tknowwhat that is?” He poses it like a question, but all I can think about is Abel’s knowing little smirk as he passed Gabe the ball. The twisted curve of his lips, the way his dark lashes fluttered against his sharp, pale cheekbones.
AndGabe.
“You fucking flirted back,” I snap the thought out loud. The second it’s in the air, I regret it with the crack of my jaw closing, but it’s too late now. Gabe… knows without knowing, but thisjust adds more numbers to the already complicated equation, and?—
“I do flirt a lot. But I have a feeling you’re talking about someone in particular.” There’s a long, dramatic pause, his index finger tapping along his thigh in my peripheral. “Like maybe your new foster brother?”
My first instinct is to blurt a rebuttal. To scoff in his face and spew more venom. It’s what makes sense, what Ishould do.But apparently, I’m not doing the right fucking thing anymore. If I ever really did.
I catch Gabe’s dark eyes for a flash before I drop my head into my hands. My palms drag up and down my face, pulling my itchy skin taut. A breath is exhaled, trapped between.
As if Gabe senses my trepidation, he says softly—too softly,“You like him.”
I burst out laughing. Head thrown back, neck exposed, boisterous cackles ripped from my vocal cords. It’s deafening.Averting.My stomach hurts by the time the spell has drawn to a stop, muscles cramping, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. I wipe at them with the heels of my hands, huffing out a few short bursts still jammed inside me.
“No.” I’m shaking my head against my hands. I can’t look at him. At anyone.
At myself.
“I don’t fuckinglike him.” It’s not a lie. But it doesn’t feel like a truth, either.
What the fuck is happening to me?
