Page 105 of Bitter Lies

“Fuck, sweet.” He turns me toward the floating Jet Ski and pushes my bathing suit to the side.

I have just enough time to grab on before he’s pumping into me, and I cry out, the stretch so deliciously wicked.

“Griff.” He thrusts into me so brutally, the water splashes roughly around us.

“Yes, fuck, you feel so good,” he groans, and I come, gloriously, tipping my head back as he surges inside of me and follows.

Clutching my back to his chest, he buries his face in my neck and hums. The gesture brings tears to my eyes which I will back, along with the burn in my heart for more.

Instead, I close my eyes and take in the moment with regret until he pulls away and turns me around with an arrogant smirk to help me back on the Jet Ski.

After we race back to the dock where he heads off to throw the ball with his friends, and I lounge by the pool, soaking in the rays, my mind spinning over the events of the last few days.

Until Max sits down beside me, and my pleasant mood fades under his brooding stare. I turn my head away, wishing for peace but he doesn’t fucking care about my state of mind.

“Have you even looked for the damn thing?”

“I haven’t seen it,” I mutter.

“Are you even trying?”

“Yes,” I trail off, lying through my teeth.

There’s a pause in which I turn to find him staring at me with wide, tortured eyes. “Hals, he’s going to hurt me.”

“Oh, Max…”

“If you care about me at all,” he says, and I cringe when his voice breaks because Max is truly scared. Can I ignore this? Fuck.

Sucking in a shaky breath, I rise from the lounger. “Okay.”

To my relief and annoyance, he doesn’t follow, leaving his mess for me to fix, but I can’t get the desperation in his voice out of my head, so I grimly head for Griffin’s room.

It’s not in the drawers because Max looked through all of those, so I step into his disgustingly large closet and glance around. It’s filled with clothes and boxes that could take me days to weed through, and with a sigh, I start at the back, pulling out a box and dropping to my knees.

The first box is nothing but playing cards, the next old magazines of half-dressed women to my amusement, but the third makes me pause.

Inside, I spy a picture of Griffin and me from seventh grade. We’re beaming at the camera, and he has his arms around me. Beneath it is a card I gave him for his birthday, along with a picture I drew of the sun setting behind his house, and with each new item I pick up, a memory flows through me.

A coin from our favorite arcade, where Griffin won a stuffed bunny that I still have tucked away in my closet.

A ticket stub to the movies and a show I don’t even remember.

One of my earrings that I thought I lost a long time ago, a pressed flower, and a rock I dug out of the sand and gave him because it was pretty and strong, just like him.

Why did he keep all this? If he hates me?

Wiping the tears from my cheeks, I shove the box back where it was and stand, pausing with a frown when I see a familiar jacket.

Running my fingers down the smooth material, I turn it toward me and see it’s the fucking coat he supposedly lost in the bet for my virginity.

A lie? Was it all a lie? But why?

No longer interested in searching through his things because my skin is crawling at the invasion, I gasp when he appears in the door with a strange expression on his face.

“What are you doing in here?” he asks, cocking his head to the side.

“Oh, I was looking for an, um, sweatshirt,” I mumble, grabbing the nearest item I see and pulling it from the hanger.

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