A tear fell down her cheek as I felt my own throat tighten.

She was looking at me like she used to, like I was everything.

Piles and piles of f**king shit swirled through my mind as I watched her.

All the crap I’d done to prove that I was strong. To prove that I didn’t need someone that didn’t want me. I swallowed, trying to calm the pounding in my chest.

Had she loved me?

No.

She was lying. She had to be.

“What was worse than losing you was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home.”

Her eyes pooled with more tears, and I wanted to break shit.

She was hurting. I was f**king miserable. And for what?

“Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault,” she continued and thinned out her lips in a hard line. “There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” In a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school.” Her eyes zoned in on me again, and her voice grew strong. “You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all of those things, and I loved you. But now…you’re a f**king drought. I thought that all the ass**les drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.”

My hands balled up, and I felt like I was crammed into a tight space, looking for a way out.

I barely registered the class clapping for her—no—cheering for her. Everyone thought her “performance” was great. I didn’t know what the hell to make of it.

She acted like she cared about me. Her words told me she remembered everything that used to be good between us. But the ending…it was like a goodbye.

She bowed, her hair falling around her with her dip, and she smiled a sad smile. Like she felt good but guilty that she felt good.

The distant cry of the school bell sounded, and I moved out of my seat, past her desk where she’d sat back down, and out of the room feeling like I was in a damn tunnel. People scurried around me, giving Tate congratulations on a job well done, and going about their business as if my world wasn’t crumbling.

Everything was white noise around me. The only sound that filled my ears was my own heartbeat as I walked in a daze into the hallway.

I pressed my forehead into the cool, tiled wall across from Penley’s classroom and closed my eyes.

What that hell had she just done to me in there?

I could barely breathe. I tried forcing air into my lungs.

No, no…

Fuck this.

She was lying. It was all an act.

All I’d wanted when I was fourteen was her. And she hadn’t been thinking about me when I was screaming for her. She didn’t miss me while I was at my father’s that summer. She didn’t want me then, and she didn’t want me now.

The day I got back, I’d needed her so goddamn much, and she hadn’t given me one f**king thought.

Goddammit, Tate. Don’t do this. Don’t f**k with my head.

Jesus, I didn’t know what I wanted to do anymore. I wanted to leave her alone. I wanted to forget her. But then I didn’t.

Maybe I just wanted to hold her and breathe her in until I could remember who I was.

But I couldn’t. I needed to hate Tate. I needed to hate her, because if I didn’t have a place to sink all of my energy, then I’d spin out again. My father would have me, and I wouldn’t have her to zone in on.

“See ya, Jared.”

I twisted around and blinked. Ben had called out to me, and she was with him.

She was looking at me like I was nothing. Like I wasn’t the focus of her life when she was the focus of everything in mine.

I stuck my fists into the pocket of my hoodie so they wouldn’t see me clenching them. It was kind of a natural thing for me to do now when I was in public. To keep my temper in check so that no one would notice what was boiling underneath.

My teeth ground together. She couldn’t hurt me.

But the air coming out of my nose was heating up as I watched them fade away down the hall.

She was leaving with him.

She’d just handed me my ass in that classroom.

She was surviving me.

And I clenched my fists tighter until the bones in my fingers ached.

“Give me a ride?”

My jaw instantly hardened as frustration threatened to boil over into rage.

I didn’t even have to turn around to know it was Piper.

She was the last thing on my mind these days, and I wished she’d take the hint and back off.

But then I remembered that she was good for one thing.

“Don’t talk.” I spun around and grabbed her hand without even looking at her and dragged her to the nearest bathroom. I needed to burn off frustration and Piper knew the score. She was like water. She assumed the shape of whatever container held her. She didn’t challenge me or make demands. She was just there for the taking.

It was after school. The place was empty as I barged into a stall, sat down on a seat and brought her down on top of me. She giggled I think, but to be honest, I didn’t f**king care who she was, where I was, or that anyone could walk in on us. I needed to dive deep. So deep into a cave that I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. That I couldn’t even see her blonde hair and blue eyes in my head.

Tate.

I ripped off Piper’s little pink cardigan and attacked her mouth. It didn’t feel good. It wasn’t meant to. This wasn’t about me getting off. It was about me getting even.