“This is bullshit!” he spat out. “No, you’re not.”

I needed to find another tactic. Fast.

“Listen, you can’t do this, okay? We can be friendly,” I lied, because I knew by that point that we couldn’t. “But you can’t throw me into pools in the middle of the fall—first of all, I really am sick, and even if I wasn’t prone to pneumonia, it’s not that fun to be thrown into icy water anyway—and Millie. It’s not fair to her. You can’t treat her sister like that. Like…like…”

“Like what?” he challenged, his pupils flaring.

Like you want me.

Does he?

My hormones were rebelling. My morals charred me from the inside. Every hair on my body stood on end. His hand snaked between us and cupped one of my cheeks, tilting my face upwards, forcing me to look at him. “Like. Fucking. What. Rosie?”

There was something in his eyes. An intensity I’d never seen before. It was unsettling, because that something told me he had no idea what he was doing. He just knew it was wrong. And like me, he was confused, hurt, and angry.

“Like you want me,” I echoed my thoughts quietly.

“But I do,” he supplied. “Maybe it’s time for some musical chairs. Your sister doesn’t care for me too much, Baby LeBlanc.”

He didn’t care too much for her either. He cared about her. Which made him even more alluring, because our goal was mutual—protecting the person I fiercely loved.

But at the same time, bitterness ate away at me every time I watched the complete and utter waste that was their relationship. When I witnessed how her eyes drifted to Vicious when he was around. How Dean and I looked at each other from across the room. I wanted to grab my sister by the shoulders and shake her. Tell her to pull her shit together and go with the guy who made her heart swell. But I was in no position to ask her for anything, considering my parents ripped our family from our home in Fairfax, Virginia, and moved us all the way to California so I could have better health care. Since I had friends and a social life and she had nothing—precisely because of that decision. So, I let her have them both. Dean’s body and Vicious’s heart.

“If you don’t let me go,” my teeth chattered, and not just for impact, “I will get a lung infection. Dean.” His name was a warning, and this time he let me push him with my palms, swimming away from me and watching me climb to the edge of the pool, my heavy, soaked clothes pulling me down.

I didn’t turn around to look at him. Was too afraid he’d see my eyes, doped on euphoria, tainted by lust. And my face, rosy in contrast to the rest of my quivering, blue self.

I saw him in my periphery swimming to the edge, bracing his forearms on the wet tiles, his chin propped on his balled hands.

“This shit is toxic. We need to stop it before it goes any further,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

“Any further than what?” I stripped out of my hoodie and tossed the heavy fabric onto a nearby sun lounger. “Than kissing and dry-humping my sister to oblivion and back while hitting on me?” My voice was trembling.

“Rosie,” he said. A high-pitched laugh escaped me. Rosie, my ass. He was with my sister. True, I pushed him to be with her, but it didn’t make me any less bitter. “Don’t twist this against me. You told me to be with her. You fucking told me to touch her, too. What do you want me to do? Ignore her ass?”

I hated that he had a point, and I hated that something so logical made me feel so illogical.

“This,” I pointed between us from where I was standing on the edge of the pool, “is not going to happen. You’re dating Emilia, Dean. We can’t ever be together.”

“Says who?” he challenged.

“Says me. And society. And logic. And culture. And damn, every love film and romance book I’ve ever consumed.”

“Mmm.” A playful grin found his luscious lips again. “That can’t be right.”

“It is,” I fired. “Juliet didn’t have an older sister named Julie that Romeo sampled before he decided she was the one.”

“Juliet never went head-to-head with her fucking feelings,” he yelled, banging his fist on the tiles. “Since when are you such a pussy?” Dean jumped out of the pool so fast, it looked like an optical illusion. He got in my face, snarling. “Since when do you give a damn about what people think? I pegged you all wrong. If you walk away from this, I’m going to give this thing with Millie a shot.”

It sounded like a threat.

“What have you been doing all along?” I snorted. It wasn’t his fault. By the time he noticed me, she wanted to date him, and he couldn’t back down. Besides, he made her life so much better. Gone were the days where her locker was stuffed with garbage and people muttered ‘white trash’ when she passed in the hallway.