“Babe. Babe. Baby...” The last one comes out far more tenderly than I intended.

I can feel him grin against my neck. “Come home with me tonight. I have something for you.”

“I bet.”

“That’s my dirty girl,” he teases.

Then I hear them, the voices of two girls who aren’t trying to hide their disdain. “Oh my God, that cannot be who he’s with.”

“Her? Why her?” says the other. “Because I could so rock his world better than that.”

“Look at the size of her ass. Just no.”

The comments come at me like rapid gunfire, ripping through my skin and shredding my insides. I don’t think Drew hears them. He doesn’t tense or even flinch as he nips and licks the curve of my neck, his hands going to my ass to squeeze it. My ass that currently feels five sizes larger than usual. I jerk back, bracing my hand on his chest to keep him from following.

His eyes are hazy, confused, and he gives a slow blink as if to clear his thoughts. “Does it tickle?” He looks far too pleased at the prospect.

“Not here.” I refuse to look at our audience.

“What about here?” A crooked smile tilts his lush mouth as his warm palm skims up the back of my neck to cup the base of my head. His lips capture mine, soft, searching, and it’s easy to forget the world. He hums in the back of his throat, an irresistible sound that makes my knees weak. I can’t help but grip the front of his shirt, if only to hold on.

A muffled, evil giggle, breaks through my fog. “Slumming much, Baylor?”

“Maybe he lost a bet.”

I can’t stand it any longer. I tear free.

“No,” I say to Drew. “Not here.” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the two girls, now joined by a third, watching. And it’s humiliating.

“Anna,” Drew says, oblivious and confused, “what are you talking about?” He makes a furtive gesture to touch my cheek but pauses when I tense, he glances in the direction of my fleeting gaze. Dark color floods his cheeks and his brows snap together. “Are you kidding me?”

His voice carries across the quad and I stiffen further. My gaze darts around. A few people are slowing down. Watching. I can see it in their expressions: What’s Baylor doing with that girl?

“Keep your voice down,” I say. I hate scenes. Hate them. My face burns.

Drew looks like he wants to punch something. “Why? Because someone might know that we’re together?”

“We’re not—”

“Right,” he snaps, cutting me off. “We’re just f**king.” He’s really yelling now. “How could I forget?”

I want to die on the spot. More people have drifted to a stop. Drew sees me looking, and scowls over his shoulder at the girls watching with wide eyes. On a curse, he grabs my elbow. His grip is firm but doesn’t hurt as he marches me over to a stand of trees at the edge of the quad. It gives us a bit of privacy but we’re still exposed. I’m still exposed. I have to stop this. But I can’t seem to say a word. I don’t have to. Drew’s going at me again.

Hurt and anger color his words as he leans over me. “So I can put my dick in you. You can suck me off,”—I wince—“I can go down on you until you scream my name,” he adds with a sneer. “But the very idea that I might try to kiss you in public is so horrific to you that you actually f**king flinch away.”

My lip trembles and I bite it. God, I’ve hurt him. I’m hurting him now. I need to fix this, but my mind and body are shutting down. “I just…”

“Just what?” he presses. “Just don’t want people to know that you’re…” His mouth works, but no words come, and his jaw bunches, his eyes going bright with frustration.

“I’m what?” I can’t help but ask. A bitch? Yeah, I know that. I am the ass**le here. I know it well.

But he doesn’t say that. He says something much worse. “Mine!” he shouts. “That you are mine!”

The ground beneath me sways, tilts back. My head hits the trunk of the tree. His. I can’t even fathom a world in which I belong to someone. It’s never happened to me. No one has ever wanted me that completely. He must be mistaken. He’ll see that. Eventually he’ll see.

“We. I.” I take a breath. “We were never supposed to…”

“Yeah, I got that.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “You made it quite clear what we are and what we aren’t.” The corners of his eyes are creased. Pain there. Disappointment.

I’m not worth it. I want to shout it to him. I’m not worth his pain. He has the world in his palm. He doesn’t need the burden of me.

It’s his turn to look away, his fist going to his hips, his head ducking as he presses his lips together. A lock of hair drops over his forehead, and my fingers throb with the need to touch it.

His voice turns low and bitter. “I mean, God forbid that perfect, classy Anna Jones be seen with Drew the man-whore, right?” He shakes his head on a snort. “You don’t even know how f**king ironic that is.” His eyes catch mine then, and they are burning. “You haven’t got a f**king clue.”

I can’t stop myself then. “Drew. I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Says the girl who doesn’t have any feelings.”

I blink rapidly, wanting to cave in on myself. I don’t even know what I can say. I knew this would end sooner, rather than later. I wasn’t meant to be his. Even as I think the words, I know I’m making a huge mistake. I’m f**king up in the worst possible way. Helpless, I reach out. My fingers graze his forearm. And he explodes like I’ve sliced into him.

His arm flies up and he takes a huge step back.

“No!” He grips his hair at the back of his head as if he might pull it out. “I tried to give you space, give you time. I thought that you were just scared, shy—Fuck, I don’t know what, something.”

God, he knows me so well, I want to cry, but he’s not done. “But I was just f**king kidding myself. You just didn’t want me the way I wanted you.”

“No, Drew, it was—”

“Tell me I’m wrong then,” he insists, his voice raw. “Tell me that this whole hooking up bullshit hasn’t been about who I am.”

My throat hurts so badly that the words feel like broken glass. “I can’t.”

His expression goes blank, his gaze going right through me. And my heart plummets. I’ve done this. I’ve made him look at me like I’m a stranger.

“You know what? I don’t need this.” He’s backing away. “I don’t need any of this.” Even though I know what’s coming, it still plunges in like a knife when he finally says it. “I’m done. We’re done.”

And then he walks away.

24

I’M DEAD INSIDE. My emotions have locked down so tight, I hardly feel a thing, just the dense weight of my body as it moves me along. Like I’m pushing through thick, cold sludge. I don’t even know how I end up at the local coffee shop. I must have walked. Must have ordered; there’s an untouched latte sitting by my laptop. I’m writing…something. My midterm on Queen Elizabeth and the use of virginity as a means of political power.

Perfect. I don’t even want to look at what I’ve written. If it’s any reflection of my thoughts, I’ve said something along the lines of: remain a virgin. Do not engage. Run away while you can.

Not that refraining from sex would have protected me from Drew. He’d burrowed beneath my skin before he’d laid a finger on me.

People come and go, and a few glance at me, as if they know me. I don’t get it, but I also don’t really care.

I’m about to leave when Iris finds me. Her smile is the overly bright one she uses when she wants to cheer me up.

“I guess you had a rough day,” she says, as she sits in the chair opposite me.

“What are you talking about?” We both know, but I don’t know how she knows.

“People are tweeting that Battle Baylor had a ‘lover’s tiff with some foxy redhead’ on campus today.”

Foxy?

“People f**king tweet about that shit?” is all I can blurt out. Holy shit. They’re tweeting? Who the hell are these people? Don’t they have a life?

Iris looks at me as if I’m crazy. “Of course they tweet about it! He’s Drew Baylor, girl.”

“And how the hell did you even see these tweets?”

Iris shrugs. “There’s a hashtag. #BattleBaylor. I follow it.”

Of course he has his own hashtag.

“You follow it? Are you kidding me?”

“Me and a couple-thousand other people. I started to follow it when you hooked up with him.”

I groan and press the cold heels of my hands against my aching eyes.

“Don’t worry, sweetie.” Iris gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “At least there are no pictures. Not yet anyway. Though I haven’t checked on Instagram. We’ll do that later.”

“Oh, God.” I hadn’t even considered pictures. I want to die. Just die. I think I might if there is photographic evidence of Drew shouting at me. I officially hate f**king social media. I’m banning myself from it. For life.

“So.” Iris picks up my coffee, finds it cold and sets it back down with a frown. “What happened? You get tired of all that endless sex?”

The question slaps into me. I think I actually flinch. She’s grinning at me as if my heart hasn’t just been ripped out of my chest. Apparently, I’ve been too effective in my protest that Drew and I were nothing serious. Either that, or misery loves company. Whatever it is, I want her gone.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did you ask for exclusivity, and he gave you the brush off?” There’s a hard glint in her eyes. “Because I’ll kick his ass if he hurt my Anna Banana.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” I say with little heat, “the fact that you think I was part of some harem or that you think I would be begging.” I don’t add the laughable idea of Iris kicking Drew’s ass. That part is kind of sweet. Even if the twerp just called me desperate.

“I know,” says Iris. “You fell in love with him and blurted it out. And now he’s running scared.”

That is it. I’m done. I collect my laptop and shove it into my bag. “No,” I say in a falsely bright voice. “It was because he wanted to kiss me in public, and I treated him like he had the f**king plague. And when he said he wanted me to be his, I threw that back in his face too.” I stand and shoulder my bag as she gapes up at me. “Don’t you know? I’m incapable of falling in love and all that feeling shit.”

Night finds me alone, listening to Trent Reznor sing Closer, the volume so loud that poor Souixsie vibrates against my wall, in danger of falling to her doom.

At least I’m not wallowing on the floor, hugging a pillow like the poster child for broken hearts everywhere. No, I’m beating the shit out of the punching bag George set up for me on my twenty-first birthday. Because, as he said, I ought to be able to beat the shit out of something now and then.

But the only person I want to beat up now is myself. My knuckles hurt as I pummel the hard bag. It isn’t enough. I hit it again and again. Sweat pours down my face, burns my eyes. I don’t hear the door open or his footsteps as he crosses the room.

I don’t even notice him until he stands next to me. My breath saws in and out as I halt, resting my gloved hands on my hips.

George’s dark eyes take everything in. Sadness and sympathy dwell in those eyes of his, but he does his best. “Nine Inch Nails?” he asks. “Really, Banana?”

Poor Trent, so misunderstood in this song. It’s not about f**king. It’s about need, desperation for salvation. My eyes burn and I fight for a breath.

“Seemed appropriate,” I say. And then burst out crying.

George pulls me in and hugs me tight. A few seconds later, Iris comes into the room. The three of us huddle together, but they’re the ones holding me up.

MY FEET HIT the pavement with a loud thump, thump, thump that pounds right into my head. I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. I just run. My shins burn and my throat is raw, but that’s nothing compared to the yawning chasm spreading over my chest. Pain. It pushes out from my heart and through my bones, my veins, my skin like a thick, ugly sludge. Holy f**k, it hurts.

I pick up my pace, trying to outrun the pain. It only grows.

What have I done? What have I done?

The ugly scene replays itself. I remember my words, the way they flowed from my mouth as if I was outside of myself, unable to control them. But I didn’t stop, and she didn’t contradict me. She didn’t make one protest when I walked away.

Defeat has never sat well with me. But this isn’t a game. Games come and go. You win some, you lose some. There isn’t anyone else like Anna. I can’t simply go out and replace her. And I’ve just lost her.

My gut clenches hard. I’m going to be sick. I’ve pushed it too far. My knees hit the pavement a second before I throw up in the grass. It’s violent, but it doesn’t purge me. No, that sick feeling simply returns, filling me back up.

I sit on my ass, panting, sweat trickling into my eyes. Birds chirp. Someone’s starting a car. In the distance, a woman calls for her kid to come inside. I wipe my mouth and hug my knees to my chest.

I miss my parents. I miss them so badly that the hole Anna left in my chest when she ripped out my heart grows so large that I fear I might fall apart. I want to talk to them. Which is ironic, considering that when they were alive, I never discussed my love life with them. Were they still alive, I probably wouldn’t talk now either. But I would have gone home, had dinner at their house, and let their idle conversation wash over me until I felt some semblance of normalcy. Instead, I feel more alone than I’ve ever been.