Page 33 of Thief of my Heart

Maybe she felt like heaven.

Maybe she tasted like home.

Maybe this was one of the greatest moments of my sad, sorry life.

None of it mattered.

Because I was still right about one thing. She was better than this place. She was better than me.

The thought rang in my head like a bell, yanking me out of the kiss. I broke away, gasping. Her own heavy breathing blew white clouds through the night air.

“Whoa,” she whispered, then reached for me again.

But this time, I parried away her hands.

“No,” I said. “It’s time for you to go home.”

Her mouth dropped open again. Her full lips were swollen from my antics. I had to force myself not to imagine what they would look like wrapped around my cock.

I failed completely.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

But my mind was made up.

“I’m going back to the party,” I said. “We’re done here.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she finally spoke. “You—after that—you actually think?—”

“I told you, you’re better than this,” I interrupted her stammering. “I lost control there for a second, but it won’t happen again.”

Never mind that I still had a hard-on the size of Manhattan. My mind was made up. Especially when it came to her.

“Fine,” she spat. “But I will go back in. Find someone else to dance with, and maybe?—”

“Don’t bother,” I cut her off as I pulled my wallet out of my pocket.

I extracted one of my last two twenties and pressed it into her palm, ignoring the way she stared at it like I’d just passed her a packet full of magic beans or some shit. Then she looked back at me, her green eyes wet with something new.

Something like loss. Maybe a little sadness. Betrayal.

All of them painful as fuck.

But I didn’t care. This was for the best.

“Take this, and get a cab home,” I ordered. “And don’t come to any of these parties no more. You won’t be welcome. I’ll make sure everyone knows that.”

TEN

IN WHICH A HUNGOVER JULIET IS THE SUN

Lea

“But he can’t tell you what to do!”

I stared at the notebook containing every essay I’d written since September, then finally tossed my pencil down on the thin pages. “Katie, I’m trying to work. There are two bit scholarship applications due next week. The only way we’ll be able to afford for me to go to Fordham is with that money.”

It was a losing battle, but I was still trying to focus on my future instead of my past. As in the night before, when Michael Scarrone had kissed my ever-loving lights out before tossing me a twenty and sending me home. Similarly, I was also trying to get rid of the worst headache I’d ever had and trying to convince Nonna I’d lost my breakfast from cramps, not the world’s worst hangover.

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