Page 1 of Burn With Me

PROLOGUE: RORI

It’sempty.The hallway. The living room. My fucking bedroom. The whole house is empty. I’m standing in the center of it all, holding what is now apparently a useless set of keys and my cell phone, when the front door bangs open, followed by the telltale sound of my mother’s heels clicking across the wood floor. Something insidious awakens in my gut. A curdling sense of dread that only seems to revive when she returns from wherever the hell she’s been for the last several months.

“Oh good, you’re here,” she says as she breezes past me.

Where the fuck could she be going?is my immediate first thought. She looks like she’s dressed for a goddamn gala in a long black tank dress with a slit almost all the way up her thigh. The only things making it seem even remotely casual are the big floppy black hat, the shades, and the gray shawl over her shoulders. A shawl … in the May heat. But I know it’s because she’s afraid of getting sunburned; tanning ages a person, and even in her early forties, she looks closer to a twenty-five-year-old than someone who has an eighteen-year-old daughter.

“Hurry up and double-check to make sure the movers didn’t leave anything behind,” she calls over her shoulder as she reaches the kitchen, and I find myself drifting after her, needing answers.‘What the fuck?’seems to be more than a question I keep asking myself; it’s my new motto.

“The movers?” I repeat. “Why did we have movers? Where’s our stuff? Are we going somewhere?”

My mother pulls down her shades, tossing them to the granite countertop as she reaches into the fridge and pulls out a bottled water. Over her shoulder, I note that a single case of it is all that’s left.Am I in the Twilight Zone or something?When I left for the last day of my senior year this morning, everything had seemed normal—and by normal, I mean my mother hadn’t been home in weeks, and I’d received no phone call or messages saying when she’d be coming back. To us,thatwas normal.

Thisis not.

“Yes, we’re going somewhere,” my mother says. Ignoring my first two questions, she sets her bottled water on the counter and then thrusts her left hand in my face. It takes me a moment to realize that she’s trying to shove the giant diamond sitting on her ring finger toward my eyes as if I could miss the damn thing, especially now that it’s front and center to my vision.

“What did you do?” The words come from my throat like glass shards being pulled from a wound. Dizziness assails me. My stomach sinks, and then, as if she doesn’t hear the horror in my voice, she says the words I’ve always come to hate.

“I got married!”

This is not happening.My mother pulls her hand back, the sound of her heels clicking across the floor as she moves away.

“Now, hurry up and check the house. We’re flying out to California in a few hours.”

“California?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away, but one thing I do know is that her voice doesn’t get any quieter—it remains the same steady volume, which must mean that I’m following behind her even though I can no longer feel my legs. “Why are you going to California?”

I know why I would—I’msupposedto go to California. In two months, to be precise. Because in two months, I’ll be joining my brother at Hazelwood University, one of the premiere colleges in the world, exclusive to the upper echelon. But she was never supposed to go. She was supposed to stay here.

My mother’s face comes into view again and I blink, catching sight of the open front door, and realize we’re at the entrance again. She laughs and reaches forward, tucking a flyaway hair behind my ear. It’s one of her rare maternal quirks. “Oh, sweetie,” she says, “because we’re moving there. Damien’s businesses are based there—he’s so amazing, oh! I just can’t wait for you to meet him. And isn’t it great that he’s based in California? You and I will be able to spend more time together even though you’ll be going to college. It’ll be like nothing has changed.”

With that, she pats my cheek, turns around, and disappears out the front door again, like she didn’t just barge back into my life like a whirlwind tornado and wreck all of my carefully laid plans. Plans that I’ve had in place for months—months that she’s been MIA, off doing whatever it is she does when she gets a bug up her ass and wants to go travel and play tourist or meet up with a friend in Tokyo. She’s never given a fuck that she has two kids. The second she deemed us old enough to no longer need nannies, we’ve been on our own, and for the last three years—ever since my brother went off to college, it’s just been me.

But this … this is a game changer. I know how she is. Every time she does this—every single fucking time she gets married—she suddenly transforms into this big family-minded woman who wants nothing more than to shove her latest conquest down my throat.

After the handsy producer who thought fifteen-year-old stepdaughters were fair game, my brother put his foot down. He beat him to a pulp and has refused to meet another since. This is my turn. This isnothappening, and if I have to dredge up the past and remind her why, I will.

1

ISAAC

Alcohol swims through my veins, wreaking havoc wherever it goes. Its destructiveness fogs over my mind. And for the first time in forever, it’s enough to numb the pain—though just barely.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Paris asks, arching his brow, the light glinting off his piercing with the movement. It’s not like him to be so fucking prudish at a party. Why he’s gotta choose tonight of all nights to be responsible is beyond me.

I don’t even bother with a response. Instead, I just let the bottle in my hand go flying in the direction of his head. The responding inhale of breath and the shattering of glass against the backyard patio a split second later are the first part of my reward.

The second part is the dark curse that spits from his lips. “Are you fucking serious?” I hear him say. “I know you’re in a shit mood, but you’re lucky I don’t knock your dumb ass out for that.”

Shit mood is putting it lightly. Rather than getting drunk off my ass and taking my fury out on my best friend, I’d rather find my shitstain of a father and wrap my hands around his neck until he’s long gone from this godforsaken world.

The sound of footsteps on the stone walkway of the garden estate echoes up the hedges into the secret alcove, and a looming dark figure appears. “What is he doing now?” Shepherd's deep baritone reaches my ears, but his question makes me snort.

My head rolls back on my shoulders, and I realize that I’ve closed my eyes, so I open them and look up into Paris’ angry blue gaze as he bends over the top of my chair, looking ready to follow through on his threat.

“He’s being a fucking dick,” Paris snaps, answering the question and glaring me down all in the same instant.

Another snort escapes my lips. “What?” I ask, the image of him wavering in my vision. “You want me to say ‘I’m sorry?’” I shake my head. Sober me might have. Drunk me, however? Drunk me is a fucking asshole that just wants to lob another fucking bottle at someone’s head.

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