Page 8 of Did They Break You

There’s no fucking way.

CHAPTER

TWO

REMI

When I getout of the student services building, I pull my phone from my hoodie pocket, and I ignore the emails indicated with red numbers. My stomach squeezes looking at them and I think about the most recent one I read.

A variation of something I’ve been told by anonymous keyboard warriors many times.

Ever feel like a cunt for ruining their lives?

I check my text messages, glancing around as I do, checking foranyone.

There are a few people strolling around, but the campus is relatively dead. Typical for Thursday night before classes start on Monday. Students are either moving in, or out partying to get ready for the return to school. When I see that Sloane has texted me, I just roll my eyes at her message.

Sloane <3

Come to Hyde Park with me tomorrow night.

It’s not the first time she’s tried to get me out of our dorm.

And every time, I said the same thing and encouraged her to go without me. My fingers fly over the keyboard, about to answer in the same way I did each time before.

But then someone shoulder checks me, and I drop my phone, my thumb poised over theNkey.

My phone lands on the screen on the sidewalk, but I barely spare it a glance before I look up, my hands clenched into fists, brows pulled together. Like, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I was on the correct side of the damn sidewalk, and it’s big enough for me and a herd of fucking elephants so?—

No.

Fuck no.

That one word I was going to text to Sloane is blaring over and over and over in my head.

My mouth goes dry, and my brain is screaming at me to turn and run. But those screams are locked inside my head, not traveling to my nervous system, because I can’t move.

My pulse is racing, fear like acid in my mouth.

Two of them.

“Happy to see me?” Cortland asks, his voice soft and low, a smile on his face. His lip ring, off to the side of his bottom lip, glints in the waning sun at my back. I remember how it felt against my face. My mouth. My chest.

I remember all of it.

Those memories jolt my mind into functioning again, and I take a step back. But before I can take another one, his hand darts out, his fingers wrapping around my wrist and yanking me toward him, to his chest.

Storm—with dark hair, blue eyes, and a nose ring—steps behind me, trapping me.

My body is tense as my free hand flies up on instinct and my palm is pressed against Cortland’s white T. His skin is hot, evenfrom beneath his shirt, his muscles coiled tight, as if being this close to me does horrible things to him, too.

But only one of us is shaking.

I swallow, one arm forced between us by his hand on my wrist, the other pressing against his chest.

“You wanna run, Remi?” Storm asks, his words low. He’s fucking scary. He was always scary, never spoke much in high school. Having him at my back, Cortland in front of me, it reminds too much of that night.

I need him off.

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