Chapter One
Allie
I walked through the gate and grimaced when I saw Mr. Sneed waiting on me.
I was late, and I was one hundred percent sure that he noticed. Not only was I late, but I also hadn’t shown up for the last week and a half. According to my mother, he wasn’t very happy about it, but at this point, I really didn’t have the energy to care.
“It’s nice to see you show up.” Mr. Sneed crossed his arms where he leaned against the porch. It looked like Carson had done quite a bit of work while I wasn’t here.
I shrugged and looked around before tucking my hair behind my ear. “I wasn’t feeling very good.”
“Your friend said it was his fault.” He nodded over his shoulder, and I knew that he was referring to Carson. He was here, and he was the absolute last person I wanted to see. “He’s been working double to make up for you not being here.”
“What a hero,” I answered sarcastically, shocking Mr. Sneed.
“Are you two fighting?” He cocked his head to the side.
“Nope.” I looked around the yard and tried to find something to do that would keep me as far away from Carson as possible. “We’re exactly how we’ve always been.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. Everything I thought I had become with Carson was nothing but a lie. It was nothing but a damn game.
What we were was exactly what he had made us.
Enemies.
We had been that for a long time, but I had always hoped... I had wished things were different.
All that naivety was gone now.
I knew that we would never be anything more than exactly what we were, and I shouldn’t have been angry about it.
But I was.
I was beyond angry and hurt, and I hated that I had given him the opportunity to make me either of those things. Carson was only able to hurt me because I cared about him when I shouldn’t have. I cared about him, and I was even stupid enough to think that I might have loved him.
That seemed like nothing but a joke now.
“Okay.” Mr. Sneed stood and his keys jangled in his hand. “I’m going to leave you two to it then. Carson’s working on scraping off the peeling paint in the dining room now. He’ll show you what he’s been up to.”
Awesome.
I nodded my head and climbed the old stairs that led into the house. I could do this. I kept telling myself that over and over. I was strong enough to face him. I was more than capable of pretending like I was completely and utterly unaffected by him.
Even though I had barely left my bed over the past week.
I could hear him working as soon as I stepped through the door, and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I pushed the door closed behind me. Josie and Frankie had offered to take over my community service duties for the rest of my time with Carson, but it didn’t work that way.
Not only would Mr. Sneed not allow it, but there was no way I would let them do all this work for something I did.
Because at the end of the day, I was the one who agreed to sneak into this property with Carson, and I was the one who had let him touch me so inappropriately in this house. I was the one who had trusted him even though he had proven to me time and again that he wasn’t worthy of it.
He was squatted down and running a paint scraper over the wall as I walked in. He was dripping with sweat, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of old jeans and tennis shoes. His discarded shirt was laying on the dirty floor with his bottle of water, and I wished he would put it back on.
Jerk or not, he was still one of the most attractive guys I had ever seen.
“Where do I need to start?”
He jumped, the sound of my voice clearly scaring him, and I found myself grinning when he almost landed on his ass.
“Allie,” he said my name like it meant something to him, like I meant something to him, but I knew that was just another one of his games. Carson was the master of fucking with my head, and that was what he did every single time he called me and text me and showed up at my house since the moment I left our camping trip.
He fucked with my head.
But I no longer trusted anything about him or anything he said or did.
“It looks like you’ve already finished the living room.” I looked over my shoulder to avoid looking at him and his sad eyes. “I can start in the hallway.”
He stepped toward me and reached out his hand before thinking better of it and dropping it to his side. “Can we talk?”
“About what?” I sounded so disinterested, and I knew that he heard it too.
“About us.”
I laughed and tucked my hands in my back pockets. “There is no us, Carson. Do you have an extra paint scraper, or do I need to go get one from Mr. Sneed?”
He clenched his jaw and watched me, and I knew that he wanted to argue. It wasn’t an argument that he would win. “I have an extra.”
He bent down to scoop up the tool, then handed it out to me. I grabbed it, careful not to touch him, but he refused to let go.
“Drop it, Carson,” I growled at him.
“I don’t want to.” I knew he wasn’t talking about the tool, but I didn’t care what he wanted. I used to care, I cared more than anything, but not anymore.
“It doesn’t matter what you want.” I shrugged and jerked the tool from his hand. “Or is this about more than me and you?” I looked around the room dramatically. “If you need me to do something for you to win a bet, please let me know so we don’t have to draw this out.”
“You know this isn’t about any stupid bet.”
“I don’t know anything.” I could feel my heartbeat rising, and I was so damn angry with him. “And I cannot trust a word you say. Should I call Eli?”
“Don’t.” He shook his head, and there was so much anger hidden in his eyes. But he had no right to be angry. He didn’t have the right to feel anything.
“Don’t what?” I laughed and walked away from him. “I can do whatever I want, Carson. It’s not up to you.”
“Not with him.”
I spun around to find him following me, and I waved my hand in his direction, pointing the paint scraper right at him. “You don’t get a say in whether or not I do anything with him. If I wanted to, I would leave here right now and go fuck him.”
“I will kill him.”
“For what?” I held my hands out as I tried to grasp exactly what the heck was going through his head. “Doing the exact same thing you did? You took my virginity. You won the bet. What else could you possibly want?”
“I know that I fucked up.” He ran his hand over his sweaty hair. “But I am not him. I did what I did to keep him away from you. I tried to tell you what they had planned but you didn’t listen. I knew the only way to get you to stay away from him was to get you to spend time with me. I didn’t think...”
“You didn’t think.” I held on to the tool so tightly that my knuckles turned white. I wasn’t ready to face him. I wasn’t ready to have this conversation about what I thought we were and what we actually became. “You aren’t some hero, Carson. You hurt me because you wanted to. You hurt me because you have some fucked-up grudge against me because of your own parents.”