“‘Never have I ever’ is always a good one,” Addison says, and it feels like I’m sixteen again, playing this with some friends and having to lie through my teeth about everything I haven’t done that I definitely had done with Wild at the time. She holds up her hand just as we all follow suit. I briefly meet Wild’s eyes, and I can see the amusement in them with a hint of “Are your friends for real?”

  “It’s messy and always one to get someone in trouble, but fuck it, I’m in,” Dex says.

  “Okay, neverrrrr,” she says, exaggerating the end of the word, “had a threesome.”

  Bryce’s head shoots up immediately and looks around the table like he’s waiting to learn something about his friends that he didn’t know before, lowering his head back to his phone, while still keeping his hand up.

  I know that he hasn’t, but it doesn’t stop me from glancing over at Wild’s hand, and when I meet his eyes, he’s giving me a look of derision. “Oh yeah, definitely,” he murmurs sarcastically but too low for anyone else to hear.

  When no one puts a finger down, Addison rolls her eyes. “You guys are boring.”

  “Coming from the person who said they hadn’t done it in the first place,” Jase says before waving her off. “Fine, never have I ever hooked up with one of our professors.”

  Dex snorts. “We had coffee and went over my term paper. I’d hardly call that hooking up.”

  Bryce looks up again and looks at Dex. “You made out with him, and then you mysteriously didn’t have to take the final.”

  “Jealous?” Dex says before taking a shot.

  “That you didn’t have to take the final? Yes? That shit was so hard,” Addie chimes in.

  “Who did you make out with?” I ask, kind of surprised this has never come up before.

  “Professor Thompson,” Dex responds.

  My mouth drops open in shock. “Our microeconomics teacher? He’s like fifty.” And not in a hot, older man way.

  “Forty-seven, actually, and so? I have a three point nine GPA, thank you very much, and I’d like to keep it that way.” There’s a round of chuckles from the table before he continues, “But fine, if we’re calling that hooking up,” he says with an eye roll and puts a finger down. “You got me.”

  We go through a few more before it makes it to Wild, who looks at me before panning his eyes around the circle. I’m not sure what he’s going to say, but I don’t think he’s planning to out us now. “Never have I ever slept with more than one person.”

  “At a time? Isn’t that the same as the threesome one?” Jase interjects.

  “No. I mean ever. I’ve only slept with one person, ever,” Wild emphasizes.

  Tingles shoot through me, and I try not to react to his emphasis on “ever.” It wasn’t the first time he’s used this one. Of course, in high school, it was a little more common, but it still elicited a bit of shock, especially among the guys on his football team. But amid people in their early twenties, it is a bit more… baffling based on how the three of them are staring at him as if they’re in the presence of some mythical creature.

  “Did I miss something? Are you marr—is he married?” Addie asks me.

  “Not yet,” Wild answers before I can respond, which does nothing but cue more butterflies.

  “High school girlfriend?” Addie presses.

  “You could say that.” He shrugs without giving any more information.

  “So are you guys still together?”

  “It’s been complicated, but yes. I always hoped I’d find my way back to her, and it looks like it’s headed in that direction.” God, I want to get this man naked, like now.

  “Oh,” Addie responds plainly. “I… wow…” She looks down at her drink before looking up at him. “That’s really great, and you just don’t see or hear that often. You’re older than us, too, right?”

  “By a year.” He nods.

  “Well, good for you. Good for her,” Addison says before a pout forms on her face. My thumbnail makes its way into my mouth, a new habit brought on because I can’t twirl my hair around my finger as easily anymore with the shorter length.

  “Your turn,” Wild says, and when I look up, I notice them all looking at me. I didn’t hate this game, but coming up with more than one of these could be a pain. Not that I had done a whole lot in the first place.

  “Okay.” I pick up my drink, letting it hover underneath my lips before I start. “Never have I ever…” I twist my mouth, trying to come up with one when Jase speaks up from across the table.

  “Gone on a date with me.” A smirk pulls at his lips before breaking into a smile to reveal his teeth. They weren’t perfect, but they were still very straight, almost like he had braces as a child, but maybe didn’t wear his retainers after he got them off, causing them to shift.

  Fuck.

  Wild doesn’t react, but I can already feel the tension flowing out of me. Addie is looking at me with a cheeky grin, her eyes darting back and forth between us with what seems like absolute glee. Bryce chokes slightly on his drink before letting out a low “nice,” and I can see Dex wince before taking a sip of his drink and looking away from the table as if he doesn’t want to be there.

  The moments tick by, and I know I have to say something, and when words fail me, I say the only thing I can think of. “What?”

  “A date… You know with me. Something you haven’t done.” He leans forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Though we could change that.”

  “You’re really putting her on the spot in front of all your friends… and me?” Wild snorts. “That’s a choice.”

  Jase’s eyes flash to Wild, annoyed and maybe even a little mad. “Dude, it was a joke.”

  “Really? Because you seemed pretty serious. Maybe a joke now since she still hasn’t answered, and it doesn’t seem like she wants to.”

  Fuck, again.

  “Sebastian,” I warn quietly.

  His eyes turn to mine. “I mean, do you? By all means, don’t let me stop you if you’re interested. Just don’t know that I’ve never asked anyone out with an audience,” he says, and I know he’s only acting like a smug asshole for Jase’s sake, but still, I wish he’d stop before this escalates.

  “Stop it,” I tell him, and when our eyes lock, we are able to have a split-second conversation that only happens when you’ve known someone forever.

  Please don’t do this. You have no reason to be jealous.

  I’m not jealous. That was lame as fuck, and you know it. I’d call out anyone for that.

  Be nice.

  No.

  “You got a problem with me or something?” Jase interrupts our moment, and when we turn to him, Jase is looking at Wild.

  “Nope.” He shrugs.

  “Chill.” Dex interrupts before Jase can reply. “No one has an issue. I think everyone’s just had a couple of drinks, and I think Sebastian was just fucking around. Maybe we should just be done with the game.”

  “I thought we were having fun.” Addison pouts before she stands up. “I’ll go order us another round. Same drinks?”

  “I’ll go with you.” Bryce stands as well, probably wanting to get away from the awkward tension building at the table. They’re gone within a second.

  Jase doesn’t say anything, and I struggle to meet his gaze when I realize that I’m not handling this right at all. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He asked out a woman whom he thought was single, and while I’ve never sent him any signals, I’ve also never explicitly said I wasn’t available. He thinks Sebastian is just my stepbrother, and he shot his shot in a fun, lighthearted way. He’s not in the wrong just because no man on this planet stood a chance with me. So I do the one thing I know will piss off the man next to me even though I know it’s time to shut all of this down before it gets worse.

  “Jase…” I tuck a hair behind my ear and stand. “Can I talk to you for a sec?” He’s up instantly, and when I look at Wild in hopes he’s not totally seething, I point at my bag. “Can you watch my purse?”

  He doesn’t seem angry, but maybe a little annoyed, and I try my best to tell him with my eyes that he has nothing to worry about.

  Jase and I move toward the other side of the room, still within plain view of the table.

  “Your stepbrother is a little weird about you, huh?” he says before I can even open my mouth. “Almost like… he’s into you or something,” he continues before downing the rest of his drink, and only then do I comprehend that he may be drunker than I realized.

  “Jase…”

  “I mean, that was weird, right? His calling me out? Like he had a problem with me asking you out.”

  “Sebastian is protective. He always has been.” Well, there’s an understatement.

  “You don’t think it’s strange? Are you okay with him just… inserting himself into your life? Being that intense? I’d never do that to my sister.”

  “Jase…” I repeat before swallowing. “I can’t go out with you. I’m sorry if I’ve led you on. I don’t think I’ve given you any signals, but if I have, I’m sorry. And maybe in another timeline, you’d be the perfect guy for me, but I’ve been in a very serious relationship my entire life and…” I shrug. “He’s it for me.”

  “Oh… I didn’t…” He lets out a breath. “Shit, I didn’t know.” He rubs a hand behind his neck and shakes his head. “You never have anyone coming to visit…” He starts, then abruptly stops, his hazel eyes looking down and then back up at me like he’s confused. He slowly turns his head toward the table. Sebastian, surprisingly, isn’t staring at us as he seems to be engrossed in what looks like a pretty intense conversation with Dex. Probably regarding the same thing Jase is moments away from uncovering.

  When he turns back to me, his brows are pulled together, and his eyes are narrowed. “You’re not trying to tell me—”

  I look down, not because I’m ashamed of what I’m about to say but because I’m trying to find the words. “I’ve loved him since I was four years old. He was there with me the day my dad was killed and—”

  “That’s not love. That's a trauma bond and probably intense codependency.” He interrupts, and I internally roll my eyes at the same things I’ve been hearing my whole life.

  I cross my arms over my chest, discomfort and irritation blossoming there. “Two things can be true at once.” I wasn’t in denial that Wild and I were a little—okay, a lot—codependent and trauma-bonded, but I refused to believe that love wasn’t capable of blossoming out of those things.

  “He’s your stepbrother, but you were raised as actual siblings… In the same house. That is not normal. I guess you can’t really say he groomed you since you’re so close in age… but… he preyed on your weakness. Probably used your vulnerability over losing your dad—”

  I put a hand up, not wanting to give him any more time for this bullshit psychoanalysis. “You don’t know shit about my life or what we’ve gone through. You have no idea who initiated what or when or what it was like growing up for us.”

  “Have you even tried something else? He said he’s never slept with anyone else, so you.” He scoffs. “I’m guessing it’s the same for you as well?”

  “Not your business.”

  “The fuck? You just made it my business.”

  “You asked me out, and I thought you deserved the courtesy to know why the answer was no. My mistake, you actually don’t deserve shit,” I snap, because I am officially over this conversation.

  “Whatever. You guys are fuckin’ weird. This is not normal or healthy, and the forbidden shit is fun now, but what about when you guys get older, and the novelty of it all wears off? You’ll have wasted your whole life chasing the high of this, and when it fizzles out, you’ll have nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, who made you the expert on this or even relationships in general? You have no idea what our relationship is like.”

  “Yeah, and quite frankly, I don’t want to. Good luck, Halle,” he says before walking away without another word. Wild’s in front of me no more than a second later, his hands framing my face and forcing it upward to look at him. “You have five seconds to tell me what he said to you to put that look on your face before I break his jaw.”

  “Wild…”

  “Three,” he says to let me know he’s counting.

  “Just what you’d expect. He also uses the word ‘weird’ a lot. He’s in desperate need of a thesaurus.” I expected a chuckle, but Wild’s eyes are still hard and intense. I’m not convinced he won’t go after Jase to show him what he does to anyone that fucks with me. “What if no one gets it? What if we’re destined to live this life of having to explain that this isn’t just about a hot forbidden relationship, but we’re more than that? What if it bleeds into our kids’ lives one day?”

  “Okay, okay. Come back from the ledge, please? By the time we have kids who are old enough to understand, I’m going to assume that any and all discourse will have settled down. So let’s cross that bridge in ten to twelve years, yeah?” He sweeps the hair back out of my face before pressing a light kiss on my forehead and then the tip of my nose.

  I nod, trying not to fixate on the vision of our young daughter coming home with tears in her eyes because one of her classmates said their parents told them we were gross or something. “You think this is what Sara was trying to protect us from all along? Why she separated us for that summer?” I grimace, remembering those three months between my junior and senior years when Sara sent Wild to live with her sister, almost an hour away.

  That was the summer everything changed between Sara and me. I was so angry, and I never really let it go. It was the summer before he left for college, and Sara wanted to create “distance” between us even though he would be gone for months at a time while attending the University of North Carolina. She claimed she didn’t like us having that much access to each other and thought that space would cause things to fizzle out.

  A part of me believed she didn’t think things were serious between us, and having me out of the picture would cause Wild to move on to another girl, subsequently breaking us up. She never outright said she was vying for me to experience my first heartbreak, but I always suspected it.

  Regardless of her intent, she was very wrong.

  If anything, the space that summer brought us closer together. We talked on the phone constantly, we texted, we sent letters. Romantic letters. Nasty, filthy letters about what we wanted to do to each other the second we were reunited. Letters that said all of the things we may not have been comfortable saying in person. I was only seventeen, just beginning to conceptualize what my life could look like, and I outlined it in countless letters to him that summer.

  Our wedding day. Marriage. Kids. Our jobs. Where could we live? Where we’d grow old together.

  When I look back, it’s easy to say these were all the things kids said in their late teens when they were deep into their first love. But it’s been almost nine years, and I still think about the wedding we planned–on a beach at sunset, and our kids' names–Noah for a boy and Morgan for a girl. While the vision of where we’d live has changed many times, the promise of sharing a home with Wild has always been there.

  “Baby, we should go. Jase is probably going to tell your friends, but…” he looks back toward the table before looking back at me. “Seems like you have a decent friend in Dex.”

  Remembering that they were alone while Jase and I were talking, I asked him, “What did you guys talk about?”

  “Nothing more than you’d expect. He asked how it started and what it’s been like these past ten years. What the future looks like.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I love you and… you’ve been my whole world since you entered it.”

  Halle: 17 Years Old

  Sebastian: 18 Years Old

  “You can’t do this!” Saint says, while tears stream down her sweet face. Her hair was still falling out of the ponytail, and the purple on her neck brought out by my teeth and tongue was darkening by the second, which was doing nothing to help our case. I rub a hand over my eyes, disappointed that I’d gotten so carried away.

  I’d half expected Saint to be yelling, but I think she’s still feeling the slight embarrassment over my mother having caught us, again, in my bedroom. She wasn’t supposed to be home for a few hours, and I thought we’d have more time. I’d blown off practice to be alone with Halle, and… somehow my mom figured it out and came home while we were nowhere near finished with each other. So now, we’re enduring our hundredth lecture about how “inappropriate” our relationship was, how things were out of hand, and that we needed to stop. Usually, I’d sit and endure it, letting it go in one ear and out the other, knowing that Saint and I will have to be sneakier next time.

  But this time was different.

  “Watch me,” my mother snaps. My mother rarely yelled, even in situations like these. She would typically explain her disappointment sternly, but she seldom raised her voice. But this time, she’s practically been screaming since she opened the door to my bedroom. “I am tired of it! You guys lie to me all the time. You are constantly sneaking around and… not only is this relationship not healthy, but it’s also not safe! Abandoned parking lots late at night? Parking out in the woods somewhere? Forget someone seeing you… What if something happens to you?”

  “We’re fine! This town is safe!” Halle argues. And while I do agree it’s a safe town, I think Halle has been lured into a false sense of security because she knows I’d never let anything happen to her.

  “I’m not going to Aunt Emily’s.” I interrupt, as I look up at my mother from my spot on the couch. My Aunt Emily, my mom’s sister, lives over an hour from here, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be that far away from Saint for three months.

  “You don’t have a choice, so I suggest you start packing.” My mother lifts her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose, and I can see the stress on her face. I know we didn’t make things easier for her, but I refused to be anywhere without Saint.

  “I’m eighteen. You can’t make me go.” I’ll sleep outside in my car if I have to.