He chuckled dryly. “It can get pretty wild.”

“Yeah?” I tried to sound casual, but the image of him in some groupie orgy pierced my chest, making my blood run hot.

“Jared and Leo are the party animals,” he explained. “Rome’s usually got someone temporary, like Alyssa.”

“And…you?”

“Me? Well, I’ve been using my hand an awful lot lately.”

I froze, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I have nobody.”

I couldn’t help roll my eyes. “You don’t need to pretend, Carter. You’re the one the girls go crazy about. I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of them. A guy like you doesn’t use his hand.”

“If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. I’m not lying. I don’t have a reason to lie, Leah. I’m wary of the girls, and I tend to keep to myself. Plus I’m fucking shattered after a concert.”

I mulled his words over in thought. “But…you’ve always been like that, Carter. You just said yourself last night that girls like Molly are fun and –”

“Yeah, they’re fun. My point about Molly was that we had a fling, and that’s usually what it is for me. When I get lonely, I like to have a girl, someone I’m familiar with. I don’t take strangers to bed, though.”

“Never?”

“Nope. Not since Pomposa, but even then I kind of knew her.”

I burst out laughing. “Stupid Pomposa.”

His mouth came to my ear, and my body seized when his hot breaths hit the side of my face. “You can call her stupid all you want, but without her riling you up and making you question what it feels like to kiss, we’d probably never have had our first kiss.”

I bit my lip on a smile. “That’s true.”

“Was it a good kiss? I always wanted to ask you that.”

I turned my head to him, and we were hardly inches apart. “It was the best.”

His face brightened. “You drove me crazy back then. Fucked with my head every single day.”

“You never showed it.”

“I know. I was always trying to hide everything from you. You were my friend and I didn’t want to ruin that.”

Friend. I hated that word. I could hear it come out of a stranger’s mouth and it still made me tense.

“Anyway,” he went on with a sigh, “tell me something you’ve done I don’t know about in the last three years.”

I thought about that for a moment. “I went paintballing for the first time about a year ago.”

“Paintballing?”

“Yeah, and I got shot ten thousand times. They have zero mercy on women. The guy I was with was meant to protect me. He said he would, anyway.”

“And he didn’t.”

“No, he was, in your own words, a poodle protecting his owner from an attack.”

He laughed. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, I haven’t met a wolf like you yet.”

He pulled me into him tightly. “That’s good. Leah?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t meet a wolf.”

I looked at his solemn face, and I nearly fell into him again, right then and there. The armour around my heart weakened as I nodded. “Okay. Carter?”

“Hmm?”

“Since we’re here and all, maybe you should sing.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “What do you want me to sing?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. The first song I ever heard coming out of his mouth came to mind in a flash of a second. “‘Thank You’ by Led Zeppelin.”

His body went rigid, and a fleeting look of pain washed over his features before he let out a slow breath. “Okay, Angel. I can do that.”

I relaxed back into his hold, and he rested his chin on the top of my head and tenderly sang the song that drew me to him almost twelve years ago.

Eleven

Leah

We spent a couple hours at the creek, and the time went by in a blink of an eye before we decided to head back. We were hungry, tired, and my ass was sore from that ground. I looked back over my shoulder once right before we left and, for a moment, I visualized a little boy sitting on that fallen tree, singing to a dazed little girl in a tattered dress.

I smiled softly, brokenly remembering the sad little kids we were.

When we emerged from the bush, I stared around for a moment, confused. Carter had his hands on his hips, looking at the empty space in front of him with an equally empty expression. For several seconds we didn’t say a word, and then, out of nowhere, Carter burst out laughing.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” he said with a shake of his head. “This is unreal.”

“Your car’s been stolen,” I stated the obvious.

“You’re telling me.”

“I warned you.”

“You did.”

“I’m right.”

“Always.”

“This is awkward.”

“Very. I mean¸ they were fucking fast.”

I nodded. “Very impressive criminals. Unless you left the key behind.”

He pulled out the key from his pocket. “Nah, they fully stole it the impressive way.”

“Imagine if they put their genius to actual use. They could have solved world hunger.”

He laughed again and glanced down at his watch – a watch that wasn’t the size of a fist like Rome’s. It was mid-day. We’d been out for hours, and now we were stranded, letting the situation sink in. What were the odds, really? This was like fate’s intervening hand. It’d have been nice if the bitch had done something less evil than stranding us in a rough area, just far enough out of civilisation that anything could happen.

I hoped my sneakers weren’t going to be found on the side of the road.

I dug my phone out of my pocket. “Who should we call and grovel to? There’s Rome, and there’s Melanie. We can flip a coin if we’re unsure. Rome will be angrier at you, whereas Melanie will tear my ass a new one.”

He smirked. “Why would she tear your ass a new one?”

“She’s been warding me away from you.”

“Ah, that’s right. I’m the bad guy. That’s nice.”

“You’re not a bad guy.” I rolled my eyes.