Living in the grand city of Los Angeles gave Remington-Bria Cruz the false hope that she'd never have to cross paths with the extremely offensive, but unfairly gorgeous Auden Shaw again. He'd made her freshman year of high school a living hell. Ther...
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There were reasons he and Wolf had completely changed the course of their lives and cut their families off without a backward glance. No one woke up one day and decided to flip off the system just for the hell of it. There were steps. Boxes that needed to be checked to get to the point of no return.
Reason One: the thing that drove them to get out of bed each morning and face another day in their crappy existence wasn't a passion for validation or personal growth or helping others. Their fuel was the dark, festering thirst for revenge. The need to settle a score. That wasn't going to go away or take a seat while they continued going through the motions at school to earn a stupid piece of paper.
Reason Two: the belief that if you worked hard enough for something, it would come true was bull. They'd seen reality and it wasn't fair. Once the rose colored glasses came off, it was impossible to go back to the lies being engraved on them. In truth, reality was what you made it and it all came down to how well you sold it to the world.
Reason Three: they'd made mistakes. The kind of errors you couldn't come back from. So the only option left was to finish what they'd started. Make a war out of the battle and damn whoever stood in their way.
Reason Four...
Shaw slammed the leather bound notebook shut. He knew the list. Hell, he'd written it years ago, when he'd decided there was no way back. It'd been necessary then because it had served to remind him of who he was. Served as an explanation for why he'd done what needed to be done.
She'd nearly managed to discover the very secrets Wolf had worked so hard to keep her safe from. That was why he'd snapped at her. Even after she'd run back downstairs and avoided him for days, he couldn't stop picturing what she would have found in the pages. How she would have reacted to seeing that part of who he'd become. What would she think of him if she knew what he'd forced her brother into?
He could hear that selfish, destructive voice in his head, the one he'd spent years trying to silence. Laughing at the joke his life was. Hadn't he dedicated so much time burying himself deeper and deeper into a hole to get away from this very moment?
Not days or weeks or months. But years convincing those around him that he didn't care. All that time spent building this persona up so that he wouldn't ruin the one good thing in his awful life.
Freaking hilarious. Because even though Wolf was too distracted with trying to stay away from Olivera to notice it, Shaw knew the truth.
Remington-Bria Cruz was a terrible liar who could probably see the best in the worst. But she was blind when it came to what was right in front of her. He wasn't. He was weak, angry, and could do nothing but glare at his reflection in the mirror every morning for needing the one thing he really couldn't have.
"Remi's working at the antique shop this afternoon," Wolf muttered, glancing down at his phone screen. "Says she won't be needing lunch with the boys today."
