CHAPTER 19: BROKEN

RINA'S POV

TEN YEARS PRIOR

Ricky was right about one thing. It took less than five hours for me to get a follow request from E.B.Clarke on Instagram. Ricky, now running my Instagram account, texted me a screenshot when he accepted it.

The plan was simple: Friday night, we were going to meet up someplace secluded (Ricky was insistent that no one see us together) and take a picture of us holding hands. He'd post it to my new Instagram story, and we'd wait until we saw that Easton had viewed it before splitting up. The following night, Ricky would meet me with movie tickets, and we'd post a picture of those, too. Easton would get the hint, and all we'd have to do is wait for an opportunity to take our supposed relationship public. The only potential wrinkle was Easton's inevitable confrontation. I remembered what happened when Easton found out I was going to the Homecoming dance with Harrison. I was fully expecting to be cornered Monday afternoon in a similar manner. Ricky insisted it would be fine if I just kept my mouth shut, and I hoped he was right.

Saturday night, after meeting with Ricky to take the picture, we waited in the movie theater parking lot the next town over for Easton to view my story. It took all of ten minutes for him to do so.

"That was fast," Ricky muttered, suddenly nervous. "We should probably get out of here, just in case he shows up to the theater."

"You think he would do that?" I questioned, incredulous.

"I wouldn't put it past him. He's nothing if not thorough."

While the movie was supposedly playing, I killed time at the library, reading a paperback in the corner until it was time to go home. Ricky was long gone at that point, too committed to his plan to risk ruining it by being seen with me in public before the big reveal. I drove home in silence, tempted to call Jen to tell her what was going on but too nervous to do so. She'd probably tell me I was being stupid, and I was. But I was consumed with rage at the idea that the deep conversations I'd had with Easton—the ones I thought were genuine—were nothing more than manipulation tactics to get in my pants. I didn't even care if I ended up destroyed at the end of this.

When I got home, I noticed Easton's black range rover parked haphazardly in front of my neighbor's yard. My headlights illuminated his face in the driver's seat, and as soon as he saw me park, he got out of his car and stalked towards me. It was too dark to see his face clearly at first, but I knew what it would look like before I could see it: twisted, red, and angry, his blue eyes dark and squinted and his fists balled at his sides. When he got close enough to me, he somehow looked even worse than I had imagined.

"Who were you with?" He demanded, his voice a throaty growl.

"How did you even know I was out?"

"Don't play dumb. You and I both know you made that Instagram post just so I would see it," He snarled, edging closer to me. I glanced at the house. Monica knew I was out, but the lights were off, the entire neighborhood seemingly asleep. Which apparently didn't concern Easton because his voice was growing louder by the second.

"You know, I always think you can't act like any more of a narcissistic prick and yet, every day you manage to one up yourself," I snorted, hoping he couldn't tell that I was deflecting. "The fact that you think I do anything for you is hilarious."

"Stop lying. Were you on a date?"

"So what if I was?" I snarled. "It doesn't concern you."

"Doesn't concern me? I don't let anyone near you!" He roared, grabbing my elbow and yanking me towards him. "Who were you out with?"

"It's none of your goddamn business, Easton," I growled.

"The fuck it's not!" He snarled, pushing me up against the passenger side door. "Don't make me find out myself, Rina. You aren't going to like what I do to him if you do."

"Oh, are we dishing out empty threats again?" I laughed. "You know they don't work on me."

"Ask Kyle Campbell how empty my threats were the day I rearranged his fucking face!" He snarled, twisting his hands into my hair. Lowering his voice, he continued. "I told everyone to stay away from you. So who could you have possibly been out with?"

"It's so cute how you always expect everything to be handed to you on command. Hasn't anyone ever told you that you can't have everything you want?"

"I'm perfectly aware I can't have everything I want. You've made that abundantly clear," Easton scoffed. "I'm not going to keep playing this game with you. If you don't want to tell me who it is, fine. But you'd better hope for his sake I don't find out on my own."

"Your threats don't scare me, Easton."

"Really? Because I can see your bottom lip trembling."

"That's not because I'm scared. It's because I can't stand you. But I shouldn't have expected you of all people to know the difference."

"What the fuck is that supposed to be mean?"

"It means you only hate me because you're scared of me," I growled. "I'm the one thing standing between everybody finding out why you really won states, remember? We wouldn't be even having this conversation otherwise."

"I never hated you, Rina." He pulled my face up towards his. I looked up at him and his eyes were blazing, staring into mine like he was trying to see into my soul. "I just don't want you with anyone else. How do you not understand that?"

I blinked at him. He sounded jealous, and I knew that he was. Ricky had made it clear that Easton didn't like me getting close to other guys. But I knew that fixation had nothing to do with me as a person and everything to do with Easton's bruised ego. If I gave him what he wanted, he'd go back to pretending like I didn't exist. Part of me wanted that, to pretend like this whole year had never happened. But I was hurt that he of all people, knowing what he knew about my past, still viewed me as an object. And even though I knew it would set him off, it was that feeling of betrayal that made me say, "I don't care what you want, Easton."

He laughed sardonically, turning his face away from mine. I could still see it fall, though. For just a second, that angry mask he always wore dropped and he looked genuinely hurt. But it was unlike Easton to let any vulnerability show, and before I could even blink, he was back to looking furious. I'd said I wasn't scared of him just a few moments prior, but that was a lie. When he was like this? He was genuinely terrifying.

Slowly, he turned his head towards me, his expression twisted into a snarl, and he growled, "I know you don't. I know you fucking hate me. But I don't give a shit if you do anymore." He said it so slowly that I wasn't expecting how fast he moved next. I didn't even have time to open my mouth in response before his lips came down on mine hard and fast. Just like then, I felt frozen. But this was the first time he'd kissed me sober. It was different. Firmer. More intense. His hands, still twisted in my hair, gripped my head like he thought I was going to be ripped away from him.

It felt too real, the way he leaned into the kiss like he couldn't get enough, pressing his body into my own. For a second, I wanted it to be real. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine we were two entirely different people in entirely different points in time. Maybe then this kiss might actually mean something. But we weren't and it didn't, and I only allowed myself to pretend otherwise for a few seconds.

In those seconds, my mouth started moving against his almost instinctively. I hadn't let myself admit much how much I wanted him until that moment, but he groaned into my mouth, and something fluttered in my stomach that made me feel like I was floating. Heat pulled between my legs when one of his hands hovered over my breast before clamping down with desperate, searching fingers. I couldn't think, could hardly breathe, like this, I wanted so badly for this kiss to be because he actually cared about me, but I knew it wasn't. I was certain he'd kissed Victoria just like this before he'd taken her upstairs, staring at her like a gift he couldn't wait to unwrap. And then last week, he'd avoided her like she was a disease. Exactly like he was going to do to me if I let this continue.

Easton's tongue dipped into my mouth, and I took it as my final warning. I turned my head as far as I could with one of his hands still twisted in my hair, and the second our lips parted it felt like waking up from a trance. Suddenly, that fluttering in my stomach turned to a sense of shame that sat like lead in my gut.

I'd just made out with the guy I was supposed to hate in my own front yard, and now I could feel his erection pressed into my abdomen.

He was staring at me, his eyes wide with what I now recognized as lust, waiting for the go ahead to continue. But he would never get that from me, even if I wanted to give it to him. "We shouldn't do this," I mumbled softly, breathing heavy, afraid to meet his eye.

"Why not?" His voice came out in a pant as he pulled my hair away from my neck and pressed his lips against my throat.

"Because," I started but was caught off guard by the feeling of Easton's teeth lightly biting the side of my neck. I sucked in a breath, trying to think of a reason that would make any kind of sense, but I lost the ability to think coherent thoughts with him touching me like that. "We just can't," I said slowly, placing my hands against his chest until he backed up.

His head shot up, and his face was flushed and angry when he said, "Would your little date not like it?" His voice was clipped when he spoke, his eyes cold, his hands coming down on my arms in a vice grip.

"This isn't about him," I said, but of course it was. My "date" was Ricky and this whole situation was orchestrated specifically to get under Easton's skin. Ricky would be thrilled to hear how well it was working, and I wished I felt the same but right then? All I felt was sick.

"Then what's it about? I want this." He said it like he was pleading but his expression was grim. I was about to make it so much worse, but I didn't see any other choice. I wasn't about to give Easton the power to break me like I knew he would if we kept going.

"Well, I don't." The words tasted bitter on my tongue as I said them. It sounded like a lie even to my ears and I was afraid to look at him in case he didn't buy it.

But he did.

I know he did, because he slammed the side of his fist into the passenger side window on the right side of my head. It was so loud and so hard I thought something had to be broken—the glass, his hand, maybe both. I gasped, anticipating the tinkering of shattered glass, but the only thing I heard was Easton's maniacal laugh.

He spun away from me, both of his hands twisted into his hair, and then just when I thought he was going to walk away without another word, he turned back towards me. "You just let me stick my tongue down your throat, but you don't want me? You're a fucking liar!"

"I'm sorry," I stuttered. "It was a momentary lapse in judgment."

"A fucking lapse in judgment? Are you kidding me? You kissed me back!"

"I also stopped you," I argued. This argument felt like burying myself alive, because it was all a lie. I didn't want to stop him, but it had to be done. I had to convince both him and myself that this would never happen, because it was going to tear me apart when it did. So I fixed my expression to look colder than I felt, praying he couldn't see straight through it, and I said, "If I wanted you that bad, I would have let you keep going."

"So those ten seconds you gave me were, what? Just to fuck with my head?" He snarled. His voice wasn't cold like mine. It was clipped with emotion and there was something broken in his expression, something I'd never seen before. For just a second, I thought Ricky might be wrong about him. But then, he fixed his face into one I always thought was a mask, but now seemed to be who he really was: cold, calculated, and uncaring. When he spoke, he did so without an ounce of emotion in his voice. "At least Victoria fucking puts out. You've never been more than a waste of my time."

Without waiting for my response, he spun around and stalked towards his car. I wanted him to look back, to take back what he said, but he didn't. My vision blurred as he got in his car without even a glance in my direction. I watched him slam the door, put it into drive, and speed off without bothering to turn on his headlights.

When he was gone—when I could no longer hear the sound of his engine in the distance—I finally let the tears fall. They came slowly at first, so soft but before I knew it, they were pouring down my face and I was sinking to my knees on the concrete driveway

Every time Easton talked to me, it felt like he took a piece of me away. This one felt like the biggest one yet.