Jesus.

She’d probably fall for it, too.

Mel,

You know, I write these fuckin’ letters to you, but they’re fake. I ask about your friends and your school and whether you’re meeting people. It’s bullshit, Mel.

Here’s my reality.

Yesterday I stabbed someone before he could stab me. Puck and I sold some shit to a bunch of white supremacists and we turned around and sold the same damned thing to some Mexicans. We had pudding with our dinner for dessert.

Then I jacked off three times thinking about you.

Those are the highlights. Like a fairy tale, right?

Remembering you keeps me going, which makes no fucking sense at all. I hardly touched you. I still think about what you smelled like when you sat next to me on the couch, though. You were just this little thing and you shivered under my arm. I know you were scared of the movie and I could’ve picked something else, but I wanted the excuse to hold you.

That’s when I started thinking seriously about us fucking.

I had this vision of shoving you into the cushions face-first, then ripping down your jeans and pushing so deep you’d feel it in the back of your throat. That’s the kind of guy I am, Mel, and that’s why you should stay the fuck away from me.

You give me the chance, I’ll pin you down and keep pumping no matter how hard you try to get away. I dream about it every night, I jerk off to it, and today I gave serious thought to killing a man because he has the same fantasies about you as me. That first night, I promised London I wouldn’t touch you, but my cock had already been hard for hours. Good thing she showed up when she did—saved your ass. How’s that for luck?

When I took you to dinner, I was going to be good. Tried to be good. I know you didn’t understand why I asked you out or what it meant. They needed you out of the way, Mel. That was my job—to keep you busy. And I promised London I wouldn’t pull shit on you but she’d been lying to us all along and I kept wondering if that meant my promise didn’t count anymore.

Pretty damned sure it hasn’t counted for a while now.

You were talking and smiling and blushing. My dick was so stiff it nearly snapped in half when I tried to stand up. Took everything I had not to throw you on my bike and ride off with you . . . I want to tie you up and come in your ass and shove my cock down your throat until you choke. I want your hair in little-girl pigtails so I can hold on tight while I fuck your face. I want you to cry and scream and give me everything. I want to fucking OWN you. How’s that for reality, Mel? You still want my advice about boys?

I’m coming home soon. You should run away while you still can, Mel. I’ll make you dirty, so dirty you’ll never be clean again. I’ll make you pay me back the hard way. You think you’re all grown up, but you’re not. There’s so much I could teach you . . . do to you. Jesus, if you only knew, you’d never write to me again.

You should move to Alaska.

Change your name.

Good luck, though, because I’ll find you and take you and—

Fucking hell.

I dropped my pencil, wondering why I’d thought this was a good idea. I wasn’t going to send it, of course. I’d send her some friendly little note and tell her she should be dating and having fun. But some part of me thought writing my real thoughts out might fix my obsession. Instead my dick was like a rock. Again.

Still.

Always.

I started shredding the paper into thin strips, because no fuckin’ way I wanted Fester to read it. He always scrabbled through our garbage like a rat. Puck didn’t need to see it, either. He was my brother—best brother I could have, and he’d proven it a thousand ways since they locked us up—but damn if he needed to know how pussy-whipped I’d gotten.

Right . . . Who was I kidding?

Puck was probably laughing his ass off about it right now.

I grabbed another piece of paper, thinking I should write her a real letter. Congratulate her on her grades and then tell her she should find a decent boyfriend. The words wouldn’t come, though. Too busy thinking about her lips, I guess. They were round and pouty. Created by God expressly to suck cock. My cock. Right on cue, it went from hard to painful, a pillar of concrete in my pants, desperate for some action.

“I drew you a picture,” Fester said, offering me a goofy grin from his bunk. He held up a piece of paper covered in bright orange and red crayon. The red was blood seeping out of stick-figure bodies he’d drawn. I had no fuckin’ idea what the orange spirals were supposed to be. Maybe the voices in his head?

He liked to talk about his art with me, like we had something in common. Sometimes I could almost see where he was coming from. Scary fuckin’ thought.

“Leave my brother alone,” Puck told Fester, his voice hard. He was already down for the night, reading some history book. World War II snipers—he loved that shit. “Lights out soon anyway. Put away your crayons and go to bed, cocksucker.”

Fester giggled, and I stood painfully. My bunk was only three steps away, but each one hurt worse than the last. Felt like my dick might split wide open, there was so much blood trapped in there. I collapsed onto my back, waiting for the lights to go out.

That’s when I’d jerk off.

Again.

We all would.

Fester better not get jizz on my pictures of Mel. I really would kill him. The lights went off with a thudding noise, like something out of a movie. Never understood that—didn’t seem like flipping a switch should be so loud.

Downright ominous.

Seconds later my hands were on my pants, shoving them down as I lifted my hips. My dick sprang free and I wondered for the thousandth time how I’d be able to keep my hands off her when I got home.

Fester grunted in the darkness as I grabbed my meat.

Christ.

Two more weeks.

If I had any decency at all, I’d leave her alone. Yeah. I could do it. I’d probably imagined how beautiful she was anyway. Men built all kinds of crazy fantasies on the inside—always fell to shit when they got out again. Mel was just another bitch, one with too much baggage. I didn’t really want her. Sure as hell didn’t need her.

Right. Who the fuck was I kidding?

CHAPTER TWO

ONE MONTH LATER

COEUR D’ALENE

MELANIE

“So he never even called you?” Kit asked, eyes wide. “I mean, I get that guys can be confusing, but to loan you his car for a fucking year, write you tons of letters from prison, and then have you drop his keys off with my dad so he doesn’t have to see you? That’s bizarre.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered, shooting a death glare across the table at Jessica, the rat. My soon-to-be former best friend seemed deeply unconcerned by the fact that she’d betrayed me.

Wench.

“I don’t blame you,” Em announced, reaching for the wine bottle. “I don’t like talking about Painter, either. He fucked with my head for way too long. I had the biggest crush on him when he was a prospect.”

“You let him mess with you,” Kit said, shoving her glass in front of Em’s for a refill. Em smacked at her hand, and suddenly the sisters were wrestling over the bottle like kindergartners with a cookie.

I glanced over at Jessica¸ wondering how our Friday afternoon had turned into a random drunkfest with two women I barely knew, because Kit and Emmy Hayes were a trip. Jess gave me a “don’t look at me” kind of shrug before draining her own glass of wine. I reached for some crackers off the little round cheese/meat platter thing Em had been carrying when she’d shown up at our house out of nowhere. (Kit had been in charge of booze.)