Without warning, I reached down and gave her ass a hard smack.
"That's for spray painting my car," I said.
Her breath hitched, and she bit her lip, trying to suppress a smile. "You're such a caveman."
"Caveman? How about this?" I said, smacking her...
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ESMERALDA'S POV
The days blurred together, a fog of pain and frustration that refused to lift. I hated how much I felt his absence, how every part of me ached from it. It was pathetic, really. I should have been furious, livid even. But instead, I was stuck in this suffocating cycle of longing and resentment.
I missed him. God, I missed him.
I missed the way his rough hands gripped my waist like he owned me. The way he whispered my name like a curse and a prayer all at once. The way his lips devoured me, like he could never get enough.
But I also hated him.
I hated the way he shoved me away as if I was nothing. As if the nights we spent tangled together, lost in each other, meant nothing. I hated how easily he shut me out, how quickly he had put up his walls again.
And yet, through all of it, I still wanted him.
Maybe I was as twisted as him, but I wasn't about to let him off that easily.
Caleb thought he could push me away, bury me beneath his indifference, but he was wrong. He might have chosen to forget, but I refused to be forgotten.
I was not just Trevor's little sister.
I was a storm, a goddamn force of nature, and Caleb Fergusson was about to learn that the hard way.
_
The engine of my car hummed beneath my fingertips as I gripped the steering wheel, my pulse racing like a live wire. I shouldn't have been doing this. It was reckless, impulsive, maybe even dangerous—but fuck, I needed to see him.
I had overheard some idiot at campus mention Caleb's gang meeting spot—an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. It was a well-known fact that Caleb Fergusson ran with dangerous people, the kind who didn't take kindly to uninvited guests. But that didn't scare me. No, what scared me was how much I still wanted him after everything.
He had humiliated me, shattered me, thrown me away like I was nothing. And if he thought I was going to slink off and lick my wounds in silence, then he clearly didn't know who the fuck he was dealing with.
I parked my car a safe distance away and stepped out, the cool evening air biting at my skin. The warehouse loomed ahead, its towering frame bathed in the dim glow of streetlights. The sound of male laughter and low, hushed conversations spilled out into the alleyway. They were inside. He was inside.
A sane person would have turned around.
But I wasn't feeling particularly sane.
Instead, I reached into my bag and pulled out my secret weapon—a can of neon yellow spray paint. A wicked grin spread across my lips as I shook it, the sound of the rattle ball inside only fueling my adrenaline. If Caleb wanted to act like a heartless bastard, then fine—I'd make sure everyone saw him for what he really was.
