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Heartbeats galloping, I twisted my head to glare at him. “I’m not easy, if that’s what that means.”

“Dom says different.”

I tried to remember Dom, but those early high school years were an embarrassing, traumatic blur. Still glaring, I tipped my chin up as I wrenched my arm out of his grip. “Do I look easy to you?”

His clear-blue eyes raked over my body, holding heavily on my cleavage. He licked his lips. “Not really. But you look like you’d be hella worth the headache.”

Disgusted, I shook my head and stepped forward.

He grabbed me again.

The bastard put his hand on me, curling his grimy fingers around my elbow, and I reacted. My instincts kicked in before I could think it through, and I spun around and aimed a swift and controlled strike to the side of his knee.

Eric buckled, dropping to the floor. “What the hell?”

I winced at my overreaction. “Sorry.”

“You crazy bitch,” he barked, his face breaking out with pink splotches.

His friend cackled with laughter beside us. “Shit, Solomon. You just got served by a chick in a Prom dress.”

“Fuck you.”

Swallowing down my embarrassment, I darted over to the couch to gather my belongings and then made a hasty retreat. I was still vibrating with adrenaline as I hauled myself up the basement stairs and went searching for a phone.

“Call me if you need a ride home.”

I needed a ride.

I need him.

While my relationship with Reed was brimming with unresolved tension and a mess of complicated forces determined to keep us apart, it was primarily built upon something else: trust.

I trusted him.

More than anyone.

Every time I’d step onto his mats, I would give him another piece of that trust, until one day, he’d earned the entirety of my vulnerable, closed-off heart. Trust hung in the air like a delicate thread, connecting us in a way nothing else could. It was the unspoken promise that he would catch me when I stumbled, breathe courage into me when I doubted myself, and guide me through every dark back alley of my past until I slowly made my way to the other side.

And I knew that any time I called…he would come.

The main level was teeming with rowdy teenagers as I made my way down a long hall and slinked into one of the bedrooms. I spotted a phone sitting on a nightstand and bit back my nerves. With his phone number memorized, I dialed it in, tapping my foot as I sat on the edge of the bed.

It rang twice before he picked up. “Hello?”

I squeezed the bodice of my dress in a clammy hand and slammed my eyes shut. “It’s me.”

A beat. “Halley?”

“Can you pick me up?”

There was a long pause, and I imagined him scrubbing a hand over his face, playing the potential repercussions of my request over and over in his mind.

But he didn’t sound annoyed or unsure. “Of course. Did something happen?”

“Nothing major,” I said, still toying with my neckline. “I’m at a house party. Can you write down the address?”

“A house party?” He sounded pissed.