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“And touching isn’t part of the deal, just like watching me change wasn’t.” I elevate my gaze to Layton’s silverfish-blue eyes and arch my eyebrow. “So hands off.”

    During a different time in our lives, I would have loved to have his hand on my knee. There’s no denying that Layton is sexy as hell with his dark, messy hair; tattooed body; and long, lean arms. What’s more, he used to be a good, caring, nice person—at least to me—but not anymore. Now there’s something dark living inside him, something I’ve never seen before, something that’s haunting him, something I don’t understand but want to.

    His lips quirk as he removes his hand from my knee. “If that’s what you want, Lolita,” he picks up his glass filled with scotch, “then I’ll oblige.”

    I narrow my eyes at him as I reach for my own glass of scotch. “Then you’ll oblige ? What the hell happened to you ? You’re too…”

    “Too what?” he challenges, wetting his lips with his tongue, causing my gaze to unintentionally zero in on his tongue ring. It makes my thighs burn for the sensation of the metal to graze along my skin; for his lips to be between my legs, his tongue licking me. It’s such the wrong moment to be thinking this, but I can’t help it. Sex has a sedating effect on me, and when I’m anxious, I want it.

    “Too calm for this type of situation,” I tell him. “Is it because you don’t think I’ll do it?”

    He searches my eyes briefly before his gaze drifts to my legs then back up my body again. “What I think is that you’re hot and bothered.”

    I flip him off. “Fuck you.”

    “I think that’s the problem, Lolita.”

    I bite down on my lip and tell myself to remain composed. To try to remember when we were teenagers and our life was school, fun, excitement, and nothing else—not a worry in the world. Hot summer nights where breaking curfew, stealing bottles of expensive scotch from our daddies’ liquor cabinets, and the occasionally harmless brawl was the biggest risk we ever took. But we’re not friends anymore, and we’re not teenagers. We’re twenty-one-year-old adults who are about to break the law for different reasons.

    I shake the glass in a circular motion, and the ice swishes around. “How many times do I have to tell you, it’s Lola? No one’s called me Lolita since—”

    “Since you were fourteen-years-old and Billy Maders found out the meaning of Lolita is seductress and everyone started calling you a whore.” He raises his glass to his lips and takes a long swallow before setting the glass down. “Yeah, I remember what happened. It was totally not true since you were a virgin, but you took it so defensively.”

    He’s actually wrong; well, not about the virgin part. I stopped wanting to be called Lolita the day my mother died because she’d always called me that. Yet I never told anyone the real reason and blamed in on the Billy thing, being way overdramatic on purpose.

    “Would you stop acting like we’re friends?” I ask, irritated that he knows me so well. He’s supposed to be the enemy, but it’s hard to look at him like that when I’ve known him since we were being potty trained. “We’re not anymore. Not after today.”

    “That’s your choice,” he says in a tight voice. “And I don’t blame you for that.”

    “Please just stop acting so… indifferent about everything.” I take a long sip of my drink, noting how he observes my neck muscles as I swallow. “Just because you decided to go work for Frankie, doesn’t mean you have to act like you don’t care about anything anymore.”

    “I didn’t decide to work for Frankie.” His jaw tightens as he looks over at the bartender. “There were circumstances that led up to it.”

    “What circumstances?” I set the glass down on the countertop and eye him over. “Because, from what I heard, you went to Frankie looking for a job. Or was that just a rumor?” I note how stiff his