Free Perfectly Toxic (The Sterling Shore Series Book 9) by C.M. Owens

Is that what time she gets off? Why do I care? So I can better stalk her?
    When I look back at her, she sighs while leaning back.
    “You know about Tag, right?”
    My entire body tenses.
    “What about Tag?”
    She looks a little surprised, and then a blush hits her cheeks.
    “Never mind. Forget it.”
    “Oh hell no. Now you have to tell me. If you think I already know, then that means everyone else knows. Don’t make me call one of them right now while I hold you captive.”
    She groans while running a hand through her hair. It slides through her hair like silk ribbons, and I struggle not to feel it for myself. It’s been years since I felt silk.
    She snaps me out of my inner reverie when she speaks. “Fine. Whatever. It was years ago, but it’s embarrassing.” She scowls at me like she’s pissed she has to say whatever it is, but I’m getting increasingly pissed by the second.
    “So back when Wren and Allie hooked up the first time, I was fresh out of high school and I was really, really wild. Tag was with Wren that night, and well, yeah…”
    I shouldn’t want to punch one of my best friends right now, but I do. This girl makes me violent.
    “You hooked up with him? And that made you never want to…? I’m confused. Leave out the details, because I can’t think about you and Tag together, but explain the rest.”
    “Tag told me his name, but when the time came to remember, I couldn’t. When Allie turned up pregnant with Wren’s kid and he’d given her a fake last name, all I had to do was remember Tag’s last name. But, like I said, I couldn’t. So I told her I was too drunk to remember it.”
    “Tag doesn’t do drunk chicks,” I immediately point out, feeling better. They didn’t have sex—
    “I know,” she says with a guilty expression. “I said I told Allie I was too drunk. But I was sober. I just couldn’t admit at the time that I was so out of control that I didn’t even bother to remember their names anymore. I changed after that. It took that to make me change. I didn’t do wild, reckless, nameless sex ever again. I started dating and getting into serious relationships.”
    “Why do I feel like someone with tattoos fucked you over and now you’re going to tell me I remind you of him?” I ask, feeling labeled.
    She smiles, surprising me, and shakes her head. “It wasn’t one guy, and it wasn’t the tattoos. It was the cocky attitude, the overly confident air about them, and the fuck-off vibe they gave the rest of the world. I kept trying to be special to someone who wouldn’t care about just anyone.” Her smile falls. “I was never special,” she admits, shrugging like it’s no big deal, even though I see the insecurity that surfaces with the confession.
    This is getting real, and normally this is where I exit. Instead, I take a long draw off my milkshake, and gesture for her to go on. Because I can’t seem to force myself to leave.
     

Chapter 13
     
    BELLA
     
    Why am I telling him this? I sound like a slutty piece of shit.
    “Anyway, the last guy I got involved with ended my string of bad boys. Such as yourself,” I state, ending it with a joking note while smiling at him.
    “I ran a business for my dad because he couldn’t bear to lose it. I worked an average eighteen hours a day—including weekends—just to keep that place booming, and killed myself to make sure it went to the right buyer when the time finally came that I just couldn’t continue to hand over my soul to a company.”
    That surprises me, considering it seems so out of the blue.
    “I’m saying I’m not your typical ‘bad boy,’ and for the record, I hate labels of any kind.”
    And that makes me smile again. He’s really nothing at all like I pegged him to be.
    “Sorry I labeled you,” I tell him mockingly, watching as his lips twitch.
    “What happened with the guy that turned you off for good?” he prompts, reminding me this is getting deep.
    “Just before I moved to Sterling Shore