Page 181 of Boys Who Hunt

I put the glass down. “I did exactly what you told me to do.”

“I told you to fucking seduce her, not fall for her!”

I don’t even know how to respond.

“Is that why you’re doing this?”

He grinds his teeth. “Maybe.”

“Why are you so obsessed with making me jealous? Isn’t it enough already?” I stare him down, clenching my jaw. “You had Mavis, and you cast her aside so you could go after Ivy instead, just to hurt me.”

“Don’t you understand? IusedMavis as a distraction, just like I fucking used Ivy as a distraction.”

My eyes widen.

He averts his eyes. “But along the way I started feeling things I didn’t expect.”

“You … you’re in love with Ivy too?” I ask, confused.

He balls his hand into a fist. “Iwanther. Badly. But I fucking wantedyoufirst.”

CHAPTER 44

Max

What?

My lips part, but the oxygen refuses to exit my lungs.

He wantsme?

He points at my chest. “That heart of yours should’ve beenmine.”

Oh God.

“But you only wanted girls,” he says, the suffering on his face clear as day. “And it fucking killed me.” He shakes his head and snorts. “All these fucking years, I never once thought of any of them as more than a distraction, a way to fill the void, while I yearned for someone who wouldn’t even look at me that way. What a joke.”

He fishes the bottle of pills from his pants and pops it open.

Ketamine.

The pills he’s been downing every time he looked depressed.

And I could never figure out why until today.

All this time.

He wasn’t jealous of me because I hadher.

He was jealous of her … because she hadme.

I march over to him and slap the pills from his hand, the bottle flying halfway across the room. I grab his face with both hands and smash my lips onto his, kissing him the way I’ve dreamed about more than a million times. And God, they taste like blissful sin.

But his lips immediately rip away from mine, the confused look in his eyes anything but comforting.

“I don’t want a pity kiss,” he growls.

“You kissed me first,” I retort. “And then you walked away.”