Chapter 2

Drake POV

The headboard slammed against the drywall with enough force to crack the plaster. Beneath me, Brittany whimpered, her fingers clawing at my bare shoulders, digging nails into my skin as I thrust into her hard, fast, and completely detached.

To anyone else, it would look like passion. To me, it was pure, unadulterated extermination.

I wasn't even looking at her face. My eyes were slammed shut, jaw locked so tight my teeth ached, as I used the friction and the heat to drown out a completely different image. An image of wet, transparent cotton clink around b*obs, blazing brown eyes, and a sharp, mocking mouth telling me that touching me was at the bottom of her bucket list.

Rosa.

The name scraped across my brain like a jagged piece of glass. She was supposed to be asleep down the hall. She was supposed to be Chloe’s annoying, off-limits best friend—the girl I had spent years treating like verbal garbage just to keep her out of my space. Instead, she was breathing under my roof. In my house.

A low, guttural growl ripped from my throat. I thrust harder, chasing a violent release, using Brittany as a blunt instrument to clear the sudden, suffocating static Rosa had injected into my veins the second she rang my doorbell.

Minutes later, it was over.

I rolled off the bed without a word, pulling on a pair of black sweatpants while Brittany lay tangled in the sheets, chest heaving and looking thoroughly shell-shocked by how cold and mechanical I had just been.

"Do you want me to stay the night, Drake?" she asked, smoothing her hair back with a hesitant frown.

"No," I said flatly, grabbing her clothes and tossing them on the edge of the bed. "I have early morning practice. You need to go."

She didn't argue. There was something in my tone, a dark, volatile edge that made smart girls grab their things and disappear without making a sound. Within five minutes, the front door clicked shut downstairs, leaving the house dead and suffocatingly quiet.

I stood alone in the dark master bedroom, running a hand down my face and dragging it through my hair.

I could hear the absolute silence coming from the guest room down the hall. Just a few steps away, Rosa was lying in bed, wearing soft pajamas, completely unaware that she had just ruined my entire routine.

Thirty days. The repairs would take a full month.

A harsh, humorless laugh escaped my lips. A month? I wouldn't last a week before my own rules blew up in my face. I had invented those stupid boundaries—stay out of my room, don't touch me, thinking they would act as an ironclad shield to keep her away. But standing there watching her scoff at me on the porch, I realized the terrifying truth: I hadn't made those rules for her.

I had made them for me.

Restless, angry, and feeling like a caged animal in my own home, I stalked out of the master suite. The hallway was pitch black, illuminated only by the faint silver moonlight spilling through the high windows.

My bare feet made zero sound on the hardwood as I walked down the corridor. Every instinct screamed at me to turn back, to lock myself in my gym, to stay the f*ck away from the guest room.

Instead, my feet kept moving.

Before my brain could stop my body, I was standing directly outside the guest room door. I stared at the solid wood, my chest rising and falling in sharp, controlled bursts. I could hear it, the soft, steady sound of her breathing on the other side.

Slowly, almost against my will, I raised my right hand.

I hovered my palm an inch from the wood, feeling the faint warmth radiating from her room. My jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched in my cheek.

Thirty days of this. Thirty days of breathing the same air, hearing her voice, pretending I loathed her existence while my hands itched to rip her door open and drag her against the wall.

I stared at my fingertips, “Thirty days?” I thought, closing my eyes as my palm pressed flat on her door. “I'm going to lose my f*cking mind.”