All Chapters of Best Friend’s Brother Shouldn’t Know How I Taste : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Kassidy's POVEli Deering could go straight to hell.That was what I told myself, anyway, as I pulled my black dress over my hips and stepped back to look at myself in the mirror. I needed to believe it.The alternative was sitting alone in that room, stewing in the particular kind of smallness that Eli Deering had always been very good at making me feel. I threw a white sweatshirt over the dress, spritzed some perfume on my neck, and walked out of my room into his party, without a single shred of guilt.Why did that fuckface get to determine what I should or shouldn't do? He wasn't my father, he wasn't my keeper, and he certainly wasn't anyone I had to answer to. I had moved five hundred miles from Wisconsin and unpacked my entire life into a neutral-walled bedroom. I had earned a party.The noise was so loud before I even reached the bottom of the stairs. Music was thumping through the walls, and there were people everywhere, older students filling every corner of the house with red

Kassidy's POVI left the house that morning without even eating my cereal. I needed air and distance and to be somewhere that wasn't that house. Quietly, I grabbed my bag, pushed my feet into my sneakers, and walked out the front door before anyone could say anything else to me.Other college freshmen were already outside, waiting for the bus, which I appreciated. The crowd around kept me from doing something embarrassing, like crying on a public street on my first full day as a college student.Terrible mistake, that was what he had called it. Not just last night, but me, by extension. My presence in his house and my presence in his life was a terrible mistake he had to live next door to.I was so furious that my hands were shaking a little as I pushed through the campus gates thirty minutes later. But the anger was nothing compared to the heartbreak I felt.Classes did not help.I had three of them back to back: Introduction to Legal Studies, English Composition, and a general Poli

Kassidy's POVI still couldn't wrap my head around the fact that Eli's girlfriend was moving in. He had such audacity! Had he forgotten that he'd had sex with me just last night? How was I supposed to deal with this crushing guilt?!I sat on my bare mattress and turned that sentence over in my head a few times, trying to make it feel less insane than it was.And now, I was going to be housemates with his girlfriend.I pressed both hands flat against my face.I had been so caught up in the heat of the argument last night, so desperate to stop feeling small, that I hadn't stopped to think about any of it. Not the girl in the kitchen, nor Nova, or the fact that Eli Deering was clearly the kind of man I should stay away from.I was such an idiot.A soft knock at my door made me yank my hands off my face."Kassidy?" It was Nova. "I just wanted to check that you have everything you need in here. Eli mentioned that the room was a little bare when you moved in."I opened the door. She was stan

Kassidy's POVFive days since Nova arrived, and I had gotten very good at disappearing. I timed my mornings around Eli's schedule, which I had figured out by the third day. He was out of the kitchen by seven fifteen, so I came down at seven thirty. If I heard Nova's voice anywhere on the ground floor, I went back upstairs and waited. It was exhausting and slightly pathetic, but it was working for me.I had been eating once a day, buying the cheapest takeout I could find every other day, and quietly taking whatever nobody would notice was gone from the kitchen. A handful of crackers. A banana nobody was going to eat. I told myself it was temporary. Just until the part-time job came through.Unfortunately, I’d also run out of tampons. I sat on the edge of my mattress and stared at my empty bag for a long moment.Then, with the taste of shame in my mouth, I got up, walked down the hallway, and stood in front of the door that Eli shared with Nova. I knocked and stood there, praying with e

Kassidy's POVI pushed through the door of Sal's Pizza, feeling much better for the first time in days, and the first thing I saw was Luca Reynolds sitting in a black car directly across the street. He spotted me at the same time and raised a hand in a wave. As if this was completely normal.I crossed the street and stopped at his window. "What are you doing here?""Waiting for you." He replied simply."How did you know my interview was this morning?""You mentioned it, remember?" He replied."I mentioned I had an interview, but I didn't tell you where or when."He grinned. "Let's just say I know people at Sal's."I stared at him incredulously. I wasn't sure what bothered me more, the fact that he had shown up or the fact that he looked so unbothered about showing up. I had deliberately not told him the details for exactly this reason. I didn't need some guy tailing me around campus like a lost puppy."And how did it go?" he asked.I weighed my options, decided that withholding the in