Sweet Retribution (Rydeville High Elite #3)(111)

Sucks to be her.

Because when I’m done with Vanessa, she’ll wish she was dead.



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INSEPARABLE


A gritty, angsty, friends-to-lovers standalone romance from USA Today bestselling author Siobhan Davis.





A childhood promise. An unbreakable bond. One tragic event that shatters everything.

It all started with the boys next door…

Devin and Ayden were my best friends. We were practically joined at the hip since age two. When we were kids, we thought we were invincible, inseparable, that nothing or no one could come between us.

But we were wrong.

Everything turned to crap our senior year of high school.

Devin was turning into a clone of his deadbeat lowlife father—fighting, getting wasted, and screwing his way through every girl in town. I’d been hiding a secret crush on him for years. Afraid to tell him how I felt in case I ruined everything. So, I kept quiet and slowly watched him self-destruct with a constant ache in my heart.

Where Devin was all brooding darkness, Ayden was the shining light. Our star quarterback with the bright future whom everyone loved. But something wasn’t right. He was so guarded, and he wouldn’t let me in.

When Devin publicly shamed me, Ayden took my side, and our awesome-threesome bond was severed. The split was devastating. The heartbreak inevitable.

Ayden and I moved on with our lives, but the pain never lessened, and Devin was never far from our thoughts.

Until it all came to a head in college, and one eventful night changed everything.

Now, I’ve lost the two people who matter more to me than life itself. Nothing will ever be the same again.





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Prologue


Present Day - Angelina





Life is just a flow of interconnecting moments in time. A combination of well-thought-out actions and spontaneous reactions. A sequence of events and people moving in and out of your personal stratosphere.

At least, that’s how I’ve always viewed it.

Like a squiggly line veering up and down with no apparent pattern. Plotting the highs; pinpointing the lows. Showcasing the happy times. Highlighting the mistakes and the resulting consequences. Calling into focus all the myriad of things I should’ve done differently if I had known.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the notion of time—making a beeline for the fortune teller every year when the carnival descended on the wide, open grassy field just outside town. I saved my pocket money all year round so I could have my fortune told. The idea that you could see into the future, to know what was around the corner, held an enormous fascination for me.

I wanted to make something of my life.

To dedicate myself to a profession that helped others.

To know happiness awaited me.

To receive confirmation that the two most important people in my life would always be in it. Because even the thought I could lose Ayden or Devin always sent horrific tremors of fear rushing through me.

For as long as I can remember, it had always been the three of us. Best friends to the end. The awesome-threesome. Forever infinity. It was a friendship more akin to family. A meeting of minds and hearts and promises. A connection so deep that we swore nothing or no one would ever come between us. We committed ourselves in a secret bond when we were twelve, and the commitment was imprinted on my heart in the same way it was inked on my skin.

I could never have predicted what was to come.

That I’d be the one to destroy everything.

No fortune teller ever told me that.

For years, I’ve thought of nothing but the what-ifs and obsessed over so many questions.

What if a fortune teller had told me what would come to pass?

Would things have been different?

What would I change?

Would I have had the strength to stay away from my two best friends? To forge a completely different path in life? To deny something that was intrinsically a part of myself? Could I slice my heart apart knowing it was the right thing to do?

For years these questions have plagued me.

But I’m too afraid to confront the truth, even though it’s front and center. Even though I carry it with me like a thundercloud, hovering and threatening but never opening up, never letting the storm loose.

Some truths are far too painful to acknowledge out loud.

As if to speak the words would confirm what I already know about myself.

That I’m weak, selfish, and not at all the person I thought I was.

Perhaps that’s why we don’t have that cognitive ability—to see the future, to know what lies ahead. I’ve thought of it often. If it’s evolution. If at some time in the future humans will be able to sense the path of their destiny. To alter their fate. To assume full control over every aspect of their life with conscious decision.

For now, all I’ve got is that squiggly line and a huge helping of regret.

What good comes from continually looking back? From locking myself in the haunted mansion of my past? Meandering with the ghosts of guilt and shame? For a girl who spent her happy youth so focused on the future, it’s a very sorry state of affairs. But I’m stuck in this washing machine that is my so-called life. The faster it churns, the more I lose myself. So, I try to stop time. To stand still. To numb myself to my reality. To blank out feeling and emotion. To close myself off. To never allow another human to imprint on my heart or to see into the black, murky depths of my soul.