Zac's school dress shirt was draped loosely over my torso. I hadn't bothered to put my bra back on. My head was tucked in the crook of his shoulder as we snuggled on his mattress. I should've asked him to drive me home over an hour ago, but, for once, I couldn't seem to find the motivation to do the responsible thing and get my ass out of bed.

Zac's mouth curved into a lazy, satisfied smile. His golden eyes flicked over to me. "Can I be honest with you?"

I shifted my body towards him. "Sure."

"I've wanted to do that to you ever since I came back to Wellesley. I wish I'd been nicer to you from day one. We could've been doing this stuff a lot sooner!"

"I know, right?" I chuckled. "But I should've made you wait longer. You were such an asshole! For no good reason, either. Might I remind you, baby, you were the one who started crushing on me first!"

He laughed sheepishly. "Oh, believe me, I had my reasons..."

This piqued my interest. "What kind of reasons? Tell me."

Zac hesitated before he spoke. "I... well, we both know I liked you back in middle school. Then, all that shit with my dad happened with the insider trading stuff. My mom and I moved to Queens. More shit happened. I changed a lot during that time, and I thought... I was done with my old life. I came back here thinking that I was invincible. That nothing at Ashton Wellesley could ever hurt me again. I wanted to lump you in with all the other assholes at school. Then, I saw you in Tilton's class. You were exactly as I remembered but prettier, hotter, and even more fierce. And I knew... I was gonna be fucked if I let you get under my skin again. So... I tried to piss you off and push you away."

He laughed again, though, this time it was aimed more at himself. "Look how that turned out for me. I'm even more of a goner than before."

Zac's confession made my heart glow. I sighed and kissed his chest. His neck. His lips. "Don't worry, baby. The feeling over here is almost mutual."

His eyebrows shot up. "Almost?"

I giggled. "Just kidding! You know I wanna get in your pants."

"Brat."

Zac's fingers were moving mindlessly all over my skin, leaving light touches here and there, stopping only to graze my nipple or play with my breasts.

I clasped his other hand in mine and held it up to my face. I pressed a soft kiss on the inside of his wrist, right onto the badass-looking tattoo of a black rose interwoven with thorns. Every petal had been strategically needled over the burn marks on his skin, giving the tattoo an almost three-dimensional look.

"I remember this," I said softly with a pained expression on my face.

Years ago, Trick had burned him there with a lit cigarette, chortling inhumanly as he dug the burning embers into Zac's flesh over and over again.

"I'll never forget what you did that day, Cate," he murmured. "You came charging at Trick with the janitor's bucket like a girl possessed. Everyone was so shocked when you dumped that sludge water all over him."

I laughed humorlessly. "Trick was a monster. I should've neutered him for doing that to you."

"That was the day," Zac kept going as though he hadn't heard me, "I realized you weren't like everyone else at Ashton Wellesley. Do you remember what you said to me afterwards?"

My mind blanked. Honestly, I didn't remember. I only recalled the intense rage I had felt when I saw Trick torturing another student and how much I wanted to stop him.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember," I confessed. "It was such a long time ago, and—"

"You said to me, 'Next time he tries to pull this shit on you, tell him you know about Cassandra.' I had no idea what you were talking about, but I tried it out on him the next day, and he left me alone for a whole week."

My heart ached for Zac. "Baby..."

He gave me a reassuring smile. "Hey, it's okay. I survived, didn't I? And I got to touch your boobs today. Life is pretty sweet."

I laughed. "You're such an optimist!"

"And you're amazing."

My eyes flicked up to meet his amber ones. The way he was looking at me made me feel like a fraud. As though I had tricked him into liking me somehow.

"No, I'm not," I argued softly. "I'm actually pretty awful most of the time."

"Yeah, not gonna lie, at your worst, you can be pretty terrible," he agreed with a tilted smile, "but I've also seen you when you shine. I saw how hard you tried to reach out to Dr. Williams a few weeks back. What you did for her... Well, let's just say, it hit me hard. You made an impression on me all over again."

My face grew hot.

How the fuck was I supposed to respond to a compliment like that?

I looked away and tried to focus on something else. Then, something on Zac's arm caught my eye.

"What," I asked, tracing my finger along his forearm, "happened here?"

Other than the cigarette burn marks on his wrist, they were barely visible, but I couldn't help noticing the raised flesh under the tattoos along his forearm. Short, even, ridged lines of scar tissue that ran up his arm like angry tally marks. These seemed to have nothing to do with Trick.

Zac grew quiet for a moment.

"Zac?" I prompted delicately.

"I'm not proud about it," he finally responded, his eyes flicked downwards in shame, "but I went to a pretty dark place after my dad went to prison. I was so angry at him for being such a goddamn hypocrite. He had always encouraged me to do the right thing, and be a good guy no matter how others treated me. It really messed me up when I realized he hadn't been one of the good guys, after all. Just the opposite, actually."

His words made me sick to my stomach. I knew firsthand how destructive a father's actions could be on his children. I didn't know what to say, except mutter a heartbroken "fuck" under my breath, hoping that Zac could pick up on the genuine compassion in my voice.

Zac continued, "After my mom divorced my dad, we moved in with my grandma. He made her sign a prenup before they got married, so she didn't get a dime from him. The neighborhood my grandma lived in wasn't the best, and the kids at my new school weren't anything like the crowds at Ashton Wellesley. This was around the time of the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, so they gave me a pretty hard time for being preppy and rich. Except I wasn't any of those things anymore. When they learned about what happened to my dad, they became relentless. They were almost as bad as Trick. I guess I started hurting myself as a way to... cope."

I buried my head into his neck and clung to him tightly. "I'm so sorry you had to go through all that, Zac. It sounds like pure hell."

He placed a hand on my head and started running his fingers through my hair in a cathartic way. "If... it hadn't been for Tariq, I might be doing it still. The cutting, I mean. His uncle owned a tattoo and piercing shop in the area, and he didn't care that we were underage. I started getting tats and piercings as an alternative to self-harm. At the time, it felt like the lesser of two evils. As you can see, I kinda got carried away..."

Zac tried to make light of the subject matter with a joke, gesturing to all the excessive amount of ink that had been needled into his upper chest and down his arms.

I tried to chuckle alongside him, but it came out like a sad, clumsy sound. At that moment, I felt so grateful to Tariq for being Zac's rock when he needed it most. I wanted to learn more about Tariq. To honor his memory. "I remember you mentioned Tariq once to me. That night after Aleah's Halloween party. What was he like as a person?"

"Tariq... was such a good guy. He had a heart of gold. Always giving to others. Never taking from them. But he was also clinically depressed. Bipolar. Life was... really hard... for him. He struggled every day to keep a smile on his face."

My heart sank. "Can I ask you something personal about Tariq? You don't have to answer me, of course, unless you want to..."

Sorrow shone in Zac's golden eyes. "Go ahead."

"When Tariq committed suicide—was it because of his depression? Or Lily?"

"Probably both. Lily definitely tipped him over the edge, though. I don't think I'll ever forgive her for what she put him through."

I gulped uneasily. "What happened between them?"

Zac cleared his throat and clenched his jaw. His golden eyes gleamed with emotion. "They dated for a year as freshmen. Lily left the school long before I even stepped foot on campus, but Tariq was so in love with her. He would've done anything for her. So, when she told him to go end himself..."

"Oh, God," I whispered, feeling a surge of bile trickle up my throat. This story was making me sick to my stomach.

"Yeah," Zac stated grimly. "It's extremely fucked up. Sometimes, I have nightmares about it. Tariq deserved so much better. He was one of the few good students at our school. He could've made it to college. I was helping him with apps to NYU and researching scholarships to help with tuition. He had a fucking future waiting in front of him. But now he's gone. Forever."

Tears began to well in my tears. I didn't want to listen anymore. My emotions were a mess, but I forced myself to stay with Zac. I reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Tariq sounds like a beautiful human being. You guys were lucky to have each other."

Zac pulled me into his arms, and, for a long while, we simply laid there in silence on his bed in a deep, mind-numbing melancholy. I couldn't stop thinking about Lily and Tariq. About all the darkness Zac had endured during his time in Queens. I don't know how much time passed between us, but I was the first to break the silence.

A thought popped into my head. "Zac?"

"Hmm?"

"What was Lily doing in Queens? Isn't her family pretty well off?"

Zac's arms tightened around me. "Do you remember what I said about her relationship with her dad?"

"That she hates him?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Apparently, he was getting fed up with her getting kicked out of schools all the time, so he enrolled her at our school in Queens as punishment. At least, that's what Tariq told me."

Mr. Sinclair sounded even more intense than my dad.

I frowned. "Looks like it didn't do any good, though. She's still as toxic as ever."

A hard look stretched over Zac's handsome features.

"No, it didn't," he agreed harshly, "You can't change someone who doesn't want to change."

"True," I echoed as an uneasy weight sunk into me.

I hoped Bea would be able to handle a girl like Lily. I considered letting her forgo our plan and retreat to safety. Lily had taken a liking to me. I could probably approach her myself with the idea of throwing a random holiday party at her house. As much as I disliked my half-sister, I didn't want to send Bea into the line of fire without any knowledge about the monster she was up against.