MARTES
5:57 PM

Reid Harlow

"Sometimes, I'm worried about you." Presley announces, causing my eyes to shift towards him. He surprised me. I thought he would be at his college, doing some dumb shit that college students do. Instead, he's sitting at the breakfast table, his fingers adjusting the squares on the rubik's cube.

"Are you sure you're not worried about Dahlia?" I mutter bitterly under my breath, taking another sip of the water in my hand. I came down for a drink, not for a fucking chat with Presley Young. I guess we can't always get what we want.

"What?" Presley questions, his brows pulled together in a look of confusion. I can see the cube in his hand, swiftly coordinating back to a solid one-color face it was before. He's not even fucking looking at it—he just knows it.

"Nothing." I shake my head, lowering the glass and heading back in the direction I came from. The stairs.

"You're ignoring me." He proclaims, just as I'm one step away from the door. I stop. The chair screeches behind me, and I hear footsteps following.

I don't turn around and inhale a sharp breath. "No, I'm not." My voice slightly pitched at the end, causing me to swear at my inability to lie. Sometimes, it would be fucking great if I could get away with shit I want to get away with.

"Harlow..." Presley warns lowly, like he knows something and he wants me to admit it. I don't say anything, and his hand plants itself on my shoulder.

I turn around at his touch, and strip his hand away from me. My face drops into a scowl and a sharp glare that tells him to back the fuck away from me. "Don't fucking touch me."

A look of irritation passed through his features, but it left just as quickly as it came. Presley closes his eyes for a second, as if he was trying to calm himself, before he opens them back up. His brown eyes staring back at me, his expression tame.

And it's that—it's that exact face right there that pisses me off beyond belief.

It's annoying, artificial, and fake. I want to see him get angry. I want to see him yell, get pissed off, snap at me in return. It's that layer of calmness I was never able to collect, and never will. It's surface-level, and why the fuck does everyone have to be surface-level around me?

Except Dahlia.

Never Dahlia.

So, why her?

"I don't even want to talk to you right now." I turn away, shaking my head as I make another attempt to head out. I knew, if I stayed, my anger would make an appearance and I wouldn't know how to stabilize it. My aggression has always been between my lips, spilled out like the pages of a novel.

But sometimes, my aggression lays between my knuckles.

I exit from the kitchen and enter the living room, where the stairs are a couple of steps away. I hear Presley following after me, the door separating the living room and the kitchen swinging back and forth, whipping against the air. "What the hell did I do? Why are you acting like...like..."

"Like what?" I demand, turning back around so fast, water spills out of the glass and onto my skin. I really need to set this down. "Like an asshole?"

He doesn't answer.

"Well, newsflash, brother." I sneer mockingly, "I've always been like this. Ever since I fucking got here, I made it clear that I never liked any of you and I never wanted to fucking fit in with any of you. I like to stay alone, and I wish you would fucking respect that and leave me alone!"

The words fell rapidly and harsh, almost like a whip struck to skin. My chest rising and falling, collecting lost oxygen to my brain, in hopes of calming me down. I knew I sounded spiteful, aggressive, cruel. What did they expect when they collected my files? When they took me in? I'm fucking pissed off and no one understands why.

I don't even understand why.

And then the memories of Presley handing Dahlia his phone, of Dahlia telling me she was talking to Presley, returns to me—and it made my anger tenfold.

"And I don't even fucking understand why you had to pick her!" I continue, the words spilling out without a thought. I knew I was crossing a line I couldn't get back from, but I couldn't fucking help it.

For the past week, my chest has felt like it's been lit on fire at the mention—at the mental image—of Dahlia and Presley together. It felt like a parasite was eating me inside out, tearing apart my organs, and it felt like I was going to die with each fucking breathe I took. I hated it.

But I couldn't stop it.

Presley pauses, momentarily stun. "What?"

"You could've had any other girl in the world. You could've had the girls in your college, at your job, wherever the fuck you went!" I growl, my blood boiling at the thought of Presley choosing Dahlia out of any of them. "You had to pick her. You had to pick Dahlia!"

At that moment, it registered. His lips parted in realization and his expression loosens as it dawns on him. He almost looks...relaxed at this revelation.

And it made me even more pissed off.

I hear the locks of the front door twisting, announcing the return of the family. I couldn't stand the sight of Presley, and it feels like everything I'm touching burns. I wanted to do something—get a reaction, get into a fight—something that would kill this emotion inside of me.

As the gears shift and the seconds are ticking away at me, I look to the glass of water in my hand, burning between my fingertips.

The memories flash: of Dahlia, smiling and giggling, and holding Presley's phone in her hand as she gives away her number. It flashes, to Dahlia smiling after telling me that she was talking to Presley, in the middle of school. In the brink of morning.

And I don't know what got over me, but as the door creaks open and I hear Nini's voice greets us with a melodic sound, I lift my hand holding the glass and chuck it, at Presley.

He reacts—quick enough—just to duck under as the glass skims the top of his head. It shatters into a million pieces, behind him, and Nini steps into the living room just to hear the glass break.

Water splashes against the walls, the door separating the kitchen and the living room, and drips onto the floor like a leaky faucet. The pieces of broken glass fall onto the ground, clicking against the wooden planks like chimes of a crystal.

Presley jumps away from the shards as Nini steps in. I realize what I've done and shift my gaze to the floor, staring at the results of my anger. The realization sinks into me like bullets fired from a gun, and the room sedates into a mediocre silence, buzzing from the hums of the heater. I held my breath.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what to say.

I just stood there.

Nini walks around, just to see the mess and I couldn't bear to stand the look on her face. I turn and bolt up the stairs, slamming the door close behind me as I lock it—disregarding the one rule established in this house for shared rooms.

But I needed to be alone, and I needed to see through the consequences of my actions.

And what was thought to be my salvation of my jealousy, just turned into my reckoning.

━━━━━

AVA'S NOTES

happy 4th of july, #AllCountriesMatter (ACAB)

i want to shoutout someone today, because they genuinely struck my heart. i want to say thank you to (@cathmae559) for commenting last chapter and giving me a heartfelt review over my story. i was really suffering writing this one chapter, and i couldn't help but reread your comment and how much it motivated me and made me happy. thank you so much. i couldn't reply back bc it didn't allow me to, but i really wanted to say thank you.

on a second note, how do we feel about jealous harlow?

please vote and comment!!