The Wicked We Have Done Read Free Page B

but my childhood best friend as well. So many students I met since I started college thought I was insane. College was a time to break free from childhood—a time for students to experiment and sleep with people they didn’t even like and join sororities where the members, for a few fleeting years, would be as close to them as sisters until they graduated and never saw them again.
    The three of us could have gone somewhere other than Phoenix for school. But Phoenix was only an hour away from home, and in Phoenix, we’d have each other.
    And had them I did. I’d been living with Meghan for three years. Liam had his own apartment with a roommate, but he was practically living with us as well.
Our third wheel
, Meghan liked to call him.
    Liam leaned over me and kissed my neck, his languid tongue rolling over my collarbone. I gasped as his fingers traced the inside of my thigh. “I love you,” he whispered. “Meghan’s probably just excited. She knows what’s waiting for you.”
    “A quickie before class?”
    “Funny.” His voice rumbled in my ear. “I meant out on the patio.”
    He had piqued my curiosity. But his eyes that were lighter than the sun-washed sky outside weren’t giving me a clue as to what he was getting at.
    “That was your cue to get your ass out of bed.”
    “Thanks for that.” I smacked him playfully and sat, locating my pajamas scattered across the floor. I dressed and tied my hair up. As I walked out to the living room, I hoped Meghan had made an excessive amount of bacon.
    I looked toward the sliding glass door. On the balcony sat a full-sized wooden easel. I squealed and ran outside. Liam followed.
    “Why?” I asked.
    “What do you mean, why?”
    I spun to him. “What’s the occasion?”
    “I’m tired of seeing you ‘working’ with colored pencils and printer paper.”
    I didn’t have any decent art supplies. It wasn’t like I’d been an artist all my life. I never took any art classes prior to college, but I knew I could draw. I knew I could conceptualize images and create them.
    Then one day, during my freshman year, I decided to change my major to art. Because being a business major was unfulfilling.
    Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter what you get your degree in. People just want to think it does.
    I didn’t tell Mom until the summer before my sophomore year. Safe to say she was still bitter.
    “You didn’t have to,” I said, even though I was so ecstatic that I couldn’t stop shaking.
    Meghan sauntered outside. She wore an apron from the coffee shop she used to work at. “You know what this means?” She waved a dirty spatula in the air.
    “We can get our blog up and running.” I bounced on my toes.
    “We can get our effing blog up and running.”
    Meghan and I liked the concept of teamwork, and an organic fan base. We had this brilliant idea not long before. Meghan was a photography major and damn good photographer. We’d been best friends ever since high school, and even then, she was obsessed with her work. We wanted to play around with perception—how a photograph could transform into a painting. It could be the same image and yet entirely different.
    But this was only theory.
    “Art-supply shop this afternoon?” she asked.
    “Absolutely.”
    “Damn, eggs are burning.” Meghan ran inside.
    Liam pushed his sandy hair back. “I gotta take a shower and get to the library. Even on Saturdays I can’t relax. College blows.”
    “I love you.”
    He shot me that perfect, lopsided grin of his. “Because I buy you easels?”
    “Because you know me. You know that a wooden easel means more than the world to me.”
    He took my hand and dragged me to him, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I love you too. More than you know.”

2
    I have the worst hangover imaginable. I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth and swallow away the bile in my throat. Water. I need water, now.
    I open my eyes to clean, bright light and groan, covering my head with a flat, itchy