Mine to Claim (Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts) Read Online Free PDF

a lavender scooped-neck sweater that barely brushed her hips, perfectly applied makeup, and all that luxurious hair pulled into a haphazard braid hanging over her right shoulder. She looked like sex on a platter waiting to be served to the highest bidder. While I looked like I should be on my way to a bus stop or to hitchhike my way out of town.
    “It’s comfortable and I don’t have anybody to impress,” had been my response.
    “But there’re always possibilities, Grace. You have to prepare for the possibilities,” she advised, turning back to face the mirror, checking her glossed lips one more time.
    “Not when the temperature has dropped twenty degrees and I’ve been on my feet more this week than I have in what feels like the last ten years of my life. I couldn’t care less about possibilities tonight.”
    Scarlett sighed. “I’m sorry about the bar.”
    I wanted to sigh too because I was really tired of her apologizing for something that wasn’t her fault.
    “Stop it about that, it’s over. I’m not even thinking about it anymore. Let’s just go and get this over with,” I said, heading to the door, hoping she’d follow my lead and talk about something other than the bar or Chris or Aidan—even though she never brought up Aidan.
    His face and voice were just never very far from my mind. But that was my issue, not hers.
    Pierce lived about fifteen minutes from campus in a small apartment building that looked more like a warehouse. Scarlett parked across the street and climbed out of the car immediately after snatching the key out of the ignition. I, however, sat there a few seconds longer staring up at the building and wondering how smart going inside was.
    To be clear, I never used to be averse to going to parties. Well, I’d never been invited to many. The crowd I hung with back in Seattle were their own brand of stuck-up and cool. Stuck-up because they thought the money their parents had made them better than those whose parents did not have large bank accounts, luxurious cars, and houses that appeared in doctor’s office magazines. And cool, because they had to think that of themselves since nobody else in the school did. I did everything my parents told me all through grade school, then I hit middle school and I began doing everything Rebecca and Misty told me to do. Hence the reason I started going out with Rory my sophomore year in high school—he was Rebecca’s first cousin.
    For the record, Rory was also very cute and captain of the debate team and the chess club and on his way to Harvard to become an attorney just like his father and grandfather before him. His life had been completely mapped out for him and he was more than happy to walk in those footsteps filled with money with a great big smile on his face. He was used to getting everything he wanted, just like the rest of their clique, so when I went against him that one time I became public enemy number one. My punishment, two years of continued degradation and embarrassment as Rory’s official girlfriend, while he slept with any and every other girl he could instead.
    I should have been strong enough to break up with him, to tell him and his stupid band of brainless followers to go to hell. Instead, I took the safe route, letting my parents, all of our parents, believe that Rory and I were the happy little couple and that one day we’d graduate college and marry, combining our families’ net worth into an astronomical sum.
    Finally, I came to my senses. I stood up to my parents, sort of, and I left Seattle.
    The sound of Scarlett banging on the car window jolted me from my thoughts and I opened the car door, resolute to continue on my path of forward movement.
    “You getting cold feet?” she asked after I’d closed the door and we walked across the street.
    I shook my head. “Nope. But my hands are freezing. You really need to get that heat fixed in your car.”
    She frowned, then smiled. “Later.”
    The word should have