The last thing I expected when I opened the door was to see Nick standing there with the shit kicked out of him. I was surprised, as I walked up the stairs, to see that he was calling me. When I looked up at him, that feeling changed to terror.
“Where the hell were you?” he shouted. As always, he was intimidating. The question was unsettling, but his appearance was truly awful. His left eye was purple, his lip split, but that wasn’t the worst: his torso was covered in bruises still spreading under that tanned skin, over those shapely abs. Seeing those wounds paralyzed me. In a panic, I started to feel faint. I hated the sight of blood, and my ears started ringing. I had to hold on to the doorframe to stay standing.
“What happened to you?” I asked quietly.
He was angry. I could see it in his every gesture. It was almost as if his wounds were my fault.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
I shook my head and shut the door soundlessly. My mother and Will were in bed, and I didn’t want to wake them. Nick didn’t seem to care, though, to judge by his voice, which was nearly shouting.
“I was with Mario,” I said, walking closer to him. I wanted to run away from those horrible wounds, but I couldn’t ignore the state he was in. “Lion and Jenna met up with us to have ice cream. What do you care, anyway? Have you seen yourself?” I reached out without realizing it to touch a bruise on his ribs.
He reached out to brush me aside but seemed to change his mind and grasped my hand tightly until it hurt. I looked up and saw the rage and fear in his eyes.
“Come to the kitchen. I need to talk to you.” He pulled me away, and I couldn’t help looking at his bare back. My God, you could see every single muscle in it as he walked! That awakened in me a desire to touch his firm body. Another bruise was starting to form on his side. I hated whoever had done that to him so much, my vision started clouding.
Nick turned on a table lamp, so the light was dim as we sat down on a bench next to the island. He never let go of my hand. It was killing me to see him like this; his eyes were squinting from the pain, and all I could think about was what I could do to make him feel better.
“Did you notice anything weird while you were out?” he asked, worry clouding his face. “Anyone following you or something like that?”
I hadn’t expected the question. Looking him straight in the eye, unable to believe what I was hearing, I said, “No, of course not. Why?”
He let me go and turned aside, frustrated. I wished he had gone on holding me, but I just sat there, still.
“Ronnie hasn’t forgotten about the race.” Now I could guess what this was all about. “He wants revenge, and if he sees you, he won’t hesitate to hurt you.”
“Is he the one who beat you up?” I asked, cursing the bastard in my mind.
“Him and his three friends,” he admitted.
“My God, Nick!” I said, feeling a strange pressure in my chest. I brought my hands up to his face, feeling his wounds. “Four against one?”
He stiffened and then relaxed. Skirting over his wounds, my fingers traveled down his cheeks, feeling the raspy touch of his stubble, which made him so frightening and sexy at the same time.
“You worried about me, Freckles?” he asked. He was trying to be funny, but I couldn’t laugh as I felt his bruises and he grimaced. He reached up and pulled my hands away. “I’m fine,” he said.
“You have to go to the police,” I said, walking off toward the fridge. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and returned to him, placing it over his eye.
“With guys like that, you don’t go to the cops, but anyway, we’ve got other problems.” He grabbed the bag and pulled it away from his face so he could look directly at me. “Noah, until things calm down, I don’t want you going anywhere by yourself, hear me?” His voice sounded like that of a big brother. “These people are dangerous, and they’ve got their eyes on you. Me, too, but I don’t care if I have to take a beating. I can defend myself. You, though… If they find you out on your own, they’ll eat you alive.”
“Nicholas, they won’t do anything to me. They don’t want problems just because I wounded some dickhead’s ego,” I said, ignoring the look of warning in his eyes.
“Until this is over, I’m not going to take my eyes off of you. I don’t care how you feel about it.”
Were we never going to get along?
“You’re unbearable, you know it?” I hissed.
“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged.
“Put a warm cloth on your bruises and keep something cold on your eye and lip,” I said, feeling bad for him. “You’ll feel like shit tomorrow, but if you take an aspirin and stay in bed, you’ll be fine in two or three days.”
His forehead furrowed, but a smile spread across his lips.
“You an expert in helping people recover from beatings?”
I didn’t bother responding.
That night I went straight to bed… and I had nightmares.
The next morning, I got up in a bad mood. I hadn’t slept well, and the one thing I wanted was to stay there lying around my room. Only one thing made me slide out of the bed and walk toward the bathroom. Whether I admitted it or not, I wanted to know how Nick was. I don’t know when or how or why, but I felt suddenly worried about him. Things seemed to be going smoother with us. He hadn’t tried anything with me since he’d touched me in the kitchen that time I had almost cut my finger, and a part of me was bitter over it. The only time my life felt good in LA was when I was in his arms. He made me forget everything else. But I knew it was better for us to get along than to be constantly shifting between making out and hating each other to death, which was the way things had been before.
I took a quick shower and thought about the night before. I’d been angry at Nick for how he talked to Mario at dinner, but my fury had disappeared as soon as I’d seen him looking like hell in the vestibule of our home.
Mario had been a gentleman the night before. He’d invited me out again, and I’d said yes. I wanted to forget my ex and my ridiculous obsession with Nicholas.
I got dressed quickly and walked down to the kitchen barefoot to have breakfast. There wasn’t a trace of Nick, but Will and my mother were sitting at the table talking loudly about something.
“Good morning,” I said, going to the fridge and serving myself a glass of orange juice. Prett, our cook, was making something that smelled wonderful. I walked over and looked down into the pot, where she was stirring bubbling chocolate.
“That looks delicious! What are you making?” I asked.
Prett smiled.
“Mr. Leister’s birthday cake,” she said cheerfully. I turned to Will.
“Wow, happy birthday, I didn’t realize,” I said, looking sheepish. He laughed.
“It’s not my birthday, it’s Nick’s,” he said, amused. My mother smiled, too.
Wow. Nick’s birthday… I didn’t know why, but it made me mad that I hadn’t known.
“He’s outside. Go congratulate him,” my mother said. “Yesterday he got in a fight with some thug who tried to rob him, so don’t get scared when you see his face.”
I nodded, impressed at my stepbrother’s skill at lying. I grabbed a pastry from the table and walked out to the yard. He was lying on a deck chair in the shade, wearing sunglasses, a T-shirt, and a swimsuit. He looked asleep. I imagined he hadn’t slept any better than I had.
I crept up beside him.
“Happy birthday!” I shouted as loudly as I could, laughing as I saw how I’d startled him.
“Goddammit!” he shouted, taking off his glasses to reveal his eye, which was now an iridescent mix of green, purple, and blue.
I couldn’t help cracking up. He tried to act tough, but when he saw I couldn’t stop laughing, his anger dissolved into a smile.
“You think this is funny?” he asked, putting aside his glasses and standing up. I started walking backward. “I’m sorry!” I shouted, raising my hands, still unable to stifle my giggles.
“Oh, you’ll be sorry, all right,” he said, and charged after me. I ran, but it was pointless. A second later, I had him behind me, and soon he’d lifted me up over his shoulder. He groaned; he must have been aching all over, but I could barely hear it over my laughter.
“No, Nick, please!” I shouted, shaking all over. He ignored me and jumped straight into the pool, both of us fully dressed.
I struggled away from him as soon as we plunged into the water. It was warm on that late-summer day. When I got to the surface, I splashed water in his face. He was dying laughing. My white dress was clinging to me. I was glad I’d put on black underwear. Otherwise, it could have been really embarrassing.
He shook his hair with a Justin Bieber–like movement and paddled over to me, trapping me in a corner of the pool.
“You can apologize now for nearly giving me a heart attack on my twenty-second birthday,” he said, wading over until our bodies were just inches apart.
I tried to push him away, but no luck.
“In your dreams,” I said, playing along. Adrenaline was rushing through my veins, and butterflies were flapping in my stomach. The feeling was like racing at two hundred miles an hour over the desert sands.
With a calculating look, he wrapped his hands around my waist.
“What are you doing?” I asked in a muffled voice when he was so close his chest was touching mine.
“Tell me what you feel right now,” he said in a hoarse voice. There was nothing funny about his expression now—it was 100 percent desire. I felt a wave of pleasure and fear all at once. What if they saw us?
I shook my head as his hands moved down to my thighs. His fingers pushed aside the wet fabric of the dress and slid between my legs. I opened them and wrapped them around his hips.
“I’m not going to stop until you tell me to,” he said, pushing me against the wall of the pool. The water reached up to his shoulders and my neck. I was practically at his mercy. I knew with a word I could get him to let me go—he’d said that, hadn’t he? But what was it I really wanted?
“They’re going to see us,” I mumbled. My cheeks were burning, my body burning; the water did nothing to quench them.
“I’ll worry about that,” he said, pushing my dress farther up and rolling it under my breasts. He looked down at me. His gaze and his fingers, which were stroking my back now, excited me. I could feel him throbbing against my hips, and all I could think about was our lips joining one more time.
“You want me to stop?” he asked, his mouth millimeters away from mine.
In his eyes, I could see every single shade of blue. I was drunk on him, on the way he looked at me, as if he wished to devour me.
I shook my head and came close so he would kiss me. My hands were already wrapped around his neck. I couldn’t even remember how they’d gotten there, and I pulled him toward me, but he resisted, moving in the opposite direction.
“Tell me what you feel and I’ll give you what you want,” he ordered me.
“What makes you think I want something you can give me?” I asked, burning with desire.
He grinned. “Because you’re shaking and you can’t stop looking at my lips.”
“I’m not going to tell you what I feel,” I said.
I heard a grunt come from the back of his throat.
“You’re impossible,” he said, and then he did press his lips into mine. The euphoria of winning that game soon turned to something more. I felt a million sensations, none of them ones I could speak aloud. His tongue slid into my mouth, and he kissed me ferociously. We were soaked, our bodies joined like two halves of a whole. I tugged at his hair, he bit my lower lip, and I thought I was going to die from pleasure.
I heard the sliding door open, jerked away, tugging my dress down, and grabbed the side of the pool to keep from sinking into the deep end.
“Hey guys, we’re going!” my mother shouted. Nicholas waved, looking completely relaxed. I had to take a few deep breaths before looking up. “Did you tell her, Nick?”
“Not yet!” he called back to her, clearly amused.
“Okay. Well, we’ll talk later. Have fun!” she said.
I turned to Nick as she walked back inside.
“Tell me what?”
He pulled me back toward him. I didn’t struggle: I didn’t have the strength to, and I didn’t want to miss out on that feast for the eyes.
“They gave me four tickets to the Bahamas for my birthday. They made it pretty clear they want you to come along, you know, to help us develop our relationship as siblings.” He grinned maliciously. “I’ve invited Jenna and Lion, and I want you to come, too.”
I could hardly believe it, especially after our previous conversations. Going on vacation with Nick… I could tell he was observing my reaction.
“What happened to us just being friends?” I asked. I wanted to know what had made him change his mind.
“That’s still on the table…especially now, when you’re in danger and it’s my fault.”
“That’s why you want to take me? To keep me safe from Ronnie?” If that was the real motive, I was disappointed.
He pursed his lips.
“That’s one reason, but not the primary one, Freckles.”
He leaned his forehead into mine.
“Nicholas, what are we doing?”
“Don’t flip out, okay?” He grabbed my waist as I started to sink. “I don’t want you here when I’m not around. I said that yesterday, and I meant it. You could wind up hurt.”
“Nicholas…” That stung, and I tried to turn away from him, but he wouldn’t let me.
“Come! We’ll have fun,” he said, kissing me again on the lips. The sweetness of that gesture made me shudder.
“What about us, though?” I replied. I couldn’t help but think what might happen if our parents found out. “I can’t do this with you. It’s absurd, we don’t even get along, we’re just letting our physical attraction get the better of us—”
“All I know is when I see you, the only thing I can think about is touching you and kissing you all over,” he said, planting his lips just below my earlobe.
“I can’t be with anyone right now,” I said, pushing him away. He looked mad.
“Who said anything about being with anybody? Stop analyzing everything and just enjoy it. This is going to be fun.”
I could tell he wasn’t being straight with me—he had to want something more—but then again, this was Nick; he used girls and threw him aside. He had to just want me for my body. What else could it be? And if I wanted him for the same reason, why should I forgo the pleasure?
“Fine, but there are conditions,” I said. “No tying anyone down, no arguments. I just got out of a relationship, and the last thing I want is to relive what happened with Dan.”
“Are you saying you want an open relationship?” he asked. “I think you’re the first woman I’ve ever known who’s asked for that, but whatever. Just sex then?”
His eyes were cold. I didn’t like that remark one bit.
“Jerkoff!” I insulted him. “What do you mean, just sex? Who do you think I am? I’m seventeen, not twenty-seven. I’m not going to just up and sleep with you!”
Baffled, he responded, “You just told me you want an open relationship. What the hell do you think that means?”
I was lost. In my world, an open relationship meant you made out sometimes and that was basically what we were doing. But then again, Nick had been around the block multiple times. Compared to him, I was just a girl; I couldn’t play in his league. Nicholas wasn’t going to be happy with a little bit; he’d want to go all the way. I’d have known that if I’d thought over the past three weeks clearly. In that brief time, I’d gone way further with him than I had with Dan.
“Forget about it,” I said, feeling I was playing at a disadvantage. He was fire, and I didn’t want to get burned. “I like this new relationship we have. I even feel like we can start to get along. Why would I want to mess that up?”
He looked at me as if he didn’t understand a word of what I was saying. I didn’t really know what I wanted, either, but casual sex wasn’t something I was into.
“Noah…we won’t do anything you don’t want to do,” he said in a tone that made me melt. He seemed to understand every single thing going through my head. It almost scared me how easily he could read my thoughts.
Blushing, I wished the earth would just open and swallow me up.
“I’d rather we just be friends,” I said, not especially convinced.
“Are you sure? Just friends?”
I nodded, looking down into the water.
“Fine,” he said in what sounded to me like a condescending voice. “But you’re coming to celebrate my birthday with me. If you’re my friend, then you can act like one.”
He swam off and then reached up and lifted himself out of the pool. To me, his words sounded like You’re scared and I know it, so I’ll wait till you’re ready.
But if that was so, what was it about me that would make Nick wait?
I spent the rest of the day in my room reading and writing a short story I’d begun working on a long time before. I liked writing as much as I did reading, and one of my dreams was being a great writer in the future. Sometimes I imagined myself being known all over the world, selling millions of copies, and traveling to promote my books and tell stories people would remember forever.
My mother had never done anything with her life because she had gotten pregnant with me when she was sixteen. My father had been only nineteen then, and he hadn’t had any education. His one shot had been racing in NASCAR. Mom still remembered how hard it had been to raise me when she was just a girl herself, and she wanted to give me all the things she had wanted when I was her age, a good college. Those had always been her dreams, and she was going to make them come true. To please her, I’d always tried to get good grades, had played on the hockey team, and had written from the time I was a girl. A part of me always wanted to make her proud.
As I got lost in thought, looking out the huge window in my room, someone knocked at my door and came in. My mother was there with a bag with the St. Marie logo. I knew whatever was in there would ruin what was left of my day.
“Your uniform arrived. Try it on, and then go downstairs so Prett can make any adjustments to it you need. Also, we’re going to give Nick his cake in a little bit. They don’t blow out candles or anything the way you and I do on our birthdays, but I think that’s terrible, and I’m going to do whatever I can to change their habits.”
“Mom, I don’t think Nick’s going to be into it,” I said, trying to imagine him sitting at a table making wishes.
“Whatever,” she said, closing the door behind her.
I got up and took out my uniform. It was as horrible as I’d imagined. The skirt was pleated green plaid with some kind of clip on the side to close it. It hung down below my knees. The shirt was white and baggy, and to my horror, there was even a green-and-red tie that matched the gray, red, and green sweater. The socks were green, too, and reached my knees. When I put them all on and looked in the mirror, I made the nastiest frown in history. I took everything off but the skirt and shirt—the two things Prett could fix—and went downstairs.
On the landing, I found Nick with his phone pressed to his ears. When he saw me, his eyes bulged, and a smile crossed his face. I scowled at him, resting my fists on my waist.
“Sorry, I gotta go. I need to make fun of someone,” he said, chuckling and putting his phone in his pocket.
“You think you’re funny?” I asked, dying from shame.
“This must be the best birthday present you could have ever given me, Freckles,” he said, laughing at my expense.
“Yeah? How about I give you this, too?” I said, flipping him off and moving past him to the living room, where my mother and the maid were waiting on me.
“If you come to dinner with me tonight, I promise I won’t send around the photos I just took of you,” he said. I turned back, furious. He was taking the jokes too far.
“I’m having dinner with Mario tonight, so no thanks,” I replied, knowing it would make him mad.
In the living room, there was a footstool ready for me to stand on so Prett could take my measurements. As I got up on it, Nick flopped down on the sofa, observing me with a cold and pensive look.
“Lift your arms up, Noah,” my mother said, helping Prett with the pins. I tried to ignore Nicholas’s presence, but it was hard, especially when I remembered that kiss we’d shared in the pool and everything else that had come along with it. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to resist him, but one thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to let him just use me. That’s why I was going out with Mario that night. I wanted to have fun during what was left of the summer, enjoy the company of different guys, not be tied down by anyone, and forget that asshole Dan.
“Ow!” I said when a pin pricked my thigh. Stupid Nick started laughing on the sofa.
“Be still, okay?” my mother said. There wasn’t much left to do. They’d taken in the skirt above my knees, and after their alterations, the shirt would look almost feminine.
Five minutes later, I was ready to take the clothes off and give them to Prett so she could work on them.
Nick stood, about to follow me upstairs, but my mother took us both by the arm and pulled us toward the kitchen.
“Today’s your birthday, Nick, so you’re going to blow out candles just like Noah and I do and everyone else does,” she said with a smile.
I grinned when I saw the unbelieving look on Nick’s face. He looked so old next to me, so mature…
“Really, there’s no need,” he started to object.
William was in the kitchen wearing his glasses and looking at his laptop. He must have been working. He smiled when he saw us come in.
“You look lovely, Noah,” he said, looking at my uniform full of pins. I had to be careful not to stick myself when I walked.
“Yeah, right,” I said.
My mother pushed Nicholas into a chair and brought over the chocolate cake Prett had made. Nicholas looked so out of place that I couldn’t help but be amused, just as he’d been amused at my dilemma minutes before.
On the cake, there were two candles shaped like the number 22. My mother lit them and began to sing, shoving Will to try to get him to participate. The whole thing was so funny that I joined in as Nick glared at all of us with his sky-blue eyes.
“Don’t forget to make a wish,” I reminded him before he blew the candles out.
As he did so, looking up at me, I had to ask myself: What could a person who had it all wish for?
