Blair shivers as I attack her neck with tongue and teeth. “Very stereotypical dude-lizard-brain of you.”
I snort, nipping at her neck. “In my fantasies you talk back, but not this much.”
“Obviously the real deal is better,” Blair says airily in the sassy tone that makes my dick hard.
“Watch that mouth, or I’ll fill it up.”
“That’s not really a threatening punishment if I like doing it so much.”
“Fuck, you kill me.”
Blair laughs. I want to bottle the relaxed sound. “In all seriousness, though, I’m pretty sore.”
I direct her face around for a kiss. “That’s why I brought you down here.”
She bites her lip, a beautiful, affectionate expression lighting up her eyes. It cracks into my heart, wrapping it in a soothing balm.
We enter a comfortable silence after Blair snuggles back against my chest. I point out more stars and tell her the mythology behind the visible and non-visible constellations.
The question I’ve been wanting to ask makes my heart thud. I can’t contain it any longer.
“Do you still draw stars?”
Blair jolts. “What? How did you know I used to like drawing stars?”
“You went to the same school as me. Little Boulder Academy.”
“Wait, seriously?” Blair turns in my arms to face me.
“We had an art class together in third grade. You showed me your stars.” I tug her closer, playing with her hair while I murmur my secrets. “You knew I was sad, even though I didn’t say anything. Despite my efforts to be the grumpy little shit I was, you came right up to me and sat down.”
Blair gasps, recognition morphing her expression.
“You told me to make a wish on your star and I did.” I wet my lips. “Whenever I felt alone, I wished on stars.”
Blair cups my face. She’s surprised, awe-struck. “You really were the same boy.”
I turn my cheek into her palm. “I was. I didn’t remember until recently. After you left, I wasn’t happy.” I lock my arms around her small waist. “I wanted you to come back.”
“I wish I could’ve.” Blair’s expression falls, then hardens with bitterness. “That was because my dad left. He ran out on us. Dumped all of his gambling debt on my mom.”
The explanation clears up what little information I pieced together from what I found out about her. With the filled in gaps, I can guess how it shaped Blair to go through that as a kid, and why she fights so hard to protect her mom.
Blair shakes her head, an angry wrinkle marring her brow. “He destroyed everything we had because he was selfish. He left Mom to clean up the mess.”
I press our foreheads together. “I’m sorry. Not just that you went through that, but for being a dick, too. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Not entirely sorry for what my actions put in motion, though. My morals run gray. If I hadn’t started the war between us, we might not be here right now.
She chuckles. “Damn right. But, I mean, I’m not totally innocent here. I did try to steal your car for revenge against your supreme assholery.”
I hum, massaging her ass. “That’s what I like best about you, angel.”
Blair ducks her head, biting my shoulder. We wrestle playfully for a few minutes.
Leaning back against the rocks lining the hot tub, I rake a hand through my hair.
“All this time…” I trail off, leaving the rest left unsaid.
“Yeah,” Blair echoes, picking up on what I didn’t voice.
All this time I wasted on hating her, and here she’s the one who gave me one of my only salvations.
The little girl with the stars and the stubborn thief who steals all of my attention, one and the same.
The way my heart thunders around her is new and unfamiliar, but I think I’m beginning to understand what it means.
Thirty-Three
Devlin
A week of bliss passes where Blair and I are wrapped around each other every minute she’s home.
I’ve been working up to asking if she wants me to go with her when she visits her mom in the hospital every other day after school. It’s a silly idea, maybe. But I want to be with Blair all the time.
Then we’re in the middle of dinner when my parents come home out of nowhere. No notice. They intrude on my bubble with Blair.
The fork pauses halfway to my open mouth when Mom and Dad stand in the entrance to the kitchen, dumping their things without acknowledging us.
Blair darts an unsure look from my parents to me. I’m as surprised as she is. This hasn’t happened before, either.
“Mom.” I clear my throat, setting down my fork. “You’re home.”
Dad tosses a dismissive look at the kitchen island where Blair and I sit side by side on our usual stools. He leaves the room without a word, his footfalls sounding on the varnished floating risers that lead upstairs.
Mom frowns after him, her expression pinched. “Hello, son.”
With perfunctory efficiency, she gives me a drive by kiss on her way to wash her hands in the sink. When she’s done, she grabs a water bottle from the fridge and leaves the room.
They didn’t greet Blair at all.
“Um,” Blair says after a door upstairs shuts. “So, those are your parents?”
“Yeah.” I rub my jaw, stabbing my fork into the chicken on my plate. “Congratulations, you’ve witnessed happy reunion number thirty-eight.”
Blair’s head jerks back at my caustic tone. I can’t help it. My parents always put me in this dour mood.
“Sorry. Finish up, then we’ll go study for midterms.”
She seems like she wants to talk more, but nods and returns to eating dinner. Her worried peeks in my direction wind my spine tighter with tension as I sit in silence.
After dinner, the plates clink when we set them in the sink. We go up to my room and spend an hour on the floor going through spread out flashcards Blair made for the English exam. When it’s late, she casts a longing look at the bed.
“I’ll, uh, go back to the other room tonight.”
She hasn’t called it her bedroom in weeks, much less slept there. We’ve been living in a perfect cocoon until my parents showed up. I don’t want to sleep without her in my bed. I sleep better when I’m wrapped around her.
“They don’t care. You can stay in here if you want.”
“Still. I don’t really know how to do the whole awkward ‘hi, I’m Blair, and I’ve been sleeping in your son’s bed for weeks’ conversation. Amongst…other things.”
Blair turns a pretty shade of pink. I drag her to me, kissing her deeply. Her eyes are darker when we part, pupils dilated and lashes fluttering.
A growl tears through me. “Fuck.”
Blair gives me a soft, shy laugh. “Deal with it. You’ll survive.”
“But at what cost?” I drape myself against her side.
She pushes at me with a wry grin. “Goodnight.”
Blair gathers her flashcards and grabs a paperback she’s been reading from her nightstand before leaving the room. I stare at the closed door after she leaves, willing my twisting heart to calm down.
“Stupid,” I mutter to myself as I climb to my feet.
Going to one of the panels of my closet, I open it and take out the magazine page with our contract agreement written on it. My fingers brush over it, tracing where Blair signed her name.
Now that I’ve caught her, do I get to hold on to her?
Or is the contract the only thing keeping Blair by my side? I wonder if she would go if I tore it up.
* * *
For two days, I’m braced for my parents to say something—anything. It’s what parents should do, but they don’t. There’s barely any acknowledgement of Blair’s presence at the house, and she’s been jittery anytime we’re all in the same room.
It leaves me angrily floundering.
“Midterms this week?” Dad asks, nursing a cup of coffee when I come downstairs.
I grunt in response, pouring a mug for myself.
“Are you prepared?”
My grip on the mug turns white-knuckled as I grit out, “Yes.”
Dad hums, appeased. All he cares about is that I make the grades for pre-med. We don’t have a father-son relationship. We don’t have any kind of relationship that’s salvageable as far as I’m concerned at this point.
I’ll have to be the one to cut the mangled thread holding the last shred of hope we could be a real family, but I’m not strong enough.
Blair enters the kitchen, slipping in with silent stealth. Maybe if she made more noise, my parents might speak to her.
“Want some coffee?”
Flashing a look at my dad, she nods. I want to sigh wearily. That’s not the fighting spirit I love. I pour her coffee and hand over the mug.
The atmosphere in the kitchen is brittle and hostile, my perpetual baseline of anger impossible to control when my parents are home.
“Um, Mr. Murphy?” Dad shows no sign of hearing Blair. She licks her lips. “Could you pass the sugar?”
It sits by Dad’s elbow. He nudges it in Blair’s direction with no response.
“Thanks,” Blair says after it’s clear he isn’t interested in conversation.
“Always a pleasure in the morning, aren’t you, old man?” I sneer.
“Energy wasted is energy not spent on important discoveries.”
Blair’s eyes bulge. The hot burn of embarrassment crawls up my spine.
You haven’t seen anything yet, angel. This isn’t the worst this cold-hearted fucker has ever said to me.
Rubbing my jaw, I scoff, stewing for the fight I’m itching to pick with him. “Yeah. It’s not efficient to talk to your son’s girlfriend or interact with your family. Forget about affection, total time waster.”
Blair’s head snaps to me. I raise my eyebrows as I sip from my coffee. Yeah, that’s right, my expression says. You’re my girl.
Dad isn’t ruffled by my jabs.
Mom walks in, dressed for work. Before they began traveling so much, they made a name for themselves in the medical field here in Ridgeview at a specialist clinic they started to treat various rare conditions. Through their clinic, my parents began to research experimental advancements in medicine and treatment that put them in high demand to speak and work around the country.
“Are we driving together or separate?” Mom grabs a granola bar from the pantry.
My teeth ache from how hard I clench my jaw.
“Separate.” Dad sips his coffee. “Make sure the tech understands the parameters of the clinical trial. I don’t want to explain it to him again.”
Mom hums and turns to me. “Good luck on your tests this week. Your father and I might be here until Friday, but most likely will be flying out to Seattle before then. We’re only in town to oversee the start of this trial before our next obligation.”
Obligation. What bullshit. I feel like I’m one of their fucking obligations and I’m their son.
“Whatever,” I mutter, turning away.
“One other thing, Devlin.” Mom taps on her phone and shows me her screen. It’s a monthly statement. “There’s been an abnormal spike in your spending account.”
Ice crystalizes in my stomach. “Why does it matter if you give me the expense account in the first place? It’s not like I’ve put that big of a dent in it.”
Mom purses her lips. “We just want to make sure you’re being responsible with your spending.”
This is ridiculous. I have thousands left in the account. They fill it up every month, giving me more than I can spend in that amount of time, even when I’m being frivolous.
Blair has turned to a statue across from me, hunching her shoulders to make herself smaller. It pisses me off that she feels she has to make herself unnoticeable.
“I’m being responsible.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.” Mom tucks her phone away. “Have a good day.”
“Should we go, too? We’ll be late.” Blair slips beside me, grasping my limp wrist. Her touch is a balm, calming the rush of poisonous rage.
“Yeah.” I dump the rest of my coffee in the sink and follow Blair to the garage. “I’m sorry. They’re…”
There aren’t words for what my parents are.
“It’s fine.” Blair tosses a concerned glance over her shoulder. “Want me to ride with you?”
“Yeah.” It comes out gruff as I rake my fringe back.
I need her by my side now more than ever. I’m growing greedier with her time.
Thirty-Four
Blair
The lines have blurred. In fact, the tasks have stopped completely. The deal is pretty much over without either of us saying it.
And yet, the new hospital bill I received is paid in full. There’s extra money in my wallet.
Somewhere along the way, I blinked and didn’t notice that Devlin and I fell into some undefined relationship.
It’s undeniable. We’re together often, all over each other once his parents leave the house empty. Our life at his house is domestic as fuck, leaving me squirmy and confused because I’m starting to catch feelings for something I can’t have forever.
This has always had an end date on it. I’ve been living on borrowed time. Soon enough the issues I’ve been running from are going to catch up.
No matter how fast you run, your demons and problems always come for their pound of flesh.
“Hey, Blair! Wait up!” Sean calls from down the hall as I leave the library with an armful of books. He catches up to me and slings an arm over my shoulder as we walk. “What do ya got there?”
“The library gets rid of books once a month.”
“Oh, so you were shopping for new stuff. Cool.”
The way he says shopping hits me hard. It’s not like once things shifted with Devlin and I, the rest of my school experience changed completely, but most of the relentless bullying stopped. Still, these privileged assholes can’t help the way they talk. Disdain for my way of life bleeds into their tone when they’re just making conversation. I didn’t think these people were suddenly my friends, but Devlin’s closest circle have been nicer since the beach party.
“Yeah, cool,” I repeat in a clipped tone. “Can I help you with something?”
“Oh, yeah!” Sean snaps his fingers and yanks me closer to whisper in my ear. “I’ve been wondering about your rates. When Dev’s finished, I was hoping to secure your services.”
Every muscle in my body goes rigid. “Sorry, what?”
Sean chuckles and the sound makes me want to sink my fist into his gut. “Don’t play coy. You don’t really have the round features to pull it off. Girls like Thea have that shit on lock with the cute button nose and Bambi eyes, y’know? Shame about her fugly as shit granny sweaters, though.”
A disgusted scoff rips from my throat before I can rein in my reaction. What a fucking pig.
“No, Sean, I don’t know what you mean. Elaborate. Now.”
Sean’s head jerks. “Oof, girl. Is that attitude extra? I think I want to add some of that on every now and then. I like a little bit of fight. That’s hot.”
Slapping his arm off my shoulders, I plant myself in front of him. Passing students stare at the scene, but I don’t care. I’m three seconds from kicking this dick-for-brains in the balls.
“What are you talking about?” I hiss.
Sean gives me a lopsided smile and leans close. “Dude, you’re like, an escort. That’s what you’re doing with Devlin, right?”
My heart stops working as a pulse of adrenaline skitters across my nerve endings. Everything is icy and frozen inside.
“What?” I choke on my question. Oh my god. Willing myself to breathe so I don’t pass out, I dig my grip into the books, grasping desperately at the way the spines dig into my skin to hang onto my temper. “Why do you think that?”
Sean shrugs. “It’s been a rumor going around for a couple of weeks. Trent told me. So,”
he drawls. “Your rates? How much will it set me back for the 24/7 thing?”
My fist flies before I can control the anger coursing through me. I may not be physically strong, but I know how to throw a punch. Sean is caught off guard, doubling over with a winded groan when my fist lands in his gut.
“I’m not a fucking hooker, you dumb sack of shit!”
The people watching give up on pretending to do it on the down low, openly gawking. Some of them have phones out, because if there’s drama it’s getting filmed these days. Fucking posterity.
My chest heaves as I stalk away from Sean, seething.
Did Devlin know about this? He has to. Trent and Sean are his closest teammates other than Connor Bishop. How long has he let me believe that things between us were good?
He called me his girlfriend in front of his parents, for fuck’s sake.
Tears well in my eyes. I swipe at them with a frustrated sound. I will not cry over this.
The bullshit at this school can’t touch me.
It doesn’t end there, though. Now that I’m aware of it and the video evidence of my showdown with Sean has spread around the school, I keep catching snide remarks about being Devlin’s live-in whore throughout the rest of the day.
“Here comes Pretty Woman,” a boy in my study hall announces, grinning at the wave of titters.
Nina’s in my study hall. She sits in front of me instead of taking her usual seat with Bailey. I spend half the period shooting her bleached blowout a fierce glare, unable to get any homework done.
When Nina turns around to make the move she clearly has been wanting to, I’m ready for it. I set my notebook aside and cross my arms. She gives me a tight, prissy smirk.
“You can suck up to Dev all you want.” Nina curls her manicured fingers around the back of her seat. A cruel, triumphant look flashes in her eyes. “Even ride his dick as much as I hear you have, but here’s the thing, Raggedy Anne. It won’t last forever. Guys like Devlin don’t settle down with trash they picked up on the street.”
Tempting Devil: Sinners and Saints Book 2 Page 23
