I shake my head. That girl is determined, crazy, brave, and . . . limber.
The front door opens and slams shut. My mom rushes out of the house and stomps off to her car. She’s carrying luggage. My dad marches after her.
“I said we’d fucking talk, Emilia.”
“You call that talking? We screamed at one another, Six.”
I watch, helpless, as my parents’ marriage unfolds into what-the-fuckery.
“Where you going?” He grabs her arm.
She yanks her arm from his grip. “Anywhere but where you’re at.”
Ouch.
“I’m done. We’re done.”
“Give me another chance.”
“You had your chance to explain and you didn’t. Why the hell was she in your hotel room?”
My dad opens his mouth. Shuts it. I kick at the ground. Damn him, why is it so difficult for him to open up to my mom lately when he never had a problem before? Or is he keeping his trap closed because that woman in his hotel room had something to do with his job?
My dad’s line of work has to do with foreign trade. He won’t get into the details, but he travels a lot. My hunch is what he does is super-agent secret shit, or he’s a mobster. He looks more mobster than secret agent.
He’s lined with muscles. Tatted. His sleeve tattoos are bold and frightening. Skulls. Snakes. The Grim Reaper prominent on his chest. Has a mean scar transecting his face from his right brow to the left corner of his mouth. He got in a bad knife fight. That’s all he’ll say. My mom says otherwise. She said he saved her life, and indebted to him, she agreed to marry him.
That’s the spiel she gives me on how they met, but I doubt she just gave in and married my scarred, mean-ass father. My mother is beautiful, with her kind eyes and infectious laughter. Every time she laughs, which is less often these days, my dad stops what he’s doing and stares at her.
I scram as soon as the heat level in the room goes from hot to sweltering hot. My parents, they are horndogs. Not lately, though. Lately, they’ve been sleeping in different rooms.
“Have your lawyer call mine. I don’t want to see you again.”
“The house, the cars, the money—”
“I don’t want any of that, Six.” She tosses the luggage into the back seat of her SUV.
“Anything. I’ll give you anything, Emilia. Stay. Please.”
She faces my dad. There are tears in my mother’s hazel eyes. I can’t decide who I hate more. My dad for making my mom cry. Or my mom for leaving us.
“I want the truth.”
“You’ll hate me.”
“I hate you now.”
“Emilia.” He extends his hand to her.
She steps forward, then shakes her head. “We need time apart, Six. I’m sorry.”
Mom rushes over to me and pulls me in for a hug.
“Take care of your father, Seven. I’ll be in touch. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I don’t hug her back. My arms hang at my sides. She’s leaving us. Goddammit, she’s abandoning us.
My chest aching, I step out of her hold and go stand by my father. I never wanted it to come to this. For my parents to give up on something that brought them happiness.
It’s all I remember growing up. My parents flirting, smiling, laughing. Them treating each day together as though it were their last. Now there’s nothing.
Mom gets in the car and drives off without sparing us a glance in the rearview or sticking her hand out the window to wave at us. Normal things she did even when she did something as simple as returning to the grocery store for one dumb and giant onion for our burgers.
Can’t have hamburgers without slices of sweet Walla Walla onions, she’d say with a smile while wiping away the tears pouring down her face. No matter what my mother did, refrigerate, nuke, put on dark shades, she always cried when cutting up onions.
“Shit, Son, what the fuck is wrong with me? I just let the best thing that’s ever happened to me walk the fuck out of my life.”
“She’ll come back.” She has to.
My dad has survived some bad shit in his past from my shooting the breeze with my cousins in Cali. My mom leaving? Yeah, I don’t know if he’ll survive that kind of devastation.
How did Leigh survive her parents’ deaths?
Seven foster homes in five years?
Her life growing up in a shitty neighborhood?
I have to know.
That girl is brave and strong.
Defiant.
Doesn’t take shit from anyone, including the biggest jerk of them all—me.
18
LEIGH
I lay in bed and think about my afternoon with Rue and Red. After I slurped up my pho, I filled out the paperwork Mason gave me.
When all of us were done eating and we paid, we headed back to the auto parts store, and I dropped off the paperwork. Then we did the fun stuff. Talking. Laughing. Window shopping. Red didn’t want to be caught dead going into a clothing store with us girls, so we indulged him and stared at the well-dressed mannequins in the window.
I might have stared too longingly at the sapphire princess dress with the plunging neckline. Rue clasps her hands behind her back and rocks on her heels, looking from me to the dress.
“Size six, right?”
“How’d you guess?” I smirk.
She and I could be twins, except her eyes are deep pools of ink and mine are a light shade of brown. She gives me a cheeky smile.
“Homecoming is in a month. You have time to save up.”
“Mason will be more than willing to give you hours,” Red chimes in.
“We’ll see.” A lot can happen. And who would ask me to homecoming anyway? The students at Cambridge High hate me for talking back to their king.
Done with admiring a dress I could never afford, and even if I could, it isn’t high enough on my list of priority purchases, I rush to the next window and make a mental list of the desserts I’d buy from Sweet Creations Two, a pun on too.
“Is there a Sweet Creations One?” I ask.
“In McMillan, a half hour from here. Same owner. He thought it’d be cool to have a one and a two.”
“Are both things like the other or is one not like the other?” I ask, putting my spin on the lyrics from a Taylor Swift song.
From the way Red is looking at me, like I’m off my rocker, he doesn’t get my dumb attempt to be funny. Rue? Rue laughs in her hands.
“You are definitely my sister from another mother,” she said. “Do you have sisters or brothers?”
“None. You?”
“My sister, Riley. She’s a senior at DU.”
“Does she like it there?”
“Not really. She’s mainly there for the degree and her friends. They call themselves the Sass Squad. It’s a play on Sasquatch.”
“Like Big Foot?”
“Yep.” She pulls out her phone from her back pocket and shows me a picture of her sister and the girls on the Sass Squad. “The one with light-brown hair is Gwen Bliss. Gwen’s family owns a lavender farm in McMillan. Then there’s Ever Moretti. Isn’t she pretty? Her brown hair is borderline black, it’s so dark. Her brother owns a tattoo shop. Next to her is Syn Winters. Is that not a sick name or what? And look at her piercings. Cool, right?”
I nod. I love the white-blonde girl with the pixie face’s face piercings. Her bottom lip, nose, and right brow are pierced. I point to the last girls in the lineup.
“Is this your sister?”
“How’d you guess?” She smiles and crosses her eyes.
“Because you two could be twins.” High cheekbones. Aristocratic nose. Small chin. Plump lips. What my dad would call kissable. He teased my mom all the time about her full lips.
“Next to her is Arie Kim. Arie has three siblings, and they and her all have different fathers.”
Wow. “Why do they call themselves Sass Squad?”
Rue puts her phone away. “Freshman year, Gwen threw a Sasquatch party at her f
amily’s farm. She’s superstitious and thought paying homage to the big guy in a place where there’s been sightings would bring luck to her family, but no one came except for her roommates, Ever and Arie, and Riley and Syn who roomed together. That’s how they all became friends. They’re all sassy too.”
“That’s great.” It is.
“You forgot to mention my brother.” Red wedges between us, slings his arms over our shoulders, and steers us to the next shop.
It’s a café. The boy wants coffee. I do too. I’d overslept and rushed out the door, shoveling food in my mouth. Yeah, not very ladylike.
“What about him?”
“That he’s in Dumas too. He’s keeping an eye on your sister. She has a bad habit.”
Rue shoves Red’s arm off her shoulder. “Don’t destroy Leigh’s opinion of my sister before she’s formed them. Riley is the kindest person. She just needs a push in the right direction. That right direction is away from Midnight. Midnight is an ass.”
“Hey, that’s my brother you’re speaking of.”
“Then don’t be so hard on my sister, making her out to be this bad person when she’s not.”
They’re arguing in the middle of the sidewalk. People are staring. I put my hands on their arms. “Hey, we all have our flaws and our bad days. I’m sure they’re nice people, and I can’t wait to meet them. Thank you for telling me about them and showing me a picture of your sister and her friends. I like putting faces to the names.”
Rue heaves a big sigh.
Red shoves his fingers through his hair.
“Do you know what this old lady, we call her Grandma Chu, used to do when kids fought?”
“No, what?” Rue narrows her eyes.
Red crosses his arms over his chest.
“She made them hug for a minute.”
“I’m not hugging her.”
“No way am I hugging him.”
“It’s sixty seconds. You can endure touching one another for sixty seconds. That’s like dropping a piece of chocolate on the floor, picking it up on the basis of the five-second rule times twelve drops and pick ups.”
They look at me like I’m snorting coke or smoking a bud in public. Which I’ve never done.
“Are you for real?” Red asks.
“Yes or no?”
“She is. You are my best guy friend.” Rue smiles and opens her arms. “How about it?”
He steps into her arms, and they hug. I set the timer on my phone. People stare. After a minute, the two break apart with cheesy grins on their faces.
“Was that so bad?”
“It wasn’t,” Rue admits. “Your turn. Hug Red.”
For funsies, I give in and hug Red. He is lean muscle. Tall. Smells nice too. But my body up against his does nothing for my girl parts. Not like how my body heats from the inside out when Seven is in proximity.
Many shops later, Red and I said goodbye to Rue. We exchanged numbers. At my stop, I hop off the shuttle and rushed home, feeling like I was running on clouds. I had a new job to get ready for, working alongside one of the nicest guys.
When I showed up for my three-to-eight shift at Queenie’s, Miles handed me a royal-blue apron and a shirt with the diner’s logo on it. Guess what it is? It’s a pink crown with a Q in black at the point of the crown.
I told Miles the crown is pretty.
He said I’m prettier.
I rolled my eyes.
He laughed and rubbed his knuckles into the top of my head, messing up my topknot. That butt. I was so excited and happy, I sent a selfie of me wearing the uniform shirt to Rue and Red. Rue sent back hearts. Red texted back that I look smoking hot—can I do a strip tease for him, please? Um, no. What a flirt!
“What you smiling big for?”
I scream. My hand slams against the spot over my heart.
“Crap, Seven, you scared me.” I hop off the bed and smack him across the shoulder. Bad idea. He curls his fingers around my wrist and tugs. I tip forward. He steps into my personal space until his body presses into mine.
“Why the shit-eating grin, Leigh? Did you meet someone you like?”
The way he says the last sentence, with this hot possessiveness . . . My heartbeat accelerates, and my mouth goes dry.
“Why do you ask?”
“A girl only smiles like that when a guy gives her something good.”
“As if.” I push at him. He doesn’t budge.
“Tell, Leigh.”
“Or else what?” I tip my chin at him.
“Or else I teach you a lesson. You’re mine to harass.”
“Harass? Is that what you call this middle-of-the-night sneaking in through my window you’re doing?”
“What else would you call it?”
“Creeping.”
“Creeping, harassing, it’s all the same to me. Now, tell, Leigh. I want his name.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh,” I say.
“Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He lets go of my wrist and pushes me back. I fall onto the bed. Annoyed that I let him push me down, I rise to a sitting position, but Seven gets on top of me and straddles my hips.
“Seven.”
“Tell, Leigh.”
“No.”
“Defiance.”
“No, Seven. Geez. Leave it alone, already.”
“So it was a guy.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Why are you protecting him?”
I glance from his thick thighs holding me down to his face. “I could put in a good guess.”
“Wrong answer.” He leans forward, and holding his weight off me with his arms alongside my head, he stretches his body over mine and nuzzles my neck.
His warm breath on my skin, his nose dragging along my flesh . . . Heat licks up my spine. I wrap my legs around his waist and tip up my hips, cocooning the erection under his jeans in my hot spot.
“Leigh, fuck.”
I hold him tighter to me with my arms and my legs. His groan reverberates against my skin.
“Why are you here, Seven?”
“You know the answer.”
His breath is minty, and he smells clean, like clothes fresh out of the dryer. He must’ve showered and brushed his teeth. I turn into him, smush my face into his damp hair, and inhale his scent.
“Mmm, you smell good.” Did I say that out loud?
“That so?” Smile in his voice.
“So. I could eat you up.” Oh, God, I gotta stop thinking out loud.
“Leigh. Fuck.”
He rolls off me and pulls me into his arms. Not sure what to do with my hands, I shift onto my side and stretch my arm across his chest.
“How was your day? Do anything fun?”
“That’s all you have to say after your boner-inducing comment?”
“The one about eating you up?”
Groaning, he adjusts the front of his pants. “You’re a little shit, you know that?”
He reaches for the remote and hits the “on” button. The panel on the ceiling opens. Raindrops pelt the windowpane. He takes off his shoes and his hoodie, and we crawl under the covers. I scoot close to the wall. He has other ideas. Seven grabs me around the waist and tugs me on top of him.
I look down into the sad eyes of an angel while rain falls from the heavens.
“That bad, huh?” My chest constricting, I cup his jaw and stroke my thumb over his warm skin.
His jaw tightens beneath my touch.
“Want to talk about it?” I fold my arms on his chest and rest my chin on my arms.
He shakes his head.
“What would you rather do?”
“You.” His voice is low, husky.
“We’re not friends, so a friends-with-benefits thing can’t start between us.”
“How about an enemies-with-benefits arrangement instead?” He runs his knuckle over my bottom lip.
His touch is gentle, but the way he’s looking at me prom
ises something on the rougher side. Like teeth raking over skin, tongue sucking on tongue, nails digging into flesh.
My breaths come out in spurts. The place between my legs throbs. I have this urge to touch myself. To take his hand and have him touch me too. Embarrassed at how easily he undoes me with one simple touch on my lip, I look away. He grasps my chin between his fingers and brings my face back to his.
“Well?”
“Whether we’re friends or enemies or acquaintances, I can’t, Seven.” I give him the same reason I gave Red. “I don’t stick around one place long enough to have a friendship, a relationship, or a rivalry.”
“Bullshit. For the right person, for the right reason, you would.”
I start rolling off him. He slings his arm across my back and keeps me in place.
“You don’t know me,” I murmur.
“Give me that chance.”
“Why, so you can mess with my head and my heart? No, thank you.”
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Fallen in love?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He searches my face. Wipes at the strands of hair falling across my forehead. “You’re mine, Leigh, and that makes it my business.”
“You’re full of yourself.”
“And you are fooling yourself if you think I’ll let you go so easily.”
I growl low in the back of my throat. He shifts us until I’m blinking up at him. Seven shoves his fingers in my hair. His other hand clamps on to my thigh.
“Have you ever fallen in love, Leigh?” His fingers press into my skin through my pajama bottoms.
It’s not painful. What he does, the gentle press and release, press and release is sheer torture, and I’m on the verge of taking off my pants so that he can touch my skin.
“No,” I admit, breathless. “You?”
He locks his gaze on mine. “Never.”
“Allison?” A jolt of jealousy grabs at my core and I scold myself. Seven might say I’m his, but he never said he’s mine. I’m a temporary fascination. A shiny new toy to pass his time with. The reason I should never let down my guard with him.
“When I say never, I mean it.”
Beautiful Defiance: Cambridge High Mayhem (Kiss Starter: Cambridge High Book 1) Page 9
