Wind shuffles the tree tops. Leaves crunch at our feet. White splotches of sunlight fall on Kat’s hair. I’m glad we’re alone, even if we are breaking rule number one. Don’t get me wrong, I know rules are important, but these last few days without Kat have been hard.
“What did he say?” I ask.
“He wants permission to crash at my house.”
That guy has some nerve, I’ll give him that. “And you said no.”
She looks at the ground.
A hard knot forms in the pit of my stomach. Mike Duvall squeezed her wrist so hard she cried out in pain. He called her a slut. He made her life hell, and she said yes? I let go of her fingers and take a step back.
“Tell him no,” I say. My hands clench and unclench. It feels wrong, telling Kat what to do, but I can’t help it. “You can’t trust him. He’s volatile, a ticking time bomb ready to explode. He treats you like crap, and you deserve better. I care too much to watch you get hurt.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes it is! Tell him to sleep in his own effin’ house!”
“Please, Quinn.” She moves toward me. “Don’t be angry. I don’t want to fight.”
“Then tell him no.”
She slides her arms around my neck and pushes her soft body against me. My face gets hot. My heart thuds too loud. My jeans tighten beneath my fly.
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she says.
“But Kat—”
Her lips press into mine. The clean shampoo smell of her hair keeps me from thinking of anything but her.
My hands go to her waist as I take over the kiss. Her fingers play with my hair before sliding down the back of my neck. My arms graze the bottom of her coat while I trace the line of her spine through the leather.
“You’re amazing,” I whisper, as I back her up against a tree.
She smiles into my mouth. Does that mean she likes this? I say it again, this time in her ear, the next time in the hollow of her neck … under her jaw … over the length of her collar bone. I slide down the zipper on her jacket and warm my hands inside her coat. My fingers flirt with the bottom of her sweater where fabric meets skin, and I ache to slip my hand below her clothes, to feel the warmth of her skin against my palm.
No touching of private parts … clothes stay on at all times … I’m breathing hard, teetering on the edge of my control.
She presses her pelvis against mine and moves her hips in open invitation. I groan. Dang, it feels too good. If I don’t stop now, I never will. My mouth goes to her forehead. My hands fall to my sides. Taking a step back is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She reaches out. Her hands touch my face. Those pretty green eyes that just burned with longing now shine with an unreadable glow.
“Are you going to do what Mike wants?” I ask.
She takes her hands away and turns back toward the school. When she kicks the stones on the path, one of her high heels flips off.
“I’m not sure I have a choice,” she says, her back to me.
I brush past her and pick up the red leather shoe mounted on a toothpick-thin heel. Amy would hate these.
“You always have a choice, Kat. No matter what anyone says.”
She takes the shoe from my hand and puts it back on her foot. “Mike was Roland’s best friend. Hurting him, or allowing him to get hurt, is the same as hurting my brother.”
“Nonsense. It isn’t as if they’re the sa—”
“I can’t put myself first, it’s selfish,” she says, turning to poke me hard in the chest. “Apathy is what killed my brother. If I’d been there, he wouldn’t have died. Mike’s problems are different but they aren’t any better. His father’s a drunk, and he beats on him bad. This is a thing that could very well kill him. I won’t stand by and let him get hurt.”
I blink, unable to believe what I’m hearing. “Are you listening to yourself?” I say, grasping her by the shoulders. “Roland chose to pick a fight and chose to drive away from you. Then he chose to drink and get behind the wheel of his car. He made his own choices and reaped his own consequences. None of that is your fault! And even if it were, Mike has an agenda. He’s athletic and popular. There’s no shortage of houses where he could stay.”
“You don’t understand,” she says too softly. “Mike and I have a history. No one else knows how his father treats him. No one else was there for him when my brother died. He tells me things he doesn’t tell other people. And because he trusts me with his feelings, I need to be sensitive to what he’s going through. Given what I know about his life, stomping on his needs is cruel. I’m sorry, Quinn, but I have to do this.”
Silence stretches between us, wide as the ocean, deep as the Marianas Trench. Nuts fall, leaves rustle, a squirrel skitters by on a branch. The sounds of cars on Rolling Road remind me everyone else is moving, but Kat and I are frozen in place.
“I’m afraid I can’t accept that,” I say, storming off into the woods.
40
Katarina
John and I are watching his wall get repaired after school when I see a girl with long red hair peeking through the window by the door.
“Why is Molly here?” I ask my friend, poking him in the ribs.
He sticks out his tongue like he’s five years old. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
I click my nails on the top of the piano while John gets the door for the girl who won’t go away. If only Quinn had her tenacity. Molly heads straight to me.
“You haven’t given Mike an answer yet, right?” she asks me.
“He’s been calling every ten minutes,” I say, holding my cell phone up. Right on cue it starts blaring Mambo Number Five. “And I’m not sure I have a reason to say no.”
“We can’t protect you if you do what he says,” John points out.
Maybe I don’t need protecting. I mean, sure, Mike’s done a few things to freak me out. But now that we’re friends, I thinking maybe he’s changed. Maybe I overreacted. The squeezing of the wrist thing could have been an accident. He didn’t know his own strength. It isn’t like he hit me. Then there’s the issue of who’s telling the truth. How do I know John’s not hiding a crush?
“I can handle Mike,” I say.
“No, Kat. You can’t. Why do you think your dad hired me?”
The next words come out before I can stop them and with a lot more force than I expect. “To save his precious reputation, that’s why!”
Molly twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “Is it possible your need to self-sabotage things by doing what Mike says springs from the neglected bond with your father? That you’re subconsciously trying to fix it through similar dysfunctional relationships?”
Holy wow! Move over Mrs. Burns. Molly could give her pointers. They could bond over their love of psychobabble and their need to use words like dysfunctional in public.
“Don’t rattle off a bunch of useless self-help bullshit at me!” I blurt.
She blinks really fast, swallows a few times and sniffs like she’s going to cry. Maybe a normal person would feel bad, but all I feel is jealousy. Why can she cry when I can’t? That’s when John does something unexpected. He drapes an arm around Molly’s shoulder, nuzzles her neck, and whispers in her ear.
She smiles at him.
Whoa! John has never once touched me the way he touches Molly. His eyes are filled with concern for her and something like longing.
“So you two—”
“Are trying to help you!” John cuts in, shooting me a warning look.
I get the message loud and clear, Don’t ruin my chances with Molly!
I guess Mike really is lying about John. But then, how did he know about the babysitting thing? Clearing my throat, I broach the subject.
“So, John … when my father called you about watching out for me, were you alone?”
He scratches his chin, tilts it sideways. “I think so.” He pauses. “Hmmm, no. Tasha was here. But only because she was looking for you.�
��
Tasha the spy! “And this was after my ex punched a hole in the wall.”
He nods.
That lying, cheating, manipulative jackass! I want to hit him. Hard. Then I think of the bruises I touched. Those were definitely real. The emotion in his voice when he said he trusts me with his life. That was real too. The tears. Damn. It’s all so confusing. If we’re such good friends now, why am I still avoiding his phone calls? Because he’s a lying manipulative jackass, and subconsciously I know this!
“What happened with you and Quinn?” John asks.
The doughnut I ate five minutes ago is making me feel sick. Then again, it might not be the junk food. Quinn was right, damn it! And I picked Mike over him.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, meaning every word.
Turns out I’m so messed up that I picked Mr. Wrong over sweet Mr. Right. He’s always right, infuriatingly right, which is too bad because if he’d been wrong, I’d call him and patch things up. But since he’s right, I really can’t call unless I’m ready to apologize and admit I was wrong. Nope, not gonna happen.
I’ll have to deal with Mike on my own.
***
One positive thing about not calling Quinn is I have time alone to think over how Roland died. The night I spent on the DC metro was the night he spent at a party—laughing, dancing and drinking beer until he couldn’t think, let alone drive.
Mike and Roland may have been best friends, but that doesn’t mean they’re alike. My brother knew his friend would hurt me and didn’t want me to get burned. For someone who never said he loved me and would rather hug a dog than his own sister, that means something. Warning me away from Mike was the nicest thing my brother ever did for me.
Five hours ago I called my ex and told him he couldn’t stay with me this weekend. The conversation was miserable and degenerated slowly from pleading on his part to sobbing. Five seconds after I hung up, I heard a car door slam and wheels skid.
With shaking hands, I locked all the windows in my house. Then I grabbed my keys and locked all the doors. All night I’ve been jittery, jumping whenever I hear a noise—the scrape of branches against the windows, water pipes expanding.
I brought my cell up to my bed and hid it under my pillow, which is pretty weird, considering I have a normal phone on my nightstand. Mike’s last words before he hung up the phone keep playing over and over again in my head. Not only are you glad your brother’s dead, but you’re trying to kill me too!
The words hurt. Because even though I didn’t physically kill Roland, a part of me is relieved he’s not around anymore. The moment he died, he was canonized; Roland Jackson, Patron Saint of Jocks. So what if he threatened to beat me up if I didn’t write all his English papers? So what if I lost my best girlfriend when he dated her and then dumped her on her ass? So what if he spent my hard-earned savings on some stupid keg party.
Still, what kind of person holds resentments against her dead brother?
I think about Quinn. Would he like me if he knew? Or would he take back all the nice things he said in the woods? Shutting my eyes, I remember his take on Roland. He made his own choices and reaped his own consequences. None of that is your fault!
Quinn’s voice had been so calm, confident. Like he was sure. It must be nice to be so damn sure. Three words resonate. Not. Your. Fault. I want them to be true. I want to hear them again so much that I pick up the phone on my nightstand and stare at the lit up numbers. My alarm clock changes to twelve. What psycho person calls a boy in the middle of the night?
I blink.
Lights flip on in the house next to mine. I know because I can see them through my lacy white curtains. Normally that wouldn’t seem strange, but tonight the lights in the Duvall house turn on faster and faster from one room to the next, like someone’s running frantically through the house, searching for who knows what.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I take a deep breath and dial Quinn’s number.
41
Quinn
I‘m standing on Kat’s dark front porch, glancing with suspicion at her lit up neighbor’s house. Mike’s Lexus is parked a few feet away, so I know he’s home.
This isn’t smart.
Assuming I’m lucky and my father doesn’t notice I’ve borrowed his car and snuck out in the middle of the night, what are my chances of spending the rest of the night with Kat while keeping my hands to myself?
If I’m going to keep her safe, I need to shore up my self-control and reign in my baser instincts, remember that I’m here to help her, to protect her. Not to make out with her. I ring the doorbell with ice-cold fingers and hope she’s less sexy in the dark than she is at school. Then I cup a hand over my face to smell my breath. It hits the air and turns frosty white.
When I hear the click of the door, I look up.
Kat’s standing in front of me. She’s wearing a short satin robe that shows off her long, smooth legs as it slides against the tops of her thighs. Wrapped around her waist is a thin strip of fabric tied in a knot that begs to be undone.
Dang.
“Don’t just stand there, get in here,” she says in a quaking voice, pulling me inside.
I hear a slam and a click when Kat locks the door. The lights are out but my eyes have already adjusted from driving in the dark and standing outside. She’s shaking. Using the wall to guide me, I walk to the kitchen before turning to look at her.
“Do you want me to heat some milk to calm your nerves?” I ask.
She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “Like you do for Elijah?”
You’re definitely not a baby. I look at the hard wood under my shoes so I won’t stare at her perfect legs, her pretty neck and luscious mouth.
Her bare feet pad across the kitchen floor. They stop so close that moonlight streams through the window and onto her gold toe ring. She smells like soap, heat comes off her skin. I want to touch her something fierce.
Instead I back up.
“I want you to hold me, Quinn,” she whispers. “I know it’s a breach of your rules. But I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t so … “ her voice trails off.
Scared? That makes two of us. She’s scared of Mike, but I’m afraid of doing something I’ll regret.
She glances at the floor while I count the daisies on her toe ring, one … two … three … four. The clock ticks. The floor creaks when I shift my weight. Her nails make a clicking sound against the granite countertop. We must be the sorriest couple ever, too ashamed of our building fears to look each other in the eye.
“My father has said some nasty things to yours,” she finally says. “You need to know I don’t agree with him. I’m sorry for not listening to you in the woods earlier. You were right.” She clears her throat. “About Mike.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
She touches the edges of her toes together, and I’m reminded of the self-conscious girl who cooked me breakfast wearing mismatched socks.
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Quinn.”
“I didn’t trust you for a long time. Even after you came to my house and made me breakfast, I was suspicious.” I play with the zipper on my coat, pulling it down and up again. “Then, when we spoke this afternoon, I told you what to do and behaved like a spoiled brat when you didn’t listen.”
“Let me take your jacket,” she offers, holding out her hand.
So that’s it? There’s no need for me to grovel? I slip off my coat and watch her carry it to the closet, giving me a view of her sweet round bottom as she sways her hips from side to side. Holy crap! I want her so bad it hurts. My palms itch with the urge to rip her robe off, lay her on the kitchen island and run my hands all over her body.
“At least you trust me now,” she calls over her shoulder.
Um, yeah … way too much!
Truth is, I really shouldn’t be here. One major slipup and I can forget going on my mission. I’ll be in the bishop’s office confessing all my wayward thoughts, my sexual u
rges, my sinful acts of debauchery.
She crosses the space between us and puts a hand on my elbow. Warmth spreads up my arm as she looks me up and down.
“Seriously, Quinn. Spiderman pajama bottoms?”
“They’re lounge pants,” I say in my own defense.
“Right,” she raises an eyebrow.
“What’s wrong with a superhero who risks his life to save the girl he loves?” I ask, wracking my brain for a sensible solution to Kat’s problem and mine. “I bet Molly would take you in tonight. It’d be safer.”
Her hand tugs me forward, leading me toward the stairs. “I don’t want Mary Jane Watson to protect me. I want you.”
42
Katarina
“Are you ashamed of your feet?” I ask the boy sitting in my bedroom.
For days I’ve dreamed about getting Quinn alone, of feeling his hands on my breasts, his mouth on my body. But never, in any of my fantasies, did he sit on the edge of my bed and refuse to take off his shoes.
I take a deep breath. Why does he put up so many damn walls?
“Tell you what,” I say, sitting on his lap and snaking my arms around his neck. “If you let your rules slide for tonight, I’ll keep things from going too far.”
When I called him earlier it had been for comfort. I hadn’t thought what potential this scenario had for seduction. But now that he’s here, I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance like this again.
He purses his lips as if considering my proposal, which is a good sign and more than I’d expected. His hormones have already cast their vote. The lump beneath his pajama bottoms tells me that. Maybe I should give him a push.
“I’ll take off your shoes for you,” I say, dropping to my knees in front of him.
The deep V of my neckline slips lower as my chest brushes against his legs. With my fingers, I loosen his shoes and pull them off.
When I glance up, his eyes have darkened with desire. Even though I’m looking straight into his face, he can’t tear his gaze away from the view of my body below the robe. I climb back onto his lap, this time straddling him. My hands go around his neck. My thighs spread. My blood is heating with a heady sense of power.
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