by Dean, Ali
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, squinting at them suspiciously.
“What if we promise not to throw you in the lake?” Bodhi asked, trying and failing to sound genuine.
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“That’s fair,” Bodhi conceded.
“We just want to help you loosen up a little so you can enjoy yourself,” Em declared, walking backward with his arms out in a conciliatory gesture.
I started to roll my eyes but then I felt it. That shift I’d been waiting for. The hum of energy that went straight from my head to my toes and settled low in my belly.
The twins must have sensed something too because they looked over my shoulder. The fifty or so people who had been here when I arrived had already grown in number in a short time. Most of them had been working their way to the keg, half focused on Moody and Spike while keeping a curious eye on the twins. No one had noticed the figure gliding through the trees. Why was he coming from that direction?
Shadows danced across his face as he emerged into the clearing. His eyes met mine. Everything quieted for that instant and I sucked in a sharp breath. His mouth parted and then his lips tilted up. The air crackled, or maybe it was just the bonfire. My entire body was on high alert. Kind of like it got before game kickoff or a penalty shot. Only this wasn’t just in my blood and bones. It was tingling along my skin and low in my belly. Cruz’s eyes remained locked on mine as I tried to steady my breathing.
After all these years, my infatuation and subsequent heartbreak should have faded. I’d been with Cruz for a shorter time period than my other ex-boyfriends, and I still wasn’t even sure we’d been anything real. We were so young. It was before high school even started. Yet even now, going into our senior year, I had no control over my reaction to him. My mind went haywire and my body lit up. It never dulled. I swear, it was only getting stronger with time. Did he have any idea what he still did to me?
Chapter Two
Cruz tilted his head in a gesture to follow him. Before I could react, my cousins moved in that direction. Oh. Right. Of course. Maybe he hadn’t even been looking at me at all. I almost laughed at myself. I had quite the imagination when it came to Cruz Donovan.
But then Bodhi looked behind him. He frowned when he saw me frozen in place. Next thing I knew, he’d swooped me up and was carrying me over his shoulder. I wanted to kick and protest, I really did, but I was too curious. He didn’t put me back down until we were in the woods, away from the audience.
My eyes immediately went to Cruz.
“Hey,” he said. And his voice, gah, it was all gravelly and seductive. Yeah, there you go, imagination running wild.
“Hey,” I said, all shy like. I didn’t know I had a shy bone in my body, and apparently my cousins didn’t either because they gave me funny looks.
I still wasn’t sure if Cruz had really invited me to join them or if I’d just been there and he’d let my cousins bring me along. Either way, I went with them when Cruz led the way down a path toward the Lake. He took us to the dock and pulled a joint out of his pocket.
I was confused. I knew my cousins smoked from time to time. It was legal in Massachusetts now – well, you had to be twenty-one, but same with alcohol and no one really enforced that. At least not here, at the Lake.
No one looked for my okay as Cruz lit the joint. Watching one of the best high school soccer players in the nation smoke a joint twisted my insides. It confused me and turned me on at the same time. This guy could get into any college in the country on soccer alone, and with his family’s name and money? He could rule the world. Cruz fascinated me for a million reasons, and the easy way he blew out smoke into the warm night air? It was one more thing that knotted me up and made me crazy. I should have been disappointed or something, but I wasn’t. Cruz Donovan did everything with purpose and if he was smoking a joint tonight, he wasn’t doing it on a whim. A birthday joint, a rare occasion. The guy certainly wasn’t a stoner, high on the regular.
He passed the joint to me next, and that surprised me too. I thought I’d wait for my cousins to hit it and have a chance to decide. When I brought it to my lips, forcing my eyes to look out at the water instead of at Cruz, I reminded myself that this was why I was here. To push my boundaries. Live on the edge a little.
It burned my chest when it touched my lungs and I coughed as I exhaled. Em winked at me when I passed him the joint and I glared. Nope, I wasn’t smoking to impress anyone. This wasn’t peer pressure. I’d come here for me. It was time to make some decisions about my life. And I couldn’t do that living in the safe bubble I’d made for myself.
Cruz had apparently gotten a motorcycle as his birthday gift from his dad. He’d driven it to the party and taken a back entrance so he could park it elsewhere, by the cabin. As the guys spoke, I realized they had kept the cabin a secret, and the rest of the party didn’t know about it. The others thought it was just land out here. It felt good to share this knowledge with them, small as it was.
I was only half-listening though. There were too many sensations going on to fully concentrate or participate. I could hear the party. It seemed to be getting louder, and music was drifting out to us on the dock. It also took effort to keep my eyes off Cruz. I allowed a few glances, but each time my eyes moved away it was like going against gravity.
He was beautiful. Truly. He somehow managed to pull off this excruciatingly pretty face while maintaining a rugged, almost dark side. He had full lips, and it always looked like he might be wearing eyeliner or mascara with how striking his eye situation was. The cheekbones were razor sharp, the jawline defined. He’d grown his hair out over the past year, and it hung below his ears now. It didn’t matter whether his head was shaved or he wore a man bun. Cruz was gorgeous and no one could argue with that.
After the third hit, my eyes got lazy. I didn’t want to pull them away. Instead, I thought about how I wanted to run my hands through his shaggy brown hair, muss it up and then maybe bite his earlobe.
I nearly groaned when he passed me the joint again but managed to shake my head. “I’m good.” My voice came out husky and I swallowed.
“Thirsty?” he asked. He pulled a flask from his back pocket, twisted the top and handed it to me. I sniffed it as I took it. Yup. Whiskey. I guess that girl’s sister knew what she was talking about.
I’d tried my dad’s beer once. That was it. I’d now smoked pot. And I was about to drink whiskey for the first time on the same night. Cruz stepped closer. I don’t even know if he realized he was doing it. But I felt a sharper tug in my belly at his nearness, and my cheeks heated. A wave of recklessness washed through me and without thinking further, I raised the flask to my lips and took a swig. It burned in a different way, and warmed me from the inside out.
When I handed the flask back to Cruz, our fingers brushed. A live wire went off inside me, and I couldn’t help but shiver. He lowered his eyes and my own widened. Was Cruz Donovan blushing? No. No way. There was my imagination running away again.
“So what made you decide to come out tonight, Haze?” Emmett asked the question and I closed my eyes for a second. There it was.
I shrugged. “Boredom.”
Bodhi flashed a wicked smile. “Took you long enough.”
I had the sudden urge to spill everything that’d been bubbling inside of me, threatening to boil over. If Bodhi and Emmett didn’t already have each other and the other three guys, they’d be my best friends. But this turmoil inside me, it was so simple and oh so complicated all at once.
I stuck with the simple parts. “Tryouts are just a formality at this point,” I reminded him. It was true for all of us. The four of us on the dock now were the only freshmen to make varsity when we started high school. As seniors, we could probably show up to the tryouts drunk and still make the team.
“College scouting is wrapped up,” I added. With a few exceptions, scouts rarely came to high school soccer games. They’d been at all the club and ODP tournaments this past s
pring and summer. That was the time that counted. I’d played hard, remained focused and determined. Now I had everything I’d worked years to achieve. Coaches at the top Division I programs were actively recruiting me, as well as coaches at the Ivy Leagues. Now I just had to decide whether I wanted to go to an Ivy, where I’d be the best player in a less competitive league, or try to make it at one of the best soccer schools in the nation. The decision felt bigger, so much bigger, than academics versus sports.
“So now I’m just riding out my senior year.”
Bodhi nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “I’m still trying to hit all-state for soccer this year, but yeah, you pretty much already achieved everything, huh? Time to have some fun?”
I laughed. “Don’t go crazy now, Bodhi. I’ve still got goals. I want to hit all-state again, win the state championship, break the record for goals scored in a high school career.” I shrugged with a cocky smirk. “But I also want to chill out, take a breather before I hit it hard again in college.”
“We are ready to help with that, cuz,” Em said through a mouthful of smoke.
“Yeah?”
“Hell yeah.”
I opened my arms for a hug and as he stepped forward, I stepped back, closer to the edge of the dock. Then I grabbed his shirt and pulled hard. Emmett stumbled forward, too surprised to react and I finished him off with a push in the backside.
Ah, the sound of him yelling at me right before a loud splash. So. Satisfying. He’d done this to me one too many times and I was finally able to seek vengeance. A few years late. But whatever.
The victory didn’t last long. I was scooped up by my other cousin a second later and dumped in the lake. I grabbed at Bodhi at the last instant and managed to pull him in with me.
We all came up sputtering and ready to dunk each other. The cool water snapped me out of my Cruz-induced fog. Oh, right. Could’ve been another kind of fog. Either way, giggling with my cousins like this was exhilarating. It was also strangely nostalgic.
My eyes of course went to Cruz, who was smiling at us. God, he looked like a dream standing there on the dock in the moonlight, a flask in one hand and the other in his pocket. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, a little different from the athletic clothes I usually saw him in. I wondered if he’d get boots and a leather jacket now that he had a motorcycle. It didn’t really matter what the guy wore though. He exuded an easy confidence and power. I think I’d know he was something special even if I hadn’t watched him play soccer firsthand.
Now that we were soaked, I wasn’t too eager to get out.
“Come on, Cruz. It’s nice in here,” I called to him.
And then he did something I’m sure I must have dreamed about at some point. He put down the flask and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it on the ground. Then he unbuttoned his jeans, pulled down the zipper, and boom. They dropped down and he kicked them aside. My mouth hung open as my eyes greedily soaked in every inch of him in boxers. But he didn’t let me stare for long. In one swift motion he dove into the water.
My entire body was on full alert now, and I couldn’t seem to get a hold on myself. Emmett swam over to me and put an index finger on my chin, forcing me to finally close my mouth.
He chuckled, like seeing girls in this state over Cruz was a regular occurrence. I supposed it was.
When my cousins tossed their tee shirts onto the dock a moment later, I shimmied out of my jean shorts. They were weighing me down and by now I was underwater with nothing to see. My halter top would stay on though, thank you very much.
I floated on my back, staring at the stars. I could hear the party, the music, feel the buzz of energy. But it was also peaceful here. It didn’t last long though. Shouts had me lifting my head, treading water.
Spike was standing on the dock, Moody jogging down the path from the woods behind him.
“What’s up?” Cruz called to them. I was surprised to find Cruz was only a few feet from me.
“The Malones are here,” Spike called back. There was an urgency in his voice that I’d never heard before. Spike wore ripped jeans, a tank top, and a backwards baseball cap over his buzzed head. He might have come from a well-to-do family but he had a thug look going on. He’d been that way since elementary school, walking around like he was ready to throw a punch at anyone who looked at him funny.
I’d been busy taking in Spike, but now I realized Cruz and my cousins were swimming hard to shore.
The Malones are here.
That could mean a number of things. There were a lot of Malones in this town. The family was large and had deep roots in Boston. Defiance Falls was thirty miles south of Boston, but most of the Malones were settled here. They were powerful, and had ancestors who showed up in our history books.
But over the past hundred years the power had turned corrupt. I didn’t know for sure if that was rumor or truth, but even my dad had warned me to stay far away from the Malones, including the ones who were my age.
If the Malones were here, it probably meant the ones who went to Mayflower Academy. I didn’t know why the guys were reacting like this. Cruz had gone to the Academy with the Malones from kindergarten through eighth grade. As the guys pulled on the rest of their clothes and shoved their feet in their shoes, it didn’t seem like they were hustling because they were excited to see old friends.
Cruz turned to me as I swam closer to the dock. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was soaking wet and while the guys didn’t seem to mind returning to the party in that state, I wasn’t so down with the idea myself.
“Stay here,” Cruz said. He didn’t give me a chance to respond, turning to jog up the path while the others followed.
I was left alone in the Lake, wondering why I was supposed to stay. And wondering why it was Cruz and not my cousins who issued the order.
Chapter Three
I didn’t listen. My shorts clung to me and gave me a wedgie as I walked up the path. I’d have to grab that flannel my Dad made me put on from the truck. Or maybe the sleep clothes I’d brought. But first, I wanted to know what had the guys darting back up here. What it meant that the Malones were here.
When I got to the edge of the woods, my pulse spiked. Not because I was in Cruz Donovan’s presence, though I’m sure that didn’t help. But because there was a standoff. It wasn’t only the Malones on one side. It was the Malones and a dozen others from the Academy. They faced Cruz, Bodhi, Emmett, Spike, and Moody. The five of them stood in a line, with Cruz in the middle.
I wanted to go around them to the bonfire, where the rest of the party was watching, but there was no way to do it without drawing attention. So I stayed in the shadows.
Sean Malone stood in front and he was the one talking. At least, I think it was Sean. There were several red-headed Malones but Sean’s hair was flaming. He’d played hockey on Blake’s club team and would be a senior this year.
I didn’t catch what Sean had said, but Cruz replied without hesitation. “I don’t care who you came here with. You’re not welcome. Leave.”
“Relax, Donovan. You’ve always taken everything too seriously. Don’t you think it’s time we get past our shit so we can hang together?”
Cruz didn’t answer. He just stood there, staring.
Sean chuckled. “Man, we’re not going anywhere.” He gestured to himself and the others behind him. “You’re not going anywhere either. You’ll be in Defiance Falls another year, then to Harvard. You’re stuck in Malone territory, Donovan. Time to make peace.”
Cruz didn’t budge. I tried to stay still, but I was getting fidgety. The Malone side was mostly guys, a few girls, and they weren’t even trying to look casual. Sean’s words might have sounded conciliatory, but the tension in the air was nearly unbearable. It felt like it could snap with any sudden movement.
I’d known that Cruz and his group had little love for the Malones, but I didn’t really know the reason behind it. I figured it was simply because the Malones had so much power, and with that came an obno
xious arrogance. But I sensed now it was bigger than that.
“I’m not going to say it again. You can leave or we can make you leave.” Cruz delivered the threat without regret, and I couldn’t hold back my gasp. What the hell was he talking about? It was five on a dozen or so. I didn’t think the others at the party were going to get involved, even if they were here for Cruz. Maybe I was wrong. People worshipped Cruz, but would they have his back against the Malones?
There was a heavy silence as Sean and the others stared down the five guys. My five guys. I shook my head at that thought. No. Four of them had been mine once upon a time, but not anymore. And never Cruz. Not really.
“Who’s that hiding in the shadows over there?” Branden, Sean’s cousin, asked. Branden was the same age as Sean. He was a hockey player too, that was how I was familiar enough to be able to distinguish them. Blake and I hadn’t been together long, but if there was anything I paid attention to about his life, it was hockey. If I hadn’t picked soccer, I might have ended up a hockey player. Or maybe mixed martial arts, like my dad. What could I say? I guess I dug the violence and aggression in those sports.
Okaaay. So maybe the lake water hadn’t totally killed the buzz I’d started. Or maybe my train of thought wasn’t so random after all. Because suddenly, the casual stance of my guys stiffened, and the air turned from tense to brutal. Fierce. Possibly even savage.
I didn’t understand it.
I took a step back and instantly realized it was the wrong move.
“Despite what these guys think, we don’t bite,” Sean said, stepping in my direction.
“Oh damn, is that Hazel Ross?” someone from the Malone side asked.
It’s a good thing I knew how to perform under pressure, because it hit me full force. I was the center of everyone’s focus, and I had the power to send this situation in two opposite directions. I had to play this smart.
I walked forward, trying to pretend like I’d just arrived. “Oh, hey Branden, Sean.” I nodded at the two redheads. “How’s it going?” Maybe I should be an actress. I was cool as a cucumber now as I sashayed over to my guys. Spike was closest, and I leaned over to him.
