Today could have ended so differently, and I knew I was lucky to be here at all. What had been palpitations could very well have morphed into a heart attack. I was lucky I was so healthy, fortunate I was so strong.
From this day on, I knew I’d never take anything for granted. Not Jessa, not Sam, and not even Max.
Tomorrow would be the dawn of the new Drew. Jessa deserved nothing less than my all.
And with those thoughts in mind, I allowed the intoxicating exhaustion to pull me under and closed my eyes as I nuzzled into her, and finally found some rest.
❖
Sam
As I watched my best friend and girlfriend head upstairs, I felt Max’s attention shift from them to me. Whenever he looked at me, I always felt like there was some expectation behind it. Like he was waiting for me to do something, say something. Normally, it didn’t perturb me, but today? It really fucking did.
This week had probably been one of the most stressful of my entire life. Not only had Jessa’s cat been run down, but the loss of Buddy had urged her to speak of something we’d been building up the courage to discuss for what felt like a lifetime—the feelings Drew and I had for one another. Then there were the drugs that Derick Petersen had planted in Jessa’s locker, followed by this shit with Drew—the fact I’d thought he’d been having a heart attack as well as his admission he’d been taking prescription meds to get through his workload.
The last thing I needed was Max staring at me like I had all the answers.
I didn’t.
Because I was feeling irritable, I snapped at him, “What is it? Do you have a problem or something?”
He slowly shook his head, but there was a measuring look in his eyes that had me gritting my teeth. “No, no problem. But… aren’t you jealous?” Again, his gaze darted over to the staircase Drew and Jessa had just ascended. “I know I would be.”
Why did I feel like he was trying to tell me something, either that or ram it home?
Folding my arms across my chest, I stared him down and stated, “If you have something to say, say it, Max.” When his nostrils flared, I shook my head at him. “You should know by now I don’t bullshit.”
Though his eyes had been narrowed, that was nothing compared to now—they were pretty much slits as he stared me down in a way that only two strong people could ever understand. It felt crazy to equate us both to wolves in the wild, two alphas trying to determine who was dominant, but that was the truth. Drew was my equal, but there was a reason I was captain of the football team, a reason I had a natural inclination to lead. I was dominant in most things, and at that moment, I sensed that even though Max was still an outsider, one who never let himself be interested enough in anything to take charge, he was just as much an alpha as me.
“She loves you, man.”
His statement had me frowning. Whatever I had expected him to say, it wasn’t that. “Hell, I know she does. I never doubted that. Do you doubt that I love her?”
His words changed the tenor of his interference, and though I resented it, I didn’t call him on it, because he was protecting Jessa. That was something I would never discourage. Drew seemed to think I was using Max, manipulating the situation because Jessa liked him. While having a big guy around all the time, especially one who shared most of Jessa’s classes, was definitely expedient, I wasn’t that much of an asshole.
I saw how poorly HawkRidge High suited him. Not just because everyone there was rich, but because Max was a loner. It surprised me that he enjoyed hanging out with us for that reason, but I knew that reason was mostly Jessa. There was something about her that was enchanting, and yeah, that made me sound like a hero from a Disney movie, but it was the truth. Drew teased her and called her Pollyanna, and to some extent she was. She was an irritatingly cheerful person, one of those people who didn’t need coffee in the morning to wake up, who was just alive and vibrant because she found joy in most things that others forgot about. Myself included.
The day she’d walked into my world had been the best day of my life, because until her, I hadn’t seen as much as I did when she was around.
Most people in the circles we traversed were bogged down with apathy. To my mind, apathy was the most dangerous emotion of them all. It made a person listless, aimless. Made everything boring, even the most exciting things suddenly switched lanes and became tedious.
Unlike a lot of the trust fund babies at school, my family didn’t come from old money. My folks were rich, crazy rich to be sure, but it was self-made. My dad had been a successful corporate attorney before he’d burned out, and the fortune he’d made, combined with the one my mother was currently shoring up as a kick ass defense attorney, was enough to put even the assholes at the academy in their place. My parents were too busy to suffer from apathy, but before Jessa, as I’d approached my sixteenth birthday, life, even though I had stresses of my own, had begun to look pretty fucking dull.
With Drew denying a relationship between us, I’d gone off the rails for a while, and sometimes, dealt with the repercussions of that time to this day. I’d fucked around with Sarah Dunham, and hadn’t that bit me in the ass just a few weeks ago? When she’d started talking about how good the sex had been between us, I was more embarrassed than anything else, because all I remembered was a drunken fumble that hadn’t rocked my world so I doubted it had hers.
I knew she wanted to hurt Jessa, that and the fact she wanted in my pants again were the only things that had stopped her from slating my performance in bed. The Sarahs, our resident mean girls, were bitches, and they’d find nothing more entertaining than slandering the captain of the football team’s abilities in the sack.
So, with my involvement with that bitch sealing the deal, my life had been veering down the drain until Jessa had moved into town, and at first sight, I’d known she was mine.
On the rebound from Drew, who’d admitted to his feelings for me but was refusing to act on them, and then the subsequent spiral that had been my rebellion against life—the usual teenage bullshit—she’d been a breath of fresh air. I loved her, and that Max was questioning that irritated me again. Because he was. I kind of felt as though he was trying to make out that I was pushing Drew on her…
My jaw tensed at the thought. I wanted to tell him that she was going to be my wife, but I knew how he’d take that. He’d react as most people would. They’d have a laugh at my expense and call me a pussy, think me a sappy romantic, or they’d believe I was too young to be feeling the way I was.
But I was none of those things.
I was the child of two attorneys. One who defended murderers, and the other who had taken businesses, torn them to shreds, and fired thousands of employees in corporate shakeups that would make his umbrella company millions in profit.
I was a realist.
It had been reared into me.
So I was none of the things that anyone could accuse me of. Jessa was my life, because I made her so. Just as she did me, and as Drew did too.
“I saw how you looked at him.” Max’s mouth firmed.
“You saw how I looked at Drew? What? Like I was shitting myself? You bet your dumb ass I was. He terrified me out there. I seriously thought he was having a heart attack,” I growled, stacking my hands on my hips to stop myself from launching at Max. The last thing I needed was to get into an unnecessary fight, one that I was only triggering because he was making me think of just how terrified I’d been this evening.
But he was shaking his head. “No. Beneath the terror, there was something else.” His gaze cut to the staircase once more, and I was aware that something was brewing in his mind, but I wasn’t sure where he was going. Of course, I had an inkling, but I wasn’t about to put my foot in my mouth and fuck things over for all of us. Not when that inkling wasn’t fully born.
“If you have something to say,” I snarled, “get on with it.”
“You hurt her, and I will fucking kill you.”
I disregarded the threat, but the poison
in his words had me tilting my head to the side.
Drew and I weren’t the only ones with feelings for my girlfriend.
Of course, I’d suspected as much. It was difficult being around Jessa without falling in love with her. Well, unless you were one of the girls in our year and was jealous. But most guys? Yeah, they could fall for her easily. Only the fact that she was constantly with me or Drew in a social setting saved us from having any issues in the long run.
Stiffly, I answered, “I don’t think you have any right to doubt or question me on this.”
“Don’t I? You have feelings for him, feelings that…” He gritted his teeth. “You can’t do this to her, man. If you’re gay, don’t drag her into some fucked up relationship just to save face. Don’t bring her down because you and Drew can’t face facts.”
I stared at him for what felt like a lifetime, but even as outraged as I was at his presumption, it resonated with me just how deeply he cared about Jessa to bring the subject to a head. He had to know I could beat the shit out of him, but he still spoke out on her behalf.
It didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out what he wanted from her, but it didn’t stop me from asking, “What do you want from Jessa?”
His scowl told me he hadn’t anticipated that question, and considering how clever the bastard was, maybe I should take that as a good sign I had knocked him off course, because the last thing we needed to be talking about was the truth of what I wanted with Drew and Jessa.
His voice was like gravel as he ground out, “Nothing she can give me.”
“Why? Friendship isn’t enough? You have to know how much Jessa values her friendships.”
His nostrils flared. “Would you be happy just being friends with her?”
I shook my head. “Fuck no.”
“Exactly.” His jaw worked for a second as he stared me down, and he ran a hand through his hair and whispered, “I need to go. Curfew.”
Despite myself, despite the fact I should take that as a sign to drop the conversation because he had to leave, I didn’t. Such loyalty deserved something.
“She knows.”
On the brink of heading for the front door, his head whipped around. “What the hell?”
I shrugged. “She knows, she accepts it.” I licked my lips, shaking my head even as the words formed because I couldn’t believe it myself. “She approves.”
For a second, I wasn’t sure what his reaction was. Disgust? Disinterest? Disbelief? More than anything, he just looked like I’d stunned him with a Taser.
“You being serious?” he choked out.
“As serious as I can be where she’s concerned. You’re not the only one who wants to protect her, Max. You forget yourself. You’re new to Hawk Ridge, new to this friendship, new to Jessa. We’re not. I need her just as much as she needs me.” I flickered a look at the staircase, then overhead where I knew Drew and Jessa would be sleeping together. Releasing a deep sigh, I murmured, “Hell, Drew needs us both more than he realizes.”
Max still looked like he’d been tasered, but his phone buzzed, and he reached into his pocket, stared at the screen for a second, then clenched his jaw. “I have to go.”
That was all the farewell I got, but it was all the bye I needed. “Take Jessa’s car,” I called out to him, as I followed him to the door. He shot me a grateful look, then loped over to the curb where he dived behind the wheel and took off. Though I watched him go, I quickly retreated inside and locked up behind him, and even though I wasn’t particularly tired, I knew the only place I wanted to be tonight was close to the two people I loved.
I already knew the layout of Drew’s bedroom, not for any nefarious reason, as we hadn’t done anything nefarious, nothing except for a single, innocent kiss. Shit, we’d done more in front of Jessa than we had behind her back, but still, Drew had been my friend for so long that he knew my bedroom and I knew his inside out.
Because of that, I was well aware that if this was going to happen, it would have been far more comfortable in my own bedroom with my king-sized bed. Drew, on the other hand, had a measly single. How he managed to pretzel his body onto that torture device I wasn’t sure, but I was looking forward to the day when we were in college, and I could buy him a new fucking bed. Not just because I intended for Jessa and me to be in it too, but because he deserved one. He was as tall as me, not as bulky, but just as strong. The guy needed his space to move.
It figured, now that I thought about it, that the family had been saving for something for some time. Drew had outgrown his bed years back, and there were certain things around the house that were in definite need of work, like the fridge they kept repairing rather than replacing even though it should have gone out with the Dark Ages, and the stove that was always on the brink of catastrophe and which Jessa moaned about when Drew wasn’t within earshot.
Money had been tight for a while, but I just hadn’t noticed it. In comparison to my family, Drew had always had less and that was what I’d chosen to see. I’d let him down, but he’d had a hand in that for sure.
Was I mad that Drew had kept his grandmother’s illness from me? No. If anything, it hurt me rather than angered me.
Exactly like Jessa, I thought we shared everything, thought we’d discussed every single aspect of our lives, and yet, I was learning tonight that Drew had secrets, ones he found no compunction in keeping from me.
Jessa, Drew, and Max too, if I were being honest, were pretty much the only people I gave a shit about. That was probably bad considering I had a family—parents and sisters—but you couldn’t choose your family, though you could choose your friends.
They meant more to me, knew the real me more than my father and mother, twin sisters and elder brother ever could or would. When we headed out to Berkeley, because I still intended for that to happen, we would be across the country from our families. Jessa would be affected by that more than Drew or me. She was close to her folks, but Chris, Drew’s dad, was barely around, and I didn’t think it was just because of his new girlfriend, either.
Chris had always been weird, but I’d thought he was decent. Unlike my father, though, he hadn’t attended every single game Drew starred in, and most of the things that went down at school he kept himself apart from. Whenever Chris mentioned his wife, Drew’s mother, there was always an intrinsic sadness about him, and a part of me had theorized a long time ago that looking at Drew hurt Chris. I knew that sounded crazy, but from the few pictures that were around the house, Drew definitely took after his mother. Chris was white, whereas Drew looked Native American like his mom. It was only a hypothesis, but it made a nasty kind of sense.
As for his grandmother, I knew her better, but… apparently not if she was suffering from a rare illness that Drew didn’t think he could share with me.
There were so many secrets between us when I hadn’t believed there were any.
I knew that had to change or we’d grow apart before we even had a chance to live a life together. I couldn’t bear the prospect of a future without these people in it, without Jessa at my side, Drew too. It would be a torment to me to picture a day, twenty years down the line, where they weren’t in it.
I knew most guys my age didn’t think this way, but they didn’t come from my background. Didn’t understand how I worked. The second Jessa had come into my life, I’d grown up in ways that few people in my class could even imagine. Sure, I was still a teenager and I wanted to party and have fun, but also, I had goals. Goals that involved tying these two people who were squished into the sardine can that was Drew’s single bed to me forever. I guess it was manipulative of me, but if that was the truth, then that was the truth. I felt no shame for it. No shame at all.
I intended for us to be very happy, but for that happiness to exist at all, we had to be together. So, no more secrets. No more lies and half-truths. We had to be all out or we were nothing, and that was something I could never allow.
Blowing out a breath, I eyed the people I loved and grimaced at
just how squished they were. It was a testament to how uncomfortable Drew’s bed was, even just to sit on, that I felt no envy about not fitting on there. Nor did I have any compunction in grabbing the blankets he stored on the top shelf in his closet and laying them down flat on the floor.
I hunkered down, quite happy to use the ground as my bed if it meant I could stay close to them both. It wouldn’t harm me for the night, and tomorrow I’d be back in my bed or sleeping on the sofa here with Jessa. I wasn’t sure about our plans yet. There was a party tomorrow, one over on Crest Lake. I had forgotten all about it until this evening when the guys had been talking about in the showers, but I wanted to go, mostly because it was going to start before sunset. Everyone was going to hang out, swim, chill, and then there was going to be a bonfire as night fell. I really wanted to do that, but wasn’t sure if it was wise considering Drew’s state.
Still, there was only so much we could talk about tomorrow, and the truth was, Drew needed to lighten up. That was as important as anything else.
Jessa wasn’t the only one concerned about him.
I knew what Adderall was. My sister took it for her ADHD. It was easy to get hooked, difficult to live without. The only way to make sure that Drew remained on the straight and narrow was to help him stay that way. To keep him on that path.
I wasn’t sure what Coach had discussed with him after he’d made me go back out on the field, didn’t know every single detail because Drew hadn’t had the chance to share it all with me yet, but I had to figure that for the moment, he was safe at HawkRidge High. Sure, it wasn’t fair. It spoke of just how corrupt the school was that a kid who was on drugs could manipulate the system just because he was a star player on the football team. Hell, it was probably a shitty indictment on North American schooling as a whole, but that was life. And being a part of life in this community, among some of the most elite and rich in the entire state, we learned, fast, just how the world truly worked.
Dare You To Keep Me: HawkRidge High II Page 7
