by L.J. Shen
MY SISTER WASN’T DRINKING.
That was the only thing that occupied my mind. Not the fact that we had a kick-ass time. Not the amazing Britney Spears show. Not the distorted, tall, radioactive-looking alcoholic drinks we carried with us all day. But the fact that Millie did not consume a drop of them, or any other type of alcohol.
We had French roots. For us, partying without wine or champagne was like dancing without limbs.
Glaring at her from the corner of a loud, crowded nightclub with neon lights and sweaty, half-naked bodies, I sucked on my straw, inhaling another cocktail.
“Your sister is sooo knocked up.” Elle popped her big, pink gum while checking herself in the reflection of a shimmering piece of hale-shaped mirrors draping from the ceiling. We were all wearing the same type of dress—pink, Emilia’s favorite color—with sweetheart neckline and ruffled layers of thin, soft-fabric. I found one at a thrift shop. It screamed Millie to the sky and back, so I purchased it, contacted the brand, and ordered four more for all of us.
“She’s not,” I insisted, but it was futile. Even I didn’t believe myself. “I’m the closest person to her. She’d never hide it from me.”
“She’s not drinking, looks like crap, and she ate a cupcake with fried pickles on top for lunch. I rest my case, but if you need me to make her pee on a stick, I know a guy who makes things happen.” Elle leaned on the wall beside me.
I glared at my sister. Millie shook her ass with Gladys and Sydney on the dance floor, flipping her sweaty hair back and forth and mouthing the words to “The Thong Song” by Sisqó. Maybe the DJ had lost a bet that night. No one knows. But I was in no mood to be a music snob.
Elle patted my shoulder. “There, there. You have a good buzz going on, and you don’t want to venture into plastered territory. Put down the drink. Let’s dance a little.”
She pulled my hand, and I didn’t protest, because what was the point?
Elle and I joined Millie, Gladys, and Sydney, and we danced for an hour or so. Millie said we needed to take a taco break, and since no one had ever said ‘no’ to taco, we all grabbed a table at the restaurant section of the club and stuffed our faces.
I excused myself to the bathroom, and when I came back, saw Gladys leaning down in the booth we were seated in, running her hand over Millie’s stomach. Sydney threw her head back, laughed, and motioned with her hands, making the illusion of huge tits.
My sister was pregnant.
Her friends knew it.
My parents knew it.
Everyone knew it.
Everyone…but me.
Dean
What’s your fascination with music, anyway?
My fingers shook with anger, but that wasn’t the only reason why I didn’t answer him. My gaze wandered to Millie’s face, and I pursed my lips. The rest of the girls had gone back to the dance floor, and it was just my sister and me. I asked her if there was anything she wanted to share, once more. She said another taco and laughed. The pit of my stomach twisted, then sizzled with rage. She was a liar, like all of them. There was really no difference between her and Daddy. Well, there was. Daddy, at least, stopped the charade and told me exactly what he thought about me. Millie was still a coward who wanted to protect my precious feelings by lying to me.
Fuck it.
I needed Dean.
Dean made things go away. He was weed. He was alcohol. He was music. Only a thousand times more addictive than all of the above.
Rosie
Listening to good music is like a drug. It releases hormones that make you feel happy. What’s your fascination with astronomy?
Dean
There were times in my life, dark times when I had to spend my summers in a place I didn’t want to be. The nights were long and boring, so I went out and laid down on the hay. The stars were the only things to keep me company, and I guess I got a little attached to them. They reminded me that under the sky, there were better things waiting for me. The people I loved, the places I wanted to visit, all the girls I was going to fuck…
Rosie
A hopeless romantic. I’m getting chills. Stop it.
Dean
You’ll be getting more chills in a second. Turn around.
Rosie
?
Dean
Simple English, Baby LB. Turn around.
He was there.
My heart jumped to my throat, but at the same time, hot lava melted in my lower belly, washing over the hurt and pain, creating an urgent need I was desperate to take care of. It was completely possible that this man was becoming more and more attractive with every passing second. I watched him in a navy blue crisp shirt and gray dress pants, ambling toward me like a force that was about to rip roofs and panties in its wake.
I was so focused on Dean, I hadn’t even noticed the girls were back at the table and the guys were there, too. Sans Trent, obviously.
Vicious took his place by Emilia. Jaime sat sandwiched between Sydney and Gladys, offering them a curt nod, and Dean remained standing, staring at me without even hiding what was in his eyes. Shameless.
“I’ll get you all some drinks.” I shot up from my seat, but I wasn’t feeling it anymore. That goody-two-shoes act. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t good and I wasn’t nice, and tonight, I was going to fuck my sister’s ex-boyfriend. An angry fuck that would erase the last few days from my memory, even if for a moment or two.
As I passed Dean, he bumped his arm against my shoulder. Every hair on my body stood on end, goosebumps prickling my skin.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I want?” he hissed into my face, licking his full bottom lip, making it shiny, a forbidden glossy apple.
“I don’t care what you want, Dean. You’re getting water. As I said, you can self-destruct all you want, but not under my shift.”
“Point made. Let it be known, though, that you can do whatever you want on my shaft.”
“No drinking or smoking,” I repeated solemnly, giving him the stink eye.
I could hear the smile in his words as he said, “You fucking care,” watching my back as I scurried along.
Yes, I do, I thought, bitterly. Wishing I hadn’t. I really do.
Things were about to get messy.
Ruckus was going to live up to his name.
Ten Years Ago
School was over. So were Millie and I.
Jaime moved to Texas for college, taking a souvenir from home along with him—our lit teacher, Melody Greene. Trent had surgery on his leg and was bedbound for the rest of the summer. And Vicious…Vicious went fucking nuts, as if he was the one she had abandoned.
After Millie ran away, Rosie seemed to have been pissed off with the world. I wanted to be her punching bag. She wouldn’t let me.
There were other things I wanted, but it wasn’t the appropriate time to go after them. So I settled for being there for her, one fucked-up soul for another.
I wasn’t particularly mad at my ex-girlfriend for ditching my ass. As far as I knew, she left me for someone else. That should’ve made me go ballistic, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find that fucking frenzy Vicious was simmering with.
Rosie said I should stop coming to check in on her, but that was like telling me I couldn’t touch my dick. Entirely fucking impossible.
I came for her every day.
We would sit outside by the pool in complete silence.
I wanted to talk to her about the stars, but I didn’t.
I wanted to talk to her about our futures, but I didn’t.
I wanted to talk to her about us, but there was no us, and her creep-o-meter was probably dinging like mad with me coming for her every afternoon.
One day, I saw Vicious walking past his manicured lawn while I made my way across the stone path to the servants’ house. He stopped and stared at me, blinking like he’d just seen a ghost.
Approaching me in slow steps, he tucked his hands in his pockets, assessing me through cold, vigilant eyes, preparing for battl
e. I puffed my chest, fixing my fake smile on. He wanted war? He was going to get one.
“You really think you stand a chance with the mouthy one after what happened with Millie?” he gritted, unable to let the word fuck, a word he used so fucking much, leave his mouth. Because he knew. Vicious knew that I took Millie’s virginity—she asked me to. I had a feeling that it was more about getting rid of her V-card than it was about me—and this was the one thing he could never erase from the pages of history. Not even Baron Spencer could tamper with reality.
I scrubbed my chin. “I know my chances with Baby LeBlanc are about as fat as your chances with Millie. I’m here to make sure she’s okay. It’s a foreign concept to you, but sometimes people just want to be nice to other people. What crawled up your ass, anyway? You look…guilty.” I furrowed my brows. Everything about my stance was ready to pounce and rip him to shreds.
“Guilty?” He laughed, but it wasn’t his usual laughter. The looming, self-assured one. So the bastard did know something. Fuck if I had a clue what it was. “Now why would I feel guilty? You were the one who went after my girl.”
“Your girl,” I repeated, letting an incredulous chuckle escape. It felt oddly liberating to address the elephant in the room. The same elephant that had managed to crush and ruin every single fucking thing in our lives during senior year. “Hey, asshat, newsflash: Emilia LeBlanc was everyone’s favorite moving target until I slapped my name on her ass. I had a suspicion that you liked her, yeah. I had a feeling it was even something more, but from the outside?” I took a step toward him, and we were dangerously close to fucking up each other’s faces and rolling on the grass until one of us was bleeding to death. “You ruined her life. All you said was that she was a white-trash hillbilly. All you did was make her feel unwelcome. Did I want to tap it? Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’m a teenager with a working dick. But, more than anything, I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t hang herself on your account.”
“How noble of you.” His chest bumped against mine, and we were going to war, now I knew. “Poor fucking Ruckus.” Vicious brought his fists to his eyes and pretended to wipe invisible tears. “Had a bad time with Emilia all those months?”
“Nah,” I said, pushing him away. He pushed me back. I grinned. “She was great, but then, you’d never know, right?” He swallowed hard.
“Maybe she ran off because you’re shit in bed,” he said. Real mature.
“Or maybe she ran off because she was tired of you,” I retorted. His face twisted in pain, and he was guilty. Of what, I didn’t know, but he was not innocent. That much was for sure. I decided to poke the subject. Get his angle on things.
“How does it feel, Vicious? To be the loser who would never know what the girl of his dream tastes like?”
“You would know, Cole. We’re in the same boat, and this ship is sinking.” Now it was his turn to get in my face and—again—I didn’t even blink. I wasn’t afraid of Vicious. I saw through his layers and knew exactly who he was.
A guy like me.
Who was hiding behind walls of muscle, good looks, fancy cars, perfect clothes, rich parents, and dark mystery. You can never be afraid of what you are. That was why I was the only one out of my friends to defy him repeatedly.
“You fucked up everything,” I whispered into his face, and I saw it in his ink-blue eyes that he knew I was right, because there was something whirling in them. Something that threatened to drown whoever dared to come close. “You fucked up, and now we’re all fucked.” I pushed him, turning around and stalking to Rosie’s door.
By the time she opened the door, Vicious was gone. Probably up in his room, smoking a fat one.
Rosie didn’t look surprised to see me. But she did gasp when I cupped both her cheeks, stepped into her house, and kissed the shit out of her without warning.
The kiss wasn’t just rough; it was downright brutal. It lacked affection in the same way it leaked desperation.
I was helpless.
Careless.
Ruined.
And not by the sister I was expected to love.
She gasped for air. I gasped for her. Our tongues swirled together, engaged, enamored, under a spell of black magic.
I held her by the back of her neck. Maybe too hard. How did I not know my body could respond to another person like this? Every nerve ending in my body was on fire. Her knees failed. She collapsed, but held onto my shirt at the very last minute, somehow holding herself together physically. Mentally, though…we were both in too deep.
Mentally, we were fucked.
It hadn’t even registered to me that she returned the kiss for a long, intoxicating minute before she pulled away, her eyes widening in shock and fear. She laced her fingers through the sides of her head and pulled at her roots, her beautiful, puffy lips falling open.
“Oh, my God.” She sucked in a breath. I felt her in that kiss, and the things she’d given me…she could never take them back. They were mine, and I was going to take the rest of her, even if it wasn’t that day. Even if it would take a fucking lifetime.
If she has a lifetime, asshole.
“Holy shit,” she croaked again. “What have I done? Get out!”
“Rosie…”
“Get. The. Hell. Out, Dean. Seriously, if you come here again…”
“You bet your ass I am,” I said firmly. “I’m going after you even if it takes me years to have you.”
“You won’t.” There was something in her voice, or maybe it was the way she pushed me away, that made it all very final. “I will make sure of it, one way or the other. You’re dead to me, Cole. Dead from the moment you put your hands on my sister. There won’t be a tomorrow for us. There won’t be a Bronze Horseman. And next time we see each other, Dean, we’re going to act like we don’t know one another. Because we don’t. You are nothing to me. Never were. Come here again, and I’m telling Daddy to pull out the shotgun.”
She slammed the door in my face.
And for the first time, she didn’t peek through the window to steal another moment with me.
Present
I loved watching Rosie dance.
She was so terrible at it, you couldn’t help but laugh. But she didn’t care. The girl didn’t fucking care, and that was what I loved about her the most. Her ability to sing out of tune and dance like no one was watching, when all eyes were on her as she struck a pose, a la Madonna, while jumping up and down like her feet were on fire.
She spun in place on the dance floor and found me, our eyes connecting. I was leaning against the bar, sipping bottled water, as promised, saluting the bottle in her direction.
Vicious was grinding against Emilia.
Jaime was outside on the phone with Trent.
Sydney, Gladys, and that chick who worked with Rosie were dancing with each other.
And again, she and I were left to our own devices.
Nina had been calling and texting nonstop, despite my ignoring her, and Trent was going through hell, but somehow, I still felt that natural high that slammed into me every time I hung out with Baby LeBlanc.
Rosie looked down to her phone and stabbed her thumbs on the screen, typing a text message. It threw my heart into fourth gear, and I clutched my phone beside my body, waiting for the ping that felt like a bang.
Rosie
I think I’m going to take someone to my hotel room tonight. Had a rough day and need to unwind.
Dean
Is that an invitation?
Rosie
More like a jab. You know what the hardest part was when you and Millie were together? Hearing you make out. It used to kill me. That’s why at some point I stopped being home when you were around.
My head shot up, and there she was, swaying her hips, a random guy hugging her waist from behind and grinning into her neck as he matched her tempo. Her eyes were on me, and she had that expression. The ‘what-the-fuck-are-you-going-to-do-about-it-huh?’ look. I was going to wipe it off of her face.
Here I wa
s, watching someone else touching her, every inch of my body raw with violent rage. The one I hadn’t felt all those years ago when Millie left. Oh, it was inside me, all right. It was just waiting to be ignited by someone else entirely.
I’m going to end this shithead.
I looked down and typed.
Dean
Don’t test me, LeBlanc. We’re not teenagers anymore. Our actions have consequences.
Rosie
And…?
Dean
And with the actions I have in mind, I’m looking at ten to fifteen years in a cage. Cut that shit before he gets hurt.
I felt my pulse in my eyelids. My spine. My fucking balls. It was everywhere, because my heart was jackhammering like it wanted to jump out of my ribcage and into her hands. It felt like snorting two lines of brown-brown, the gunpowder rushing through my system.
For the first time in a very long time, I cared.
Breaking them up and causing a scene crossed my mind, but I wasn’t that person. I was the chilled, asshole motherfucker who smiled at the world, even when it threw shit at him. And Rosie threw shit at me because I deserved it. Because I did kiss her sister when she was in the same house. Because I didn’t stop it from happening. Because it was payback, and she wanted to take it far. I was going to let her explore the distance, even if it hurt me—but the line was going to be drawn at kissing. She was fucking mine. He could look, but hell if he tried to touch.
The guy spun Rosie around and they danced together, but she kept an appropriate gap from him, probably knowing he wasn’t going to appreciate a trip to the ER. Dude was okay-looking, I suppose. Mid-height and young—about Rosie’s age, casually dressed. Nothing to write home about.
He yelled something into her ear over the music, and I felt my nostrils widening like a mad bull. She motioned for him with her fingers to wait a minute, looked down, and typed a message.
