When she speaks, her voice is unexpectedly soft. “I’m not saying you have to do it, Brooke. Only that you should be open to the possibility.”
I force a smile. “I understand.”
“And if you have any questions about what to expect…”
God, she makes it sound like I’m getting married. It’s prom night, and I feel like I’m being sold to the highest bidder. Liam isn’t a bad guy. A little cocky, but what heir to a shipping fortune wouldn’t be? We aren’t close, though.
Honestly I was surprised when he asked me to prom, but it seemed like a good idea. Now that the little silver packet stares up at me, I’m rethinking that decision.
“I do have one question.”
She doesn’t quite manage to hide her wince. This conversation is as uncomfortable for her as it is for me. “Of course.”
“That story about Dad? The one you tell at Christmas, about him being like the Innkeeper from the Bible. Did that happen before or after you were married?”
She blinks, looking surprised by the question. “We were engaged at the time. That was when he only had a couple of motels to his name.”
It’s my mother’s family that had money. My father had pure ambition and hard work. The business thrived until just a few years ago. I know that Liam might be the answer to turning things around. Such a mercenary way to look at my prom night.
The foil crinkles, and I realize I’m holding it in my fist.
My mother’s blue eyes are pleading with me. “Brooke, I never would have suggested this if I hadn’t met Liam myself. If I didn’t know he comes from a good family.”
“What if I don’t want him?”
“You wanted him enough to say yes,” she reminds me gently. “If you decide you don’t want to do anything with him, then don’t. This isn’t a requirement. But if you’re on the fence, remember all the things I’ve done for this family. That your father has done. We both make sacrifices.”
Sacrifices. She could be talking about Daddy’s long hours at work. But what if he’s sacrificed more than that? What if he’s sacrificed his morals as well? What if he sacrificed defenseless children?
But he’s my father. I won’t give him up to Stone.
Which is why it’s a good thing I haven’t seen Stone again. Over and over I tell myself that.
My mother scowls at my feet, clad in black heels. “Is that a scuff?” She mumbles something about her kit and sweeps out of the room with an air of annoyance, as if I’ve been careless already.
I flop back on the bed.
It’s been a year and a half since my seventeenth birthday. A year and a half since that last ride. A year and a half since he made me feel free, hurtling down the highway in the sunshine.
When I turned eighteen, I half expected him to show up, the way he did on my sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays. In truth, I more than expected to see him. I wanted to see him. I yearned to hear him call me little bird in that way of his, gravelly and surly, yet so strangely full of tenderness. I would’ve given up every brightly wrapped birthday gift to feel his hand on my thigh just once, a little bit too heavy, too possessive.
Stone was the only birthday present I wanted and the only one I should have never wanted.
I told myself it didn’t matter what I did—Stone would either show up, or he wouldn’t. That’s his way.
Still, I parked in a shady spot near a shadowed doorway. After school I actually sat there, alone in the driver’s seat, for fifteen minutes, checking Instagram.
I wasn’t looking at the scroll of smiling faces and meals and blue-water beaches—not really. With every fiber of my being, I was waiting for him, trembling for him, butterflies in my belly, thighs smashed tight together, thinking of him.
An ache between my legs.
I felt sheepish about that when I realized it. What if he touched me there? What if he knew? But Stone wouldn’t joke about something like that, and he would never say I was a slut.
He would like it, because my desire for him is something real and true. Stone likes real and true things about me. He’s the only one who wants to know my dreams. He’s the only one who doesn’t want me in my mask.
In the end, it didn’t matter how long I sat in the car. My birthday came and went.
Stone never showed up.
It’s for the best—I know that. Even as he could touch between my legs and feel the wetness there, I knew he could gaze into my eyes and sense my secret worries about my father.
Could I lie to him? I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to try.
Three hours and a hundred photos later, I’m riding in the back of a huge limo next to Liam, across from Randall Wainwright and Kitty, one of the gorgeous Shaffer twins. They’re nice enough, but kind of drunk, and Kitty managed to make me feel terrible about my dress by not saying a word.
Randall cranks Lil Peep.
Liam slings an arm around me and hands over a polished silver flask.
“No, thanks,” I say. “I haven’t eaten.”
“But look, it says drink me,” he protests.
I smile. “Where does it say that?”
He grins and changes his voice, like the flask is talking, blond hair flopping over his forehead. “Drink me, Brooke!”
I roll my eyes. Liam can be seriously silly sometimes, though I don’t really know him that well. Liam and Randall go to the boys’ school down the block from our girls’ school, but in the upper grades, we share activities like band and theater and choir, and we do all our dances together.
“Drink me, drink me!” he repeats. Randall and Kitty are laughing.
I snort and take the flask. “I think you’re the Mad Hatter, that’s what I think.” I take a fake sip.
“Oh, come on,” Liam says.
I take a good swig this time. The liquid burns my throat.
Liam takes the flask back and drinks. Randall cranks the tunes.
Kitty shows me her nails, with tiny loops on the ends of them. “Amazing,” I say.
We get a booth at Bel Canto. Liam and Randall have fake IDs. They order two whiskey sours each and then give them to us when the waiter leaves.
We get puffed pastry appetizers, and Randall is laughing about band kids. It’s a five-course meal, the kind you order as a set. It’s delicious and probably worth an entire car payment for most folks.
I have just that one drink—I don’t like to drink the way some kids do.
Liam is actually really nice. He likes me, and he’s always trying to make me laugh. He gives me the cherry out of every drink he orders, and he smiles at me when he puts his hand on my thigh under the table, watching my face for any sign of not wanting it there.
I smile back at him, signaling that it’s okay. I try to imagine it feeling alive and exciting, like when Stone first touched me there, but really, Liam’s hand just feels…wooden, in a weird way. Like there’s no life in his touch. Flat.
But I let him leave it there, because he’s taking me out to this nice dinner, and maybe he’ll grow on me. I remind myself I didn’t like hanging around with Stone at first, and he grew on me, right?
Understatement of the year. Stone is all I can think about.
But Stone can’t be my boyfriend.
If anything, I should hate Stone for how he blazed into my life with all his heat and fury and passion. I should hate Stone for his intense gaze, and the way his eyes burn into my soul, and the way he kisses me—like he’ll die if he doesn’t.
Liam kisses me after dinner. More tongue, less passion.
It’s not fair to compare them. Of course Liam would have less experience. I have less experience, too. It’s actually kind of sweet. We can experience this together.
The prom is held at the elite boys’ school down the block from our girls’ academy. The theme is fairy garden, and kids from both schools have been collaborating on the decorations, though everyone knows it’s just an excuse to meet each other.
And as the night goes on, Liam’s kisses get more slopp
y. During a slow dance it seems like he’s making out with my cheek. “Got a hot tub room at Solange,” he slurs.
I smile and nod.
Solange (you never call it the Solange) is where the after-party is; Solange is a boutique hotel on River Road Drive, just down from the Ivy Club, which is the exclusive private men’s club that my father belongs to.
If the schools Liam and I attend cater to the most elite families in all of Franklin City, the Solange penthouse after-party is where the heirs of the most elite of the elite families will go.
I’m hoping Liam passes out before we get there. Even though he was nice to me, I don’t want to have sex with him. The condom feels hot in my little black and gold clutch.
He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the ballroom, mumbling something about fresh air.
I’m wondering whether he’s feeling sick. Some small part of me hopes he is.
I imagine myself playing Florence Nightingale, making the limo driver bring us to the 7-Eleven, where I’d buy him crackers and soda. He’d apologize, and I’d be so nice about it. And then he’d drop me off, and my mother would have no excuse to be angry—how could I go to Solange when my date was deathly ill?
“You okay?” I ask.
“Gotta get air,” he murmurs, arm slung around my shoulders.
The limos are arrayed up and down the block. “Which one is ours?” I ask.
“Who cares?” he says, and his voice is lower than usual.
It sends a shiver down my spine, not completely unpleasant. It reminds me of Stone, that voice. Enough that I turn my face away and pretend he’s with me.
So we keep walking. Suddenly, he’s leading me into a darkened walkway between buildings, ivy-covered brick on one side, a chain-link fence on the other, a dim glint in the dark.
“What are you doing?”
“A little party of our own.”
I slow down, tugging toward the street, the light. I’m not sure that I want to go back. Not sure that I want to go forward. “We’re missing the dance,” I say, stalling for time.
He pulls me deeper in, then pushes me against the bricks in the dark and makes out with my face—that’s how it feels, like I’m a face to make out with while he paws my breasts.
My mother’s words ring in my ears. Be nice. Try. We all make sacrifices.
“Somebody might come.” But that’s not what I’m worried about. No one will find us out here. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Everyone in there will end up naked in a hotel room.
“Let them come,” he says, running his hand over my dress, pulling it up, feeling my bare thigh above the stockings, reaching higher.
“Wait,” I say, but what I really want to say is, you’re not Stone.
The realization turns my insides cold. No matter how long it’s been since Stone left, even after I knew he wouldn’t come back, I’ve been waiting for him. Ignoring all the prep-school boys for him. Keeping myself a virgin for him. How messed up is that?
In the end it’s not my mother’s words that move me.
It’s the knowledge that I want Stone that makes me decide to have sex with Liam. I think if I let Liam inside my body, if I lose myself in this moment, I can finally forget.
I resign myself to this. I’m going to have sex with my prom date, like a hundred other girls tonight. I’m going to be completely ordinary, completely normal, completely unlike the girl who dreams about the man who took her hostage.
Except that Liam isn’t kissing me anymore.
He’s pulled back, looking at me, concern replacing some of the lust in his eyes.
Because I told him to wait, I realize. He’s respecting my body, respecting me, and that’s another thing that makes this so different. Stone never had sex with me, but I like to think that if he decided to, he wouldn’t stop. Not even if I asked him to.
That’s the way I fantasize about him, being hard and demanding.
“You want to go inside?” Liam says, his voice a little hoarse.
It would hurt him to go back inside, be a strain on his body, but he’d do it if I asked him to. The knowledge sends a tendril of tenderness through me. “No. I want this.”
To prove the point, I reach back up for him, curling my hands into the lapels of his tux and pulling him down to me. His lips meet mine again, and I can almost, almost be in this moment with him. I’m a few seconds away from letting go of those car rides. A single breath away from forgetting.
Suddenly he’s off me.
There’s a flash of hands and black leather. The shattering smash of a body against steel links. A delayed grunt of surprise. Protest. Pain. Liam leaning against the fence, a stunned expression on his face.
A hulking shadow stands in the alley between us.
“What the hell?” Liam says, pushing away from the fence.
“Walk away.” Stone. He came for me. He watched me. And he’s standing between Liam and me. I can hardly process this. It’s like seeing a wild animal in the middle of a shopping mall. He doesn’t belong here, but I’m so angry. Angry that he messed up the one thing that might help me get over him. Relieved, too.
“Who the fuck are you?” Liam demands.
Stone takes a step toward him, and in a matter of seconds, I’m flashed back to my sixteenth birthday party. To seeing Stone for the first time. To blood and death.
“Wait,” I say, breathless with panic. “Don’t kill him.”
He turns to look at me, his face in shadows. Even in the dark, I can see his expression. Terrifying. And a little incredulous. “You think I’ll kill him.”
His voice is flat, and I realize I’ve managed to insult him.
The truth is, I don’t know what he’s going to do. He beat that man in the truck stop bathroom, but that was entirely different from this. I didn’t want that man. And, for my own reasons, I wanted this boy.
“Please,” I say, soft. It’s only meant for Stone, that one word. Not for Liam, who’s cursing and threatening to call the police.
Stone takes a step toward me, and I’m too glad to be scared of him. Maybe I should be worried that he’ll hurt me, but he’s protected me too much.
“I should leave you with him,” he says, his voice still strangely flat. “So he can paw at you. Put his filthy hands on your body. That’s what you want?”
I have the sense of being at the top of a mountain, that whichever way I lean now will determine where I roll, one word to decide my whole future. Stone will leave me here. That much is clear in my voice. If I tell him that I want to stay, that I want to lose my virginity to Liam, he’ll let me.
“No,” I breathe out, before I’ve even thought through the ramifications.
Liam chooses that moment to wave the phone at us, the screen overbright in the dark alley. “The police are on their way, asshole. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
My blood runs cold. The police. They won’t take kindly to a grown man crashing a rich-kid prom night. “You have to go,” I whisper.
“Come with me,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s ever asked me that.
He’s taken me hostage three times now. Sat in the passenger seat and told me to drive. But he’s never asked me to come with him. The question sits between us, as precious as crystal, fragile as dew.
“Stone,” I say, and it’s impossible to mistake the longing in my voice.
I’m standing here in a dress my mother picked out, with the boy she wants me to lose my virginity to. With that foil packet in my clutch, a symbol of everything I’m worth to them. The dutiful daughter to make a sacrifice. What about what I want?
What about what I need?
Light bounces off the bricks, flashlights on cell phones. Then Randall appears at the entrance to the alley, his arm slung around Kitty, who’s carrying a bottle of wine.
“We’ve been looking for you,” he says, his voice almost a shout. “It’s time for Solange, baby!”
It’s Kitty who realizes something is wrong. “Oh my God,” she says
.
Randall sobers up real quick. “You can take what you want. I have money in my wallet. I’ll give it to you.”
He thinks we’re being mugged. And in the middle of this mess of teenage hormones and drunkenness, Stone stands like he’s actually made of marble. Still. Cold. Unfeeling.
With a terrible shudder I realize he never had this. Prom night. Tux rentals. A limo.
He stands there looking so alone.
I take his hand in mine. He squeezes so hard I gasp, and I realize I was wrong. He’s not unfeeling. Not cold. He burns hot with fury, with regret. “Let’s go,” I tell him softly.
“Come quietly and your pretty boy doesn’t get hurt.”
Stone’s words ring loud through the alley, bouncing off brick, and I realize he wants it to seem like he’s taking me hostage. Even though I already asked to come. I don’t know why he wants it like this. Maybe this is the only way he can take me.
“No,” I say, a little hesitant at first. “Don’t.”
“I won’t let you touch her,” Liam says, but he doesn’t sound sure. And he doesn’t place himself between us the way that Stone did. Doesn’t defend me with his body.
“What are you going to do about it?” Stone says, soft with menace. “Are you going to fight me? Going to throw a punch at me? Does it seem like you’d walk away from that?”
As threats go, it’s effective. A visible shudder grabs Liam.
Stone grabs my wrist, his grip firm but not bruising. “He understands, princess. You don’t fight me. Got it? That’s the way you keep your friends nice and safe.”
He drags me down the alley toward the street.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Liam, hoping he’ll understand. It sounds like I’m sorry that he was threatened, like I’m terrified and mindless. In truth I’m just sorry he didn’t get the sex he deserves.
Stone pulls me down the street, with Liam shouting about the police, with Randall staring after us. Kitty whispers to me as I pass by, asking where I met him. She thinks he’s some kind of bad man, the kind who would snatch a young woman off the street. She doesn’t know he’s so much better than that. And so much worse than that. Because he’s done this before.
A white truck waits at the corner, a sharp contrast to the long line of black limos in the parking lot. I’m supposed to be in one of those limos, getting felt up, getting drunk. I’m supposed to be a regular eighteen-year-old girl, but instead I’m holding hands with a murderer.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 99
