by Nikki Chase
Prologue
“You look amazing tonight,” he says as he takes another step, closing the gap between us.
My heart hammers in my chest, and my whole body feels unstable. “Thanks,” I whisper. “You do, too.”
“I mean it.” Aiden’s breath falls hot on my skin.
He’s too close—someone’s going to see us. But at the same time, he’s too far away, and I need him right against me, skin on skin.
Aiden seems to feel the same way, because he puts his hand on my waist and pulls me close.
“We shouldn’t,” I say. “Someone might see.”
“Just one minute.” Aiden puts his hand on my cheek and strokes my skin with his thumb.
I can’t help but melt into his touch. Before I know it, my eyes are closed and my head is tilted up. Aiden leans down and puts his lips on mine.
It’s gentle, tentative, and more than just a little bit scary, this kiss we’re sharing. It feels new like the first one, but I know these lips and the way they kiss—I replay his kisses in my head all the time.
“I miss you, princess,” Aiden says when he pulls away.
My body tenses. “There it is again. ‘Princess.’”
I break free of Aiden’s arms, which only seconds ago felt like heaven.
I raise my gaze to meet his. “I’m not your princess, Aiden. You disappeared on me without so much as an explanation. I waited for you all night. I waited until the diner closed and they shooed me out, luggage and all.”
I want to add that it was raining, too, to add insult to injury, considering I was literally in a desert city. But I think I’ve gotten the message across.
Regret and realization flash in Aiden’s eyes, but there’s something else: hurt.
He was the one who left me hanging; what’s he got to feel hurt about?
Aiden opens his mouth but before he can say anything, the big door opens.
Music blares from the gap. The party’s in full swing now. With flashing lights and a popular dance number to set the mood, Hannah and Earl’s wedding guests are getting wild on the floor.
I realize the person who’s just opened the door is my dad, and I take one big step away from Aiden.
“Aubrey, here you are. Your sister’s looking for you,” Dad says with a big smile on his face.
A surreptitious breath of relief. He mustn’t have seen the kiss.
“Yeah, I was just getting her some powder from upstairs. Took me a while to find it.” I pull out the compact from the pocket in my dress before I follow Dad back inside.
I glance back over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of Aiden. Looks like I’m getting texts with sad emojis tonight.
Aubrey
My phone lies on the counter. I’ve already turned it off and taken out the battery, so it’s probably safe now.
“Damn,” says the man on the other side of the counter. He works for the cell phone carrier, whose bright orange logo is printed on his blue polo shirt, just over a plastic name tag that says “Tom.”
He’s working at the moment so he shouldn’t be swearing, but I guess this is a sight that would even shock a veteran phone-carrier-stand guy.
“So can you help me?” I ask again, my gaze darting between Tom and my seven-year-old nephew, Marcus, who’s currently too busy zig-zagging between annoyed shoppers to realize I want him to just stop for a moment.
I just want some peace and quiet while Tom fixes my phone. God. Is that too much to ask?
“I don’t know,” Tom says.
“Huh?” I stare at Tom. Is this guy reading my mind?
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know,” Tom repeats. “This account is not yours. It’s under your dad’s name. So because it’s his account, he can technically do whatever he wants to it.”
“So you’re saying this is legal?” I can’t believe this.
“Yeah.” Tom shrugs.
“So you’re saying he can track my phone and find out where I am at all times, without my consent and even without my knowledge, and it’s perfectly okay?” I ask, the words coming out like bullets. I’ve been preparing this ammo all day, since I found out about what my dad’s doing.
“Well…” Tom takes a sharp breath. “I don’t know about ‘okay,’ because this is totally fucked up if you asked me.” He pauses, then he gives me a look of sympathy. “But it’s completely legal.”
“Marcus!” I yell over my shoulder. “Let go of that lady’s bag!”
Marcus stares at me with a mischievous grin as he lifts up the bag over his head.
Oh no, this can’t be good. “Marcus,” I warn him.
Without saying anything, he lets the bag go so it hits its owner with a loud thud against her hip. As he cackles, she recovers from her shock and lifts her angry glare from Marcus’ face to mine.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, putting on what I hope is an irresistibly forgivable face.
Marcus’ victim huffs a hateful snort and stomps down the wide mall corridor, blending in with the Saturday crowd.
“Marcus,” I say as I glower at him, “come here.”
It’s bad enough that I have to face the horde of weekend shoppers, but of course that’s not the worst thing about today. My mom and my sister are in town to take care of some last-minute wedding stuff, so I’m stuck with Marcus all day.
I mean, I love my nephew, but he’s a destructive tornado. He’d spread the chaos throughout the mall, one shopper at a time, if I let him roam free.
I take his little hand in mine and hold on tight. He’s not going anywhere.
It would’ve been fine had I stayed home like I’d planned, but then I learned a horrible truth about my family, and I couldn’t just do nothing.
Here’s what happened: I was telling Mom about the time I’d gone out clubbing until 3 a.m., and she said Dad had stayed up all night waiting for me to come home.
That sounds fine, right? That makes my dad seem like a normal, concerned parent who may just be a tiny bit too protective of his daughter.
The problem? Dad wasn’t even supposed to know I’d gone out.
We live in different cities now. He’s at home in Las Vegas, where I used to live. And I’m in San Francisco, where I’m attending college at the University of California.
After a little digging, Mom admitted that Dad had been tracking my phone, which is outrageous.
I’m not a teenager anymore—hell, a lot of parents respect their teenagers’ privacy enough to not track them 24/7. I’m about to graduate medical school and start my internship program. I’ve even gotten matched with a local hospital, and my first day will be in July.
“I don’t think I need to spell out what the problem is, but I don’t want my dad to keep tracking me. What can I do?” I ask Tom.
“Well, you can’t keep using his account. You’ll need your own account. I can set that up for you right now if you want,” Tom offers, in an obvious attempt to close the sale.
Normally, I’d ask more questions about the phone plans. But with Marcus pulling my hand and trying to lick it, I’m a little more preoccupied than usual. Tom’s probably going to get a big, fat commission from whatever products he sells me.
It doesn’t matter. This new account may be under my name, but all my credit card bills go straight to Dad. So he’s literally paying for his own wrongdoing.
I chuckle to myself as I swipe the credit card, although it’s not as if he’s even going to notice the extra expense. Two phone bills instead of one—that’ll really hurt him.
My dad has been the Chief of Medicine at Hopedale Hospital for decades. He’s good at doing his job and managing his finances, so he’s sitting on a pretty big mound of money. He’s not going to even feel this.
But I’ll bet he’s going to miss the ability to track my every movement. He’s probably already called Mom in panic, demanding to know what’s going on. Typical.
After plenty of assurances from Tom that Dad won’t be tracking me anymore, I put my new phone in my bag. It has a diffe
rent number and everything now.
“Can I walk on my own please, Aunt Bee?” Marcus asks, looking up at me with almond eyes that look just like my sister’s. He blinks innocently and smiles sweetly. A little too sweetly.
I grip Marcus’ hand tighter, worried he’s going to attempt jailbreak.
Ugh, my palm is getting clammy, I think to myself. Hannah needs to buy her son one of those kid leashes.
Marcus tugs gently on my hand and says, “I’m sorry I played with that lady’s bag.” His eyes, wide as saucers, plead with me.
Damn it. He knows how to play his cards. “Fine,” I say with a sigh as I let go of his hand, “but stay close to me, okay? Don’t leave my side.”
“Yes, Aunt Bee,” Marcus says, a picture of purity and guiltlessness.
But as soon as the door opens and we step outside the mall building, Marcus throws his skateboard on the ground and rolls away from me, snickering as his blond hair floats in the wind.
Damn it, Hannah. Was it really a good idea to give this kid a skateboard?
Marcus needs a different hobby, like stamp collecting, or anything else that limits his potential for destruction.
Marcus looks over his shoulder at me, and I scream, “Look out!”
I can only watch in horror as he slams into a parked car.
“Oh, no. Oh, shit.” I sprint toward the car.
The door opens and a man steps out of the car. A pair of dark aviator sunglasses perches on the bridge of his nose while his dark, lustrous hair shifts with his self-assured, precise movements.
I hope he’s not angry, but I think he is.
The black cotton of his shirt stretches snugly across his back as he crouches down to give Marcus a hand. Despite the situation, I can’t help but notice how broad and solid his body is. He has the kind of muscles that have been carved by determination and discipline.
I want to see what he looks like underneath that shirt—the lines and the ridges, the ripples underneath his golden skin whenever he moves…
Jesus, Aubrey, I scold myself in my head, this is so not the time to be zoning out, fantasizing about a random guy. He may look like a hottie from all the way over here, but he may be a nottie from up close. And more importantly, he probably hates your guts for letting your nephew run wild right now.
The guy is still standing there talking to Marcus. I can’t hear him from where I am, but Marcus’ expression grows more pitiful by the second. It’s not long until he starts crying.
Oh, man. That looks like a nice car, too. I hope Marcus didn’t do too much damage to it. If any adult in my family knows about this, they’re going to blame me. And by the way the car owner turns to look at me now, he’s probably blaming me, too.
Why does this parking lot have to be so big? It’s going to take me forever to reach them.
I lift up my hand and wave to signal to the guy that I’m coming over. “Sorry!” I yell out.
But he’s not waiting for me. He twists to say some parting words to Marcus, then he gets back into his car and drives away, without even waving back at me.
Okay. I didn’t expect him to be all warm and friendly after what Marcus did. But I have to say, it was pretty rude of him to leave without acknowledging me at all. Ugh, rich guys can be so arrogant sometimes.
Still, I guess I’m lucky he didn’t ask me to cover the cost of fixing whatever damage Marcus caused to his luxury car.
Marcus is still crying when I reach him, and there are some scratches on his palms.
Great. Now I have to explain those to Hannah. That’s going to be fun.
Aiden
Rich, entitled girls can be so annoying.
I already saw that girl back inside the mall, trading in her shiny new phone for a slightly-shinier, slightly-newer phone. Such waste.
If she has the time to upgrade her phone every time a new version comes out, she needs to rethink her priorities, because that kid was out of control.
Sure, she’s hot—or at least she seemed hot from the back when I passed her by at the phone stand, and from afar when we were at the parking lot—but I feel bad for her husband.
Poor dude probably has to work all day to fund his wife’s expensive spending habit and come home exhausted late at night, only to be terrorized by that skateboarding ball of disastrous energy.
But hell, I don’t have time to be worrying about other people’s families. I have my mom to take care of, and she’s plenty.
At least I don’t have to worry about my mom riding skateboards in mall parking lots and crashing into random cars . . . I chuckle to myself at the mental picture.
My mom can be difficult, though.
Despite her protests, I’ve been working part-time to help pay the bills while I finish medical school. She wants me to focus on my studies and let her worry about covering our expenses, but I can’t do that.
Mom used to have quite a lot of money in her bank account, but nobody would know it by the way we live. Most of her money has gone into my education.
I knew medical school was going to be expensive and I almost decided to skip college so I could work in retail or something. That would’ve allowed me to bring in more money than I’m making now from my part-time job.
But Mom had other ideas. She told me she’d been saving up all that money specifically for my college fund. She said she was going to feel like she’d failed me if I didn’t go just because of monetary considerations.
I wanted her to keep some of that money for her retirement, but I decided to go into medicine in the end.
If we’re talking long-term, that should be a better way to go anyway.
By the time my mom retires, I should be making more than enough money to support us both, as well as any other additions to our family.
There’s still a long way to go until I get to that point, though.
For now, I enjoy the single life too much to get into a relationship with some girl. Between medical school and my part-time night job, working security at the mall, I barely have enough time to sleep as it is.
Of course, I’ve had relationships—I’m twenty-six after all. But they never lasted long. Every time I get close to a girl, I always start comparing her to someone from my teenage years, someone I’ll probably never see again in my life.
Nobody has ever made me feel the way she did.
I scoff as I hit the brake at a red light. As if she’ll give me the time of day.
Even if I happen to bump into her again, she’s probably forgotten about me. And if I manage to get her to speak to me . . . well, what then? I still wouldn’t be good enough for her, or her family—not even if I become a successful doctor.
There are always better guys out there for her, guys from wealthy families whose statuses match hers, guys who have never had to struggle for anything in their lives.
I don’t know why I still think about her now, ten years after everything happened. But I guess the first time always leaves the deepest impression.
I’m sure it wasn’t as perfect as my memory makes it seem. Everything’s probably exaggerated in my head. She probably wasn’t as beautiful as I remember, or as funny as I remember, or as smart as I remember.
My phone rings, jolting me back to the present. The ringtone sounds extra loud today as it’s amplified by the sound system in the car.
I press a button on the steering wheel to pick up the call. “Hello.”
“Hey, man, are you ready for Vegas?” Earl asks excitedly from the other end of the line.
“Dude, I was ready yesterday,” I say, matching his excited tone.
To be honest, I don’t really look forward to going back to that city where so many painful things have happened in my past. But this time, I have a big, happy reason to go.
When my mom and I moved to San Francisco ten years ago, I started hanging out with the neighborhood kids, even though many of them were a lot older than me.
Earl was one of those people. Despite his humble beginnings, he’s gone on to
become one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. I wanted to grow up to be like him, and now I’m following in his footsteps. He’s one of the handful of people from our old neighborhood who has made it out of poverty.
We still talk on the phone, but it’s been ages since I saw him. He moved to Vegas eight years ago to be with this girl he fell head over heels for, and he’s been living there ever since.
Normally, I wouldn’t be able to go to Vegas because my mom would freak out about it, even if I try to tell her nothing bad will happen.
But I’m making an exception now because there’s no way I’m going to miss out on Earl’s wedding. I’m just going to tell Mom that I have another interview out of town, even though I’ve already received a confirmation about my medical internship.
“What about you? Ready for the wedding?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the long road. I’m really digging the way I don’t need to fumble with my phone or any earphones to talk on the phone.
Earl laughs. “I’ve been with my fiancée for eight years. I don’t think there’s any surprise for me to worry about at this point.”
“Well, you never know,” I say. “Johnny Depp and Amber Heard? Lived together for three years, got married, then—boom, separated within a year. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Nine years together, got married, separated two years later.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” Earl asks.
I laugh. “I know. Seriously, though, I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”
“I know I will,” Earl says earnestly.
I envy his certainty. I can’t imagine getting myself tied down to a woman for the rest of my life and feeling that sure about it. Maybe it would be different if I were with her, but that’s out of the question.
“How do you know so much about celebrity relationships anyway?” Earl asks.
“Hey, don’t judge, man,” I say. “My mom watches those gossip shows all the time and I can hear the TV from my room. You know how fucking thin the walls are. There was a special on celebrity break-ups last night.”
“Okay, whatever. Let’s save the girl talk for tomorrow. How’s your mom?”
