Unwritten Rules

by Eliah Greenwood

  “It’s not that.” He looks conflicted. “It’s just…”

  I wait for him to speak, holding my breath.

  “I can’t think of a good memory.”

  Ouch.

  Then, like he got too close to a forbidden place, he shakes his head, trying to remove the unwanted thoughts from his brain. There are so many questions I want to ask, so much more I want to know.

  “Want to go for a walk?” He gets up from the swing.

  I nod, following him on the empty sidewalk that borders the park.

  I watch the cars pass us. “You’re not who I thought you were.”

  “And who is that, may I ask?”

  “A big-headed Mr. Know-it-all, player, daddy’s spoiled little boy.”

  “And who am I now?”

  “A decent big-headed Mr. Know-it-all, player, daddy’s spoiled little boy.”

  He laughs, shaking his head. “How kind of you.”

  “I know.” I laugh along with him.

  “If we’re being honest, you’re not who I thought you were either.”

  “How come?”

  “I thought you were wild when I met you. You know, since you basically broke every single rule. But you’re not. You’re the definition of a good girl. A prude,” he teases.

  I jolt around to face him. I hit him in the arm, trying to hurt him, but end up hurting myself instead. What’s his arm made of? Bricks?

  I make a face. “I am not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m not,” I retort. “How am I a saint? I’m secretly hanging out with a street fighter, not to mention my cousin’s nemesis, aren’t I?” Guilt burdens me when the words leave my mouth. It sounds so much worse when I say it out loud.

  He scoffs. “Oh come on, when’s the last time you did something crazy? And I mean really crazy? Like the ‘I’ll tell my children this story’ kind of crazy?”

  “That’s easy. Last week, I followed this guy onto the roof of an abandoned high school.”

  “That doesn’t count. I practically had to carry you there.”

  “Whatever,” I huff. “I’m not a prude.”

  He steps closer until his strong physique hovers over me.

  “Then prove it.”

  The small proximity between us makes it hard to think.

  Reboot the computer. I repeat, reboot the computer.

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  Haze glances around, analyzing the area. Then, after a good ten seconds, he speaks.

  “Jump.” He points at something.

  I turn my head to see a public pool. At first, I crack up. One, because I expected something a bit more challenging, and two, because I’m wearing my bathing suit right now. It’s perfect.

  “All dressed,” he adds.

  Shit.

  He walks toward the fenced pool where a large sign says “$10 for adults. $5 for kids.” I follow him, my heart thumping loudly against my rib cage. The fence is high and surrounds the entire property. I’d have to do way more than get into a pool all dressed. I’d have to jump the fence and break in. That’s a crime.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then you admit that I’m right?”

  If there’s one thing I hate about Haze, it’s his ability to make me want to do the craziest things just so I can prove him wrong. I’m not sure what it is. In every way, he’s the bad influence I never knew I craved. The devil on my shoulders who tells me to let go.

  To be wild.

  “One minute, tops,” I mutter.

  A satisfied smile remolds his lips as he nods. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Haze and I look around carefully, making sure we’re alone. I struggle to climb over the fence while he watches me, already on the other side, and snickers. When I finally make it, his pale eyes lock with mine.

  “On three,” he says.

  A violent wave of second thoughts hits me. The severity of the situation overcomes my fleeting moment of madness, and I realize what I’m about to do.

  “Haze, I’m not sure this is a good idea. Maybe we should go.”

  He doesn’t reply, frowning. His gaze rapidly shifts from the pool to me.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. But before we go, can I use your phone for a second? I need to make a call, and I left mine in the car.”

  “Sure.”

  I get my phone out of my pocket and hand it to him. He captures Kass’s prehistoric phone in his large hand and briskly drops it on the grass surrounding the pool.

  “What are you d—”

  Before I have time to comprehend the events unraveling before my eyes, he runs toward me, picks me up like I’m weightless, and throws me into the freezing water.

  Bastard.

  He jumps, too, making sure to create a splash as big and obnoxious as humanly possible. How could I not see that coming? I gave him my phone like a freaking idiot. At least he thought about protecting it.

  The water is freezing. I hold back a scream, goose bumps erupting over my skin. I come back up to the surface, gasping for air and trying my best not think about all the kid pee I probably just swallowed. I didn’t even have time to close my mouth.

  “You piece of sh—” I cut myself off, coughing.

  No words can explain how grateful I am that I wasn’t wearing makeup.

  “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  He laughs. “I can’t believe that you thought I wouldn’t.”

  “I hate you.” I splash him again.

  He splashes me right back, and thanks to his considerably stronger and wider arms, I’m practically hit by a tsunami. We keep on splashing each other, struggling to hold back our laughter as our clothes go from wet to soaked.

  “Hey! You!” a man’s voice screeches in the distance. A glimmering light catches my eye. It’s a flashlight. It has to be.

  “Shit,” Haze growls. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Security.

  We hurry out of the pool as fast as lightning. I scoop my phone off the ground.

  “Come on, we have to go. Now!”

  Jumping the fence suddenly seems like the easiest thing I’ve ever had to do. As soon as our feet hit the ground, he traps my hand in his and starts running.

  I always hated exercise. In gym class, the teacher would find great pleasure in threatening to fail me because I refused to do anything that required running. News flash: almost every sport does. But now that it’s the only way to not end up in jail tonight, I’ll run for two hours straight if I have to.

  The man screams to stop, but we don’t look back, dodging everything that dares stand in our way. Haze is a fast runner. We’re very different in that department. Anyone who sees me running should start running, too.

  After a never-ending five minutes of cardio, Haze pulls me behind a trash bin next to a store and motions to stay silent, his finger pressed to his lips.

  We see the flashlight wandering around the darkness of the smelly alley for a couple of minutes.

  “Damn it,” we hear the man curse.

  The footsteps decrease, gradually becoming more and more distant until they disappear altogether. We catch our breath, our eyes colliding.

  Then, we can’t stop ourselves.

  We break into laughter, holding on to our stomachs while our shoulders shake uncontrollably. I can’t believe I’m laughing at this. It could’ve gone extremely wrong. We could’ve gotten arrested. We could’ve gotten hurt. We could’ve died.

  So tell me why I’ve never felt more alive.

  “DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. MY AUNT’S working at the hospital tonight, and Kassidy’s still at the party.” I unlock the front door to Maria’s house and walk into the completely silent kitchen that’s usually crawling with Kass and Maria’s yappers. Haze follows me hesitantly.

  When we finally managed to stop laughing, we started shivering. The water was so cold, it’s a wonder we didn’t catch hypothermia. I sugges
ted that we go to my house, which was closer to where we were, to dry ourselves up. Haze’s place is around thirty-five minutes away, and I don’t want him to stay in his stone-cold clothes and get sick.

  “Come on.” I guide him to the bathroom upstairs and hand him a clean towel. When realization seems to hit him and his eyes grow two sizes, I frown.

  “What is it?”

  No reply. He dives his hand into the back pocket of his pants and gets something out of it.

  A phone. It’s dripping on the floor, completely soaked.

  “Crap. I thought you said you left your phone in the car.”

  He looks up at me. “I did.”

  “Then whose phone is this?”

  “Kendrick’s.”

  “What?”

  “I completely forgot to give it back to you when I took you to the rooftop, so I brought it tonight but… then, I also forgot that it was in my pocket when we jumped in the pool.”

  “Okay, hold on. Why do you have Kendrick’s phone?”

  “He lost it when he attacked my brother. They wanted to use it against him, but I stole it to give it back to you. I thought you had enough going on,” he glances at me. “What’s up with hanging up on people, by the way?”

  Everything falls into place.

  Haze is the one who picked up when I called Kendrick.

  “But…” I stutter. “They made me throw my phone into the toilet in case someone wanted to locate the call!”

  It takes a couple of seconds for the information to register into Haze’s brain. Then, after silently staring at me with his mouth wide open, he bursts out laughing, for the billionth time tonight.

  “You did what?”

  “Shut up.” I cover my face with shaky hands. “I can’t believe it was you. God damn it.”

  Haze doesn’t stop laughing, nor does he seem to have any intention to.

  “You threw your phone in the—” He cuts himself off, laughing louder. “I can’t believe you. It’s impossible to be bored with you, Winter, you know that?”

  I shake my head, unable to take any more humiliation. I threw my phone in the toilet. How was I supposed to know?

  “You’re dripping everywhere. Don’t move. I’ll be back with some dry clothes.”

  He nods, still laughing.

  I walk into Kendrick’s room, which is messier than I thought possible, and grab whatever clean clothes I can find—God knows that’s rare in my cousin’s room. Boys will be boys. These two are around the same size. It should fit.

  When I walk back into the bathroom, I see Haze managed to get his laughter under control and is drying his hair off with the towel. One of his toned arms holds the towel up as the other one ruffles his messy brown hair. I swear, this boy could make the simplest actions look attractive.

  “There you go,” I say, a shy smile forming on my lips. “Take off your clothes so we can throw them in the dryer.”

  Haze grins and proceeds to do the one thing I did not expect. He tugs at his shirt and removes it with absolutely no shame.

  Don’t look at his abs.

  Don’t look at his abs.

  Don’t look at his a… Dang it.

  My cheeks heat up when I take in every inch of his Adonis body. My wandering gaze can’t seem to stay in one place, drifting from his pecs, to his biceps, to his obliques, to his six-pack.

  Don’t even get me started on his six-pack.

  He’s… infuriatingly hot.

  Street fighting and training close to every single day will do that to you. It’s hard to believe he’s only eighteen. According to what Kendrick said, he’s been training with his brother ever since he was fourteen years old. Well, it shows.

  I giggle nervously, looking away. “I didn’t mean right now.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Is my sexiness making you uncomfortable?” He smirks, stepping closer.

  My pulse quickens with every step. As the distance between us decreases, my ability to breath does, too.

  “Is there a better way to react to someone stripping in front of me?”

  He laughs, staring right through my soul.

  “There are many ways to react to someone stripping in front of you.”

  Barely four steps separate us now.

  The cockiness drains from his face and is replaced by something darker, eager. I know that look. I know that lust.

  Three steps.

  His gaze drops to my lips

  Two steps.

  For the first time, he doesn’t rip his eyes away. He stares. Hard.

  One step.

  He stops, refusing to take the last step. We both know that would be taking us to the next step, as well. We don’t move a muscle, looking at each other in silence. My head is a freaking whirlwind. His eyes say that it’s up to me. That he won’t make a move unless I want him to. Do I want him to?

  Yes, you do.

  Shut up, voice of reason.

  I have no idea why I do it. Why I take the last step. Maybe it’s the four drinks running in my veins, or maybe it’s my heart and its annoying tendency to disagree with my brain.

  His breath lightly fans my lips. He smells like mint. I’m confident that my heart is going to burst out of my chest any second when he lifts his hand and cups my face gently. I shiver at the touch, welcoming the warmth of his skin.

  He leans forward, his lips dangerously close to mine…

  “Who left a trail of water around the house?”

  I jerk away from him in a sudden move. It’s like coming out of a trance. Or waking up from a dream.

  A really, really good dream.

  I panic. “My aunt’s here early. You have to go.” Then, yelling loud enough for her to hear, “It’s me. I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up in a minute.” I turn back to him. “Come on, you can sneak out my bedroom window. It used to be Kendrick’s room. He did it all the time.”

  Haze is as overwhelmed as I am, but he doesn’t budge. He throws his wet shirt back on and follows me. I unlock the window with a shaky hand and open it.

  Our eyes meet. We’re thinking the same thing. Should we say something? Probably. But we don’t have time.

  “Go.” I whisper.

  Then, without a word, he exits through my window, hustles down the vines growing on the side of the house, and disappears into the pitch-black night.

  Seconds later, Maria comes up the stairs, complaining about the trail of water Haze and I left all the way from the kitchen to the second floor. I apologize and tell her that someone pushed me in the pool, which technically isn’t false.

  I refrain from telling her that it wasn’t at the party but in a public pool that the town’s bad boy and I broke into. I don’t think she’d like that part very much.

  She says to clean it up and hugs me good night, exhausted from her day at work. I sit on my bed, my skin burning where Haze’s fingers used to be.

  I almost kissed him. I almost kissed my cousin’s worst enemy. He’s the one who made the deal. He is the reason Kendrick is hurt. I should be crippled with guilt. I should feel awful. I stare at the window that Haze just escaped out of, and I hate myself.

  Because I don’t hate myself at all.

  E L E V E N

  The New Girlfriend

  “Guys, I’m begging you, just drop it. It’s not too late to turn around.” I shift in the back seat, staring out the window at a neighborhood I’ve never been to before. None of the boys reply, bumping their heads along to the music playing on the radio.

  “Fine, ignore me. But when Kendrick finds out and kills all of you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I put my hands up in surrender, gently pressing my forehead to the tinted glass.

  “He told us to do whatever it took to fix it. That’s what we did. We fixed it. He’ll give us his blessing. You’ll see.” Will says, his eyes locked on the road.

  “We’re talking about hiring Kendrick’s ex-girlfriend, which was a very messy breakup, may I rem
ind you, to play his new girlfriend in front of his mother. The only thing I see him giving you is a broken nose.”

  “Well, he’s going to have to deal with it because the dinner’s tonight and Nicole’s the only girl who said yes,” Will retorts. He claps like an overexcited child to spite me. “Look, we’re here.”

  I glance out the window. He’s right. We’re in front of her house already. We got this far—might as well get it over with.

  Alex furrows his eyebrows. “Remind me why they broke up again?”

  “Don’t know.” Blake frowns. “Will?”

  Will snickers. “No idea. Kendrick’s not exactly big on talking about his feelings.”

  Then, as if they can read each other’s minds, they turn their heads concurrently and gaze in my direction.

  “Don’t look at me. I don’t know any more than you do.”

  “Yeah, right. Spit it out,” Will says.

  Will might be a complete jerk sometimes, but he’s right about one thing. Kendrick rarely talks about his feelings. Everything I know I heard from Kass after she bugged him for days.

  I give in. “He wouldn’t tell her about the fights. She dumped him because she felt he was hiding things from her.”

  Alex nods. “Dating her wasn’t a walk in the park either. Last I heard she was needy, controlling, and a bit crazy.”

  Will makes a face. “Aren’t all girls?”

  I roll my eyes so hard I see my brain.

  Guys like him are the reason some girls go gay.

  The boys reach for the car handle, ready to step out of the vehicle. I’m about to do the same when Will cackles.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Canada?”

  “What do you mean? I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not. You don’t know Nicole like we do. Let us handle it.”

  “What? Absolutely not. I’m not staying in the car.” I’m about to open the door when I hear the unmistakable sound of defeat.

  He locked the door.

  The bastard locked the door.

  Will has this great car that you can’t get out of if it’s been locked from the outside. Some call it childproof.

  I call it a kidnapping car.