Backlash (The Rivals Book 2)

by Geneva Lee

  “I did just fine when Noah Porter came looking for you,” she says.

  I drop the knife I’m using to chop tomatoes.

  “Noah found you.”

  “Showed up at my dorm.” She pops another grape, like the FBI showing up at NYU is a daily occurrence.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I ask. The last thing I need is him dragging her into this, even if she thinks she can handle herself.

  “It’s not like he was honest with me.” She rolls her eyes, propping her feet on the barstool and hugging her knees to her chest. “He told me he needed to ask me about my family. I figured it had something to do with when we were kids. I told him I’d been in foster care since I was eight. Then he asked me about that and if I had any contact with my family. I thought he meant dad, so I said ‘nah,’ and then he left. He did give me his number.”

  I stare at her through the entire rambling account. “He gave you his number? Or his business card?”

  “His number,” she says, leaving no room to doubt what she means. “I have it somewhere. Do you want it?”

  I’m going to kill him. Of course Noah would hit on my baby sister. Trust Sutton to attract a man like him. She’s too pretty for her own good, and she’s got a pistol for a mouth. It’s just the combination an alpha male like him goes for. If he only knew.

  “It’s not like I’m going to call him,” she says, misreading my face. “Not the same team, remember?”

  “How did you figure out he was looking for me?” If I spend another second thinking about Noah trying to flirt with Sutton, I’m going to find myself in jail for murder by nightfall.

  “Luca told me.” She freezes, grape in hand, then winces.

  “Weren’t supposed to tell me that, were you?”

  “If you would keep me updated, I wouldn’t have to! But you went radio silent. What was I supposed to do?” Her shoulders square as she gets fired up. In another minute, she’ll be a five-foot-three, one-hundred-and-ten pound fireball.

  “You’re not the one who’s in trouble,” I say calmly before she explodes.

  “Luca just told me you had your hands full with MacBitchFace.” Sutton screws up her nose to remind me exactly where she stands when it comes to Adair.

  I take a deep breath. This isn’t going to go over well. “About that…”

  “Yeah,” she stops me. “Jack told me about that, too. What the fuck are you thinking?”

  “I’m in love with her.” I might as well face the truth, and the sooner Sutton accepts it, the better. The last thing that will help me get into Adair’s good graces is Sutton unleashing chaos on our relationship.

  Sutton shakes her head like she’s not buying it. “Your dick’s in love with her.”

  “Nice,” I mutter, returning to the Jerusalem salad I’m making. I check the clock, trying to guess whether I’ll have time to manage my sister’s fire and prepare all the food for a picnic date. “I don’t expect you to get it. I barely get it myself, but it’s real, okay?”

  “Sounds like she doesn’t know it.”

  “Yeah, she’s got questions.” I wipe my hands on a towel, finished with the salad. I turn to hummus next, blitzing chickpeas, garlic, tahini and lemon together with my secret weapon, picked up from a Greek YaYa: smoked paprika..

  “About?” Sutton presses.

  “The last five years,” I admit.

  “What have you told her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wait!” Sutton spins the stool around and hops to her feet. “I know more than she does?” She claps and begins bouncing around in her socks. I do my best to ignore her happy dancing at this revelation, but I can’t keep a smile off my face. For as much trouble as she’s going to cause being here—and I know she will—I missed her.

  “Sit down,” I order her when Zeus begins to howl out of concern.

  In fairness, he never encountered this particular brand of insanity before. Some people burn energy by fidgeting, but Sutton would die if she had to keep still.

  “So, what are you cooking for me?” she asks with bright eyes, peering across the counter to watch me work.

  “Get takeout,” I tell her. “This is spoken for.”

  Her lip sticks out. “And who is getting your sausage?” When I don’t respond, she groans. “Not fair! I came all the way from New York to see you!”

  “Without calling to tell me you were coming,” I point out.

  “As a surprise!” She feigns devastation. “Only to discover I’ve been replaced by MacBitchFace.”

  She watches, faux-wistfully, as I use a mortar and pestle to grind fresh za’atar, a dizzyingly fragrant mix of thyme, sesame, and a dried berry called sumac.

  “No one can replace you,” I tell her, and I mean it.

  “Unless it comes to dinner,” she mutters.

  Adair opens the door to her suite just wide enough to slide through, purse in hand, wearing a loose linen sundress. Her hair is pinned into an artful mess on top of her head, revealing her long porcelain neck. The straps of her dress are thin enough that I can see every delicious freckle on her shoulders.

  “Something wrong with your door?” I ask, leaning in to kiss her. It’s swift, a brush of my lips, before she can stop me. When I pull back, her cheeks are flushed pink.

  She swallows before saying in a business-like voice, “I thought it best we keep a safe distance between us and a bed.”

  “If memory serves, the wall suited you just fine.” I pat the wallpaper for good measure.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warns me, “or I’ll start bringing a chaperone with us on all our dates.”

  Dates? As in plural? That’s a good sign. I try to keep my face blank, but she must see something hiding there, because she sighs.

  “Keep it in your pants, okay?”

  “Happy to,” I promise, offering her my arm. I’m already dreaming up all the things I can do to her with my pants on. I don’t mind being generous.

  “I don’t like the look on your face,” she says, but she loops her arm through mine, anyway. “So, where are we going?”

  “Guess.”

  “Hennie’s,” she says.

  “As much as I will live and die for hot chicken,” I say, “—and I will—I thought something more romantic might be in order.”

  “I thought we were going to talk.” She stops in the middle of the Eaton’s lobby so abruptly that a bellhop nearly runs over her with a baggage cart.

  “We are.” I tug her forward, calling an apology to the guy who’s collecting suitcases from the floor and shoving them back on the cart.

  “About you,” she says, “not us.”

  “There’s not a me without you,” I say without thinking. She stops again and I turn to her. Cupping her face in my palm, I look into her green eyes. “I’m really trying here. I promise.”

  Uncertainty flickers across her face, but she finally nods. “Okay, let’s go, but it better be neutral territory.”

  “It doesn’t get more neutral,” I promise her, closing my free hand over the one hooked around my elbow. Neutral or not, she’s not getting away again.

  It’s a typical, sultry summer night in Nashville. Neon signs glow under the waxing sun. There’s still a couple of hours until sunset, but the light has already begun to fade to the rosy glow of twilight as we drive away from the city and towards Valmont.

  “Neutral territory?” she says with a raised eyebrow when we pass the first mile marker.

  “There’s not a lot places in Tennessee that are neutral for us,” I remind her. If I was doing this perfectly, I would take her out to the far reaches of Windfall’s grounds like we did on our first picnic. That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to risk going anywhere near her family estate at the moment. Besides, the last time we did that, we rode horses, which Adair doesn’t do anymore. The thought jogs my memory. “Why don’t you ride anymore?”

  “There was an accident,” she says tersely, suddenly taking an intense interest in the sc
enery outside.

  “You said that.” I wait for more of an explanation when she doesn’t continue, I add, “If you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t.” I can tell by her tone that she means it.

  Apparently, Adair can demand all sorts of information about me, but I’m not allowed to ask about something that changed her life dramatically. “I just remember how much you loved to ride horses. Do you miss it?”

  “I try not to think about it.” She turns to me and reaches for my hand. “Can we drop it? It’s not a good memory and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Why does that matter?” I ask.

  “Because you’ll try to fix it for me,” she says, “like you always do, and this can’t be fixed, which only makes it worse. I did something stupid—-really stupid—and I can’t take it back. That’s all you need to know.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” I say, squeezing her hand. She falls so silent afterwards that I nearly drive off the road turning my attention to her. Her face is stricken—white as a magnolia petal—and the moment our eyes meet, she blinks and shakes the look off her face.

  “It’s worth a lot,” she says at last.

  “But it doesn’t change anything,” I guess. “Okay, happier topic. Have you figured out where we’re going yet?”

  “You really aren’t going to tell me?” She twists in her seat and turns wide eyes on me.

  “No. You’ll see.”

  “What if I guess?” she asks.

  “You haven’t exactly been playing that game.”

  “We’re going to Valmont but not Windfall, so the quad? Or to Market Street for dinner?”

  I grin. “Terrible guesses. I want somewhere private, but neutral,” I add quickly. “Besides, I already have dinner.” I hitch my thumb to the back seat.

  Adair peeks into the back and spots my carefully prepared picnic basket. “A picnic? Is that a good idea?”

  “The weather’s right.”

  “It’s hot as hell,” she says in disbelief.

  “It’s cooling off.” I dismiss her concern, because I know the real reason she’s against the idea. A picnic might take place in neutral territory, but there’s a good chance we’ll wind up alone.

  “You’re the worst,” she says as if guessing my thoughts.

  “No, Lucky, I’m an opportunist,” I tell her, turning the car down a narrow lane.

  “Wait, where are we going for this picnic?” She looks out the window and groans when she processes the scenery outside. “You’re shameless.”

  “It’s a public place. Outdoors. Suuuuuper neutral.”

  “Little Love isn’t what I had in mind,” she says dryly.

  “You only said neutral,” I remind her.

  “You're shameless.” Despite her objections, her hand stays warm and soft in mine as the car climbs up the winding road to the highest point in Valmont.

  Little Love is named after its much more impressive cousin Love Circle, which overlooks the whole of Nashville. Love Circle is a spectacular spot for seeing the entire city, the kind of place where someone is always proposing marriage or taking couple’s portraits. That means it’s not exactly off the beaten track.

  Little Love, on the other hand, looks out over Valmont University. During the academic year, couples visit it for slightly more debauched reasons. It’s a place to get away from your roommate or smoke pot. But right now Valmont is between summer sessions, and hardly anyone sticks around for classes during the summer, anyway. That means there won’t be many people here. Not only will it get me alone with Adair, it also will make certain the wrong people don’t hear something they shouldn’t. Adair wants to know about the past few years? Fine. But I can’t take the chance that Noah Porter is around, or that someone from the Koltsov family is following me.

  When we reach the top of the hill, we don’t just find it quiet, we find it deserted. Lights twinkle in the dusky orange sky above us, the university sprawls below us. If Love Circle is the quintessentially urban romantic spot in Nashville, Little Love is the country dream version. Small sparks pop in and out of the air around us as the lightning bugs come out for the evening. They’re joined by a symphony of cicadas. It should be magical, but Adair sits in protest in the passenger seat while I lay out a wool blanket and start setting things up.

  I pour a glass of wine for her and pop open a Pellegrino for myself, then I hook my index finger, beckoning her to join me. Her eyes narrow and her mouth flattens as if she’s seriously considering staying put.

  “Lucky, come on, let’s talk!” I call.

  She throws her hands in the air, but finally climbs out of the car. She stops on the edge of the blanket and stares down at the feast I’ve laid out. “What is this?”

  “I settled on a picnic because a lot of the really good food I discovered the last five years is just as good if it’s not hot.” I’m about to launch into a description of each item, but she cuts me off.

  “But where did you get it?” she asks, carefully joining me on the picnic blanket. She spreads her skirt, carefully as though she has anything to hide from me.

  “I made it.” I grab a chunk of cheese—the fruit and cheese assortment is standard for all meals throughout the Middle East. I’m not entirely certain how Adair will react to the Sujuk, a dry, spicy beef sausage, but it’s possible she has had everything else.

  “You cooked?” she says.

  I frown. Why is she acting like this is weird? “I love to cook, remember?”

  “I know, but I’ve never had a guy cook for me like this before,” she says, her words strangely strangled.

  “I’ve cooked for you.”

  “With Francie,” she says, recalling the meals we shared with my foster mom five years ago. “Never like this.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re scared to eat my cooking or not, Lucky.”

  “It’s not that.” She shakes her head and a copper strand falls into her eyes. “It’s…really nice.”

  I reach over and tuck the strand of hair behind her ear. Then I brush my thumb across her cheek. “I want to take care of you.”

  We stare at one another, neither of us speaking. There’s a whole world stretching out around us, but she’s the only thing I see. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “So, what is this?” She points to the covered bowl containing an oily paste of herbs..

  “That, Lucky, is za’atar. And I’m glad you haven’t tried it before.” I tear off a hunk of barbari, a kind of Persian flatbread similar to pita, but crispier, and bathe it in za’atar before popping it in my mouth.

  Adair mimics my technique, and her eyebrows try to bounce clean off her face. “Where did you learn to make this?” she asks between ravenous bites.

  “I was in Turkey for a while. For them, this is like having ketchup on the table.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, but I know better than that. I just opened the door she’s been trying to unlock since my return.

  “You were in Turkey?”

  “For a while, after I left the Marines,” I explain.

  “So, you were in the Marines?”

  I pause, momentarily surprised. That fact isn’t exactly top secret. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to dig that up. “I assumed you knew that. I told Cyrus.”

  “I heard you joined up. That’s all. I left for London shortly after you enlisted,” she says softly. “I needed to get away.”

  Not for the first time, I want to ask her why? Why she didn’t stay in London? Why she came back here? Why she never reached out? But I’m the one who has promised to give answers tonight. My own will have to wait.

  “What happened when you left?” she asks.

  I suspect she wants to know about why I left, but I avoid that part. Adair has suffered enough without knowing what her father did to me—to us. There was a time when I thought I could never forgive her for siding with him, but now I realize leaving her the way I did only made it harder for her to break free from her fam
ily.

  “I enlisted. Francie was furious,” I begin.

  “I bet,” Adair says with a knowing smile. “I hope she chewed your ass out.”

  “Don’t worry. She did,” I confirm, before continuing, “but I couldn’t stand to go back to New York and take advantage of her anymore. So I joined up and went through boot camp. My drill sergeant said that I had a killer instinct and a willful disregard for human life, particularly my own.”

  “Harsh, but I imagine that’s what they like,” she says, pouring herself a second glass of wine. If I’m lucky, it will soften her up for the rest.

  “It was true. I just didn’t care. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I just went for it. Every training exercise. But she liked me.”

  “She?” Adair says. “Your drill sergeant was a girl?”

  “Don’t be jealous.”

  “Oh, I’m not.” She holds up her wine glass. “I just can’t believe she liked you.”

  “Women find me charming.”

  “I thought she found you reckless, with a death wish,” she says.

  “It was a very charming death wish,” I explain. “Anyway, she pulled some strings and got me transferred to a special forces unit. That’s where I met Jack and Luca.”

  “What were they doing there? Neither seems the type,” she says thoughtfully.

  She’s not wrong, but I’ve seen other sides to my best friends—sides I hope she never even glimpses. “Not my story to tell, Lucky.”

  “It’s okay. Sorry I asked.”

  “Luca might tell you if you flatter his ego enough,” I advise.

  “I can only imagine how much flattery that will take given the size of his ego.”

  “That’s the thing with egos—the big ones don’t take much to flatter.” I can’t help laughing at her astute observation. She’s got his number, alright. “So, we got sent to Afghanistan with a special forces unit. There were rumors the Taliban was running guns from an unknown source and we went in to find that source.”

  “And then what were you supposed to do?” She’s stopped eating entirely.

  “Kill them,” I say matter-of-factly, daring to look her in the eye.

  “And did you?” From her tone, I’m not sure she wants the answer.