Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle)

by Gennifer Albin

  Finn beamed. “There, see? Was there anyone interesting at least?”

  At his question, the series of contradictions that was his mystery girl rushed through Will.

  “You hesitated!” Finn crowed with, to Will, a boggling amount of triumph. “Who was it? Was she hot?”

  He was not interested in a sex addict, no matter how gorgeous or intriguing she was. Unfortunately, when Finn set his mind to something, he was like a mosquito buzzing in your ear. So instead of replying, Will only smiled and pretended to ignore Finn’s prying questions.

  Chapter Four

  After Leah’s last class (poetry still made little sense to her, but she was pretty sure she could get by as a writer without understanding everything Cummings ever wrote), she drove the thirty minutes out of town to her family’s estate. The gates stood at the end of a long, overgrown path. A brick wall surrounded the grounds, although the elements had worn it down due to a lack of upkeep. Or more specifically, a lack of financial resources to pay for the upkeep.

  Even in its current state, the mansion still held glimpses of its former grandeur. Her parents did what little they could—or were willing to do—to keep the lawn trimmed and the paint from chipping, but she wished they’d just sell the place and move somewhere more practical. Two thirds of the Carter Estate had been closed off and left to gather dust. The rest was left to the cleaning whims of her mother, who refused to pay for a housekeeper.

  Leah let the car roll forward down the gravel path. Low hanging branches that hadn’t been trimmed since before she was born dragged against her windshield. It was a good thing her car was a green junker with plenty of old scratches to cover up the new ones.

  As she approached the gates, she pressed the button on the remote she kept on her dashboard. The gates were huge and iron with rusted hinges and the sort of floral metalwork that would have been beautiful if maintained. As it was, they still held an aged beauty found only with old structures. They shrieked as they slowly swung open, and she drove forward onto the paved driveway.

  Before she’d even reached the walkway for the three-story mansion, the front door burst open. Her brother waved excitedly, his grin the most welcoming thing she’d seen all day. Truthfully, he was always the brightest spot of her day, and not for the first time, she wished her parents would just let her take him. She’d raised him after all—he was practically hers.

  Elijah had been an unintended, and unwanted, pregnancy. Her mom, surprisingly, had refused an abortion, instead planning to give the baby up for adoption. Leah wouldn’t even have known about the pregnancy or their plans for the baby if she hadn’t overheard her parents discussing it.

  Since she had always wanted a sibling, she begged her mother to keep him. She had promised to do everything for him; she would be the baby’s full-time nanny. When Elijah was born, she’d kept her word, despite the fact that she had only been twelve at the time. Of course, her mom had to teach her the basics, like changing diapers and mixing formula, but from the moment Leah got home from school in the afternoons to the moment she left in the mornings, Elijah was her responsibility. She and her mom had switched roles—Leah became Elijah’s primary caretaker, and her mom helped out only when necessary.

  A part of her had hoped that having Elijah would change things. Once her mom saw the baby, maybe something would click inside her, and she would turn into the loving, considerate person that books and TV said moms were supposed to be. But her mom had handled Elijah with the same sort of detached efficiency as the nurses at the hospital. Leah was just grateful she’d helped out at all.

  As for her dad, she couldn’t remember him holding Elijah even once as a baby. But considering he’d always treated Leah more like a pet than a daughter, it wasn’t too surprising.

  But they still wouldn’t let her take him.

  “Think about how it’ll look to everyone,” her mom had argued.

  “They’ll think we can’t take care of our own son,” her dad had added.

  “Because you can’t!” she had shouted, furious with them.

  Predictably, that hadn’t won her the argument.

  She waved at Elijah as she parked her car. He stood leaning against the front door frame. For nine years old, he was getting impossibly tall. He had the same hazel eyes and full mouth as Leah, but unlike her, he was all smiles and good cheer.

  “How was school?” she asked, reaching out to ruffle his hair.

  He slapped her hand away, grinning. “We’re learning about constellations. Can we visit the observatory?”

  “Sure. Maybe next Sunday? I work this weekend.”

  The front door opened onto a large foyer. They passed through the formal dining room, and she gave the chandelier a scrutinizing look. A film of dust coated the hanging crystals. She made a mental note to clean it before she left.

  Leah banged around the large kitchen until she found a packet of dry pasta and a jar of tomato sauce. Then she rummaged through the fridge and was grateful to see her mom must have gone grocery shopping recently. Elijah took a seat at the opposite side of the island, smiling at her as she set the items on the counter. He liked to watch her cook.

  Seeing the happy way he watched her move around the kitchen kind of hurt, but only in that dull ache sort of way. It hurt because it reminded her of how she used to watch her mom. Their mother was a brilliant cook. She could mix magic in a pot and made even the barest ingredients taste like gourmet cooking. She’d learned everything from her own parents, who had both been culinary masters. Leah couldn’t remember much about her grandmother because she’d died when Leah was four, but she did recall the way she always smelled of different spices.

  Her mom, who had always been emotionally reserved, had changed after that. Then, when Leah’s grandfather died a few years later, her mom quit the chef job that their financial situation had forced her to take and she became as distant as Leah’s dad. It was years before she began cooking again, but even now, it was rare to find her in the kitchen. At least she still went grocery shopping so Leah could make Elijah dinner every day.

  She grabbed a package of ground beef, an onion, some green peppers, mushrooms, and then closed the fridge and set those items on the counter as well. Then she filled a large pot to boil the pasta, pulled out a host of spices from the spice rack, and began chopping vegetables to spruce up the sauce.

  A part of her wished her mom had opened up about how much losing her parents had hurt her. Maybe their relationship wouldn’t be so strained now, but Leah had been too young to fully understand. She hadn’t known how to ask, and she wouldn’t have known how to help. All she could do was wait every night at the kitchen island and wonder if she’d ever see her mom smile over a pot of homemade soup again.

  By the time she was Elijah’s age, she had accepted the answer was no.

  “Can I help?” Elijah asked.

  His eager face struck at that persistent dull ache in her chest. She finished smashing a clove of garlic before asking, “Did you finish your homework?”

  Elijah made a face. “Almost.”

  “Well, go finish it first.”

  He slid from the stool, and she could hear his footsteps echoing through the emptiness as he made his way upstairs to his bedroom.

  It wasn’t right, him home alone in such a huge house. She saw him every afternoon, but she hated leaving him afterward. The guilt ate at her, turning into a roiling anger at her parents. She had moved out as soon as she could because she could no longer stand being dependent on people who would never be there for her, and despite the crushing guilt that she had about leaving Elijah there, she couldn’t move back. Just the thought of going back there to live set her pulse racing. It would be like willingly jumping back into a hole it had taken years to climb out of. She wouldn’t do it.

  But Elijah needed her. And if her parents kept refusing to let Elijah move in with her, maybe she’d just take him anyway and to hell with them.

  Elijah dragged his backpack into the dining room whe
re he set up on the table to finish his homework. Once the sauce was done and the noodles were boiling on the stove, she checked over his homework and circled the math problems he’d gotten wrong. Then she pulled her book of nineteenth century poems from her purse, which she’d tossed onto the kitchen counter earlier, and settled next to him to skim through assigned pages. They were studying the classics in order to develop their own poetry writing. Her professor kept telling her to stick to concrete images instead of meaningless pretty words. All poetry sounded like meaningless pretty words so how was she supposed to figure out how to stop?

  “There’s a bake sale tomorrow at lunch,” Elijah said without looking at her. “They’re trying to raise money so we can get free yearbooks at the end of the year.”

  She dug into her purse. She only had a few dollars on her, but she tucked them into a small pocket on Elijah’s backpack.

  “Don’t lose it, okay?”

  He nodded and gave her a small smile. He always looked scared to ask. He knew how tight money was for her. When she graduated, she would be buried in school loans, and that was after the two scholarships she’d managed to get. But when her brother gave her that uncertain look, it was hard to deny him anything.

  They ate dinner while Elijah told her about the constellations he’d learned in school that day. Then, he helped her clean up before they went outside and picked out Orion and the Big Dipper in the night sky. After, she gave him the usual reminder to brush his teeth and get up in time to catch the school bus in the morning.

  “Can we make cookies tomorrow?” he asked as she hooked her purse strap over her shoulder.

  “Sure.” They baked at least once a week. Making creative desserts was one of her favorite hobbies. She supposed she wouldn’t be a Carter without some kind of love for the kitchen. She pulled Elijah into a hug and kissed the top of his dark head. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Good night.” He gave her a squeeze before letting go.

  She waited in her car until she saw the light in his bedroom turn on. As she drove out the gates, she congratulated herself for not having thought about Blue Eyes and his low, lilting voice even once.

  At least until now.

  Chapter Five

  Leah got home to find her roommate overseeing the assembly of new furniture.

  This appeared to basically involve making the living room look like a forest with an identity crisis, full of dozens of slightly different pieces of wood. Helena was shouting at their neighbor Jay who sat on the carpet with a screwdriver in one hand and the instructions in the other.

  “But they’re in Japanese!” he said, shaking the instructions at her. “You’re Japanese!”

  “I was born in San Francisco,” she snapped. Then, seeing Leah, she demanded, “Can you read Japanese?”

  “Not unless the instructions just say ‘baka’ over and over again,” she said.

  “Ha!” Helena threw up her hands. “All that anime you watch, and you’ve learned exactly one word.”

  “You don’t speak or read it either, and it’s your heritage,” Leah pointed out.

  “That’s different.”

  Leah gave her a bemused look. “How?”

  “Because I didn’t bring home my tenth casual screw of the year and then pass out while he robbed us blind, hence my trip to the furniture emporium, and hence Lord of the Eyebrows here trying to put it together.”

  Jay rubbed his absurdly thick eyebrows with a self-conscious frown.

  “How does that even—” Leah gave up and sighed. “I take it I’m never going to win an argument with you ever again? What if I had a boyfriend and you slept with him?”

  “You got us burglarized.”

  “What if you ran over my mother?”

  “You still got us burglarized.”

  “I see.” Leah pursed her lips.

  Jay gave a cry of triumph and waved two pieces of wood that had been fastened together into an L shape. Leah headed for her bedroom. Spending time with Helena these days always turned into another guilt trip, and she was tired of making the journey. She had promised to pay her back for everything that had been taken. But it had been over four months, and Helena showed no signs of forgiving her, despite that she was trying her best to do whatever Helena wanted.

  Why else would she be attending those ridiculous sex addict classes?

  Leah collapsed backward onto her bed and sighed. Thank God she still had her bed even if it was only because she’d been asleep on it while her one night stand had been lugging everything else out the door.

  She rolled onto her stomach and reached for her book bag. Having read enough of the assigned pages to get by for the next class, she pulled out her computer science textbook instead. She had database commands to study. Having always wanted to do something with writing, she’d ignored her parents’ protests (she ignored a lot of their protests so it hadn’t been hard) and was majoring in creative writing. But her minor was in web design because she was also practical, and she knew that if she wanted to live on anything that wasn’t ramen, she would have to study something else as well.

  Even as she flipped through the textbook to find the right page, she itched to be writing instead. The last time she’d written anything just for herself instead of an assignment had been before the burglary. The guy had taken her short story journal. Of all her possessions, that had been the most treasured. She would have happily traded everything else that was stolen to get it back.

  The journal had held over two dozen short stories she’d written over the course of the last three years, ever since she began college. The stories themselves weren’t important. But they represented who she’d been when she wrote them—the bright moments and the darker ones. Helena had always called them morbid so there had probably been more dark ones than bright, but the stories had been her only way to release the things she kept bottled inside. More than that, they had helped her think objectively about herself and whatever issues she’d been going through. She could pretend those feelings, those difficulties, weren’t happening to her, just to a character in a story.

  Every story in that journal had been fiction. But everything the characters felt had been real.

  From outside her bedroom door, she could hear Helena’s raised voice, although she couldn’t make out the words. Leah glanced around her nearly empty room. All that was left were her clothes, a few notebooks, and some pictures of herself and Helena hanging on the walls. He’d even taken her anime collection. Weirdo.

  She hadn’t asked for his full name when she’d made the poor decision to bring him back to the apartment, so all she could give the police was his first name and physical description. They were still looking for him, but if she ever saw him again, she’d smash his face into the nearest jagged surface.

  Waking up to the sound of Helena screaming and sobbing at their cleaned-out apartment had been terrifying. Realizing she was responsible had been … horrifying. Humiliating. Gut wrenching. A hole had opened up in her stomach, and she had wanted to climb inside and disappear so she wouldn’t have to face what her colossal mistake had cost her. And she didn’t mean money and possessions.

  More than the loss of her things, she’d been scared to lose Helena. She couldn’t even count how many times she’d apologized, but really, how did someone make up for something like that? She didn’t know, but she’d started by going along with Helena’s demand to get help for a problem she didn’t have. It was a miracle Helena hadn’t immediately thrown her out and ended their friendship. In fact, she still half-expected it to happen.

  They had known each other for nearly ten years, ever since Leah’s family permanently moved into the old estate that had, previously, only been a vacation home. Helena was her first and most enduring friend. Okay, Helena was pretty much her only friend. But that didn’t make their friendship any less important.

  Shutting her textbook, she scooted back off the bed. Database commands could wait. Helena and Jay sounded like they could use some help.
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  Chapter Six

  Leah didn’t even bother looking at the cookies. She was too agitated. To still her fidgeting hands, she tucked them inside the too-long sleeves of her striped tee and trapped them between her thighs. A moment later, she realized she was bouncing on the balls of her feet and immediately stilled.

  She couldn’t understand why she was so restless. This was her last session. After tonight, she was free. And yet, instead of feeling anticipation, the agitation had been gradually building for two days, and now, back again in the dingy church hall for the last of her completely useless ‘therapy’ sessions, she had reached some sort of peak of freak out.

  It was only when Blue Eyes walked through the door in dark jeans and a v-neck tee that perfectly framed his collarbones—and she released a breath in heartfelt relief—that she realized she had been afraid Blue Eyes wasn’t going to come back a second week. She would have left these sessions without ever having seen him again.

  This realization made her stiffen up in renewed agitation. She immediately vowed to avoid eye contact. She looked at the ceiling. She looked at the floor. She crossed her arms and scowled. What was her problem? Whether he came or not, it shouldn’t have mattered to her anyway since she wasn’t coming back.

  She hoped this compulsion to see him was just because she felt bad for snapping at him last week. Even after she insulted him, he’d still been inexplicably nice, and now her conscience wouldn’t let it go until she apologized.

  At random points in the past seven days, moments from last week’s session had surfaced in her mind, completely steering her thoughts away from whatever she’d been doing at the time. It had been extremely confusing when she’d been vegging out watching a late night documentary on the migration of wildebeest, and then suddenly, she was thinking about the way Blue Eyes had stood up for her. About the genuine indignation in his voice that had caught her so off guard.