There was confusion in her expression before a smile pulled to her face when she saw him standing beneath a big tree. She ducked away, and he was sure it was his pulse that would wake the entire house with the way it boomed, excitement and want filling him so full he thought he just might burst.
Not pretty.
But it was the truth.
This girl drove him right out of his mind.
He was already moving her direction by the time she slipped out the front door and silently snapped it shut behind her. She padded across the porch and down the stairs as he jogged her way.
They met in the middle, and he lifted her a couple of inches from the ground so he could feel her weight, spinning her around as he buried his face in the sweetness of her skin.
Honey and light.
She giggled and clung to him, her voice quieted to a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“I needed to see you.”
“And what if it had been your sister you woke up instead of me?”
He shrugged a little and settled Nikki back on her feet. “Then I’d tell her I was here to check on you two. Pretty much the truth, anyway.”
Nikki stepped back and bit her bottom lip. She took his hand in hers, swaying lightly, spinning around, peeking back at him as she danced them off into the secluded cover of the towering trees. “Is that all you’re here for, Oliver Preston? To check on us?”
There was a tease to her voice, and every inch of his body reacted.
He followed.
Where else was he going to go?
He was enraptured.
Enchanted.
This girl magic.
He rushed her, scooping her up from behind. Her feet kicked into the air as she squealed quietly, her back to his chest and his mouth at her ear. “You know why I’m here.”
“And why’s that?” she played along when he set her back down. She swung back around to face him.
He rushed his fingers through the softness of her hair. “For you.”
“And now that you’re here, what are you going to do with me?”
In a second flat, he had her pressed against the old car her grandpa still drove where it was parked behind a shed at least a hundred yards from the house. Where no one could see them. “First off, I’m going to kiss you.”
He did. He took her face in his hands and he kissed her. Slow and long. He felt like he was standing in the middle of the river, taken by the current, unable to stand.
She sighed, and he hummed as he dropped his forehead to hers. “I was going nuts not getting to do that all day.”
Rex and Sydney were around the whole time, and he hadn’t gotten to sneak a second alone with Nikki.
Hiding this was getting harder and harder, but somehow, finally telling everyone after all this time felt harder to do, too. They’d been doing it for so long, it was beginning to feel like a lie.
A sin.
“You’re driving me crazy, Nik,” he whispered at her mouth. “Don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The second I’m away from you, all I can think about is the next time I get to be with you. You’ve got me so spun up inside.”
Her hands fisted in his shirt. “And the second you walk away, I feel a piece of myself go missing.”
A breath left him, and he ran his lips up her cheek and whispered at her temple, “Sunshine.”
“Beast,” she teased quietly.
He fumbled with the door latch behind her, and Nikki was giggling as he angled her around to open the door. He fell into the seat and took her with him. She was quick to straddle his lap, hands on his shoulders, rocking against him.
If he didn’t get to feel all of her soon, he might die.
He was sure of it.
Because her rubbing on him like that was nothing but torture.
The best kind of torture.
He just didn’t know how much more of it he could take.
His hands went to her waist. “What if we stole the keys to this car and just drove away?”
She was kissing him, murmuring at his mouth, “Where would we go?”
“Anywhere . . . everywhere . . .” he rumbled. “Just so long as we’re together. Can’t wait until it’s just us. You and me . . . my girl riding at my side in my badass car.”
She giggled. The sound of it vibrated right through the center of him. “Mmm . . . you want an old car like this?”
Their hands were everywhere. Touching and exploring.
He groaned. “Hell, yes.”
“Hot rod, huh?” she whispered.
“You know it. Nothing cooler than that. Gonna have one by the time I’m eighteen. Just wait. Then it’s just you and me. No more hiding.”
“Are you going to wait that long to take me?”
He stilled at her question. Because her voice had gone different. Something needy. No longer a tease.
He pulled back and looked at her through the milky light of the moon. Trusting eyes and freckled skin and heated body. “You want that?”
Didn’t matter it was dark, he could feel the warmth rise to her cheeks. “Yes.”
He swallowed around the lump that almost strangled him.
Nerves and excitement and lust.
He stared up at her, watching her expression when he said, “Next weekend . . . there’s a big bonfire at the lake. Supposed to camp with a bunch of people from school. Tell your mom you’re spending the night with Sydney.”
Her head angled to the side, that same worry they had over his sister taking over her features. “And what am I supposed to tell Sydney?”
A sigh pilfered free. He didn’t want to be annoyed. Irritated that they were sneaking around because they were afraid they might offend her or hurt her.
“We’ll . . . figure it out, okay? We’ll make it work. I just want to be with you.”
She wound her arms around his neck. “I just want to be with you, too.”
23
Ollie
Traditions.
It was hard to pinpoint exactly how they were formed. How they came into existence. It was like a slow slide of habits that gathered and merged until they stuck. Most people viewed them as a good thing.
Holidays and family and celebration.
Cherished memories repeated again and again.
This tradition?
It was nothing less than masochistic.
Hot blades cutting into my skin.
Needlessly, considering the scars were already there. Etched in me so deeply they could never be erased.
Kale and Rex both inclined back on different pieces of furniture in the back office at Olive’s, Rex with the bottle this year, pouring it into the shooters. “Seems crazy this date has come up again. Years going by faster than I can make sense of them.”
A sorrowful, wistful sound filtered from Kale. “Yeah. Time just keeps rolling, things changing so quickly, and still I can close my eyes, and I swear, I’m back there at the lake that night.”
Shivers scraped across the surface of my skin.
Agony.
Rex peered over at me. “You sure you want to do this again?”
“What’s changed?” My voice was grit, even though the words were feeling more and more like a lie.
The first time we’d gathered on the anniversary of this night? We’d been eighteen. They’d found me at the lake.
Alone.
Looking at the water like it might conjure her existence on the glassy, darkened surface.
They’d climbed down on either side of me.
Kale with all his quiet understanding and support. Rex wearing some sort of unfathomable grief on his face.
He’d pulled out this massive bottle of cheap whiskey, twisted the cap, and handed it to me.
I’d chugged what had to have been half of it until I’d choked on the burning liquid that’d pooled in my empty gut, then the three of us had sat there for hours, passing it back and forth until it was empty and the sun was coming up.
Two of them swim
ming in my loss. Keeping me from drowning.
I’d pushed Nikki away. Hadn’t seen more of her that unbearable year than stolen glances which had damned near destroyed the last bit of me.
Cutting her out of my life had hurt like a fucking bitch. But how could I have her when the cost of wanting her was my sister?
I couldn’t.
And I’d hated and hated and hated, and that feeling had built for so many years until it suffocated me. Until I could no longer see straight, which was how I’d ended up at Nikki’s door a year ago tonight.
Nothing but a selfish bastard.
Taking her.
Of course, I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten there since I’d been so messed up that my rational mind could no longer convince my spirit that I wasn’t allowed to have her.
It was like finding peace in the darkest night.
Then, like a piece of shit, I’d slipped from her bed before dawn, fucking wrecked, leaving her lying there naked where I’d been tangled with her.
The whole time wanting to climb right back into her arms.
To wrap her up and never let her go.
But I’d left her there because I’d had to.
What other choice did I have?
Didn’t think I’d ever been so torn about anything.
I had been wrong.
Tonight, I felt like I was being shredded in two. Never so caught up in right and wrong. The girl once again a secret.
My best secret.
One I wanted to keep.
Just didn’t know what kind of person that made me if I did.
Rex handed Kale a shot glass and then gave one to me. The three of us met in the middle of the small office. We lifted the shots above our heads. “To Sydney. We’ll never forget.”
Glasses clinked, and we tossed back the shots. I swallowed it down. Heat blistered my stomach and crawled through my senses. This date would haunt me forever—but I could feel something . . . something changing.
Kale clapped me on the back. “You okay, man?”
A huff left my nose, and I scrubbed a palm over my face. “Not sure that’s the right description. Okay would mean forgetting.”
He looked at me seriously. “Not sure there’s any chance of that. Don’t think you’re ever going to forget. And I don’t think you’d want to.”
He started to move around me to head for the door. All the girls and Broderick would be waiting, probably wondering where the hell we’d slipped off to.
He paused when he was right at my side, both of us facing opposite directions. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder, his attention cast to the ground. “But it’s been fourteen years, Ollie. If I knew Sydney at all? She’s looking down on you, wishing you’d finally let her go. Wishing that you’d finally let yourself live.”
I didn’t say anything, and he opened the door and stepped out into the bar, the muted thrum of the band playing tonight growing loud as he did. Without looking back, he snapped it shut, closing Rex and me in, the beat once again distorted, faint and vibrating through the walls.
Warily, I looked up to meet Rex’s piercing gaze. Something about it was unsettling. Remorseful but strong. “He’s right, man.” The words caught in his throat. “It’s time.”
I looked to the floor, hand running down my beard. “Not sure that’s possible. Not until I find her.”
He winced, eyes slamming closed and hands curling into fists. “You’re hung up on an impossibility, Ollie. It’s time you admitted that.”
Part of me wanted to lash out at him. Tell him to fuck off because he couldn’t understand. This was my sister we were talking about. They’d barely even been friends, only knowing each other because he and I hung out.
The other part knew he was right.
Fourteen years, I’d been searching. Cutting out every fucking news article about her that had ever been written, comparing it against other cases, sure that, if I was patient enough, I would notice something. Piece together a clue that had been missed.
Hell, that’d been part of the reason I’d opened this bar in the first place. Figuring one day, someone would slip, say something they shouldn’t. Or maybe someone would say something they didn’t know was important in the first place.
I felt that hope slipping away.
What scared me most was I didn’t know where that left me.
Rex hesitated, the words almost a groan when he released them. “I miss her, too, man. You think if I could go back, I wouldn’t do things differently?”
I looked up, trying to gauge where he was coming from, what he was trying to get at.
He sighed, shook whatever thoughts he was having off. “Everyone’s out there. Together. The people who care about you most. Don’t neglect that. You’re gonna regret it if you do. Time goes by so fast, Ollie. So damned fast. You’ve got to treasure the days you’re given.”
An echo of my mother’s screams filled my ear, the impact of them thrashing in my spirit, her fists a phantom pain on my chest.
It’s your fault.
I trusted you.
You were supposed to take care of her.
You promised, you’d take care of her.
“Not sure I even deserve to be out there with them.”
Rex strode for the door, pausing with it open as he turned, his words pointed. “Don’t you?”
For twenty minutes, I sat alone with only my thoughts and the sounds of the bar seeping through the walls to keep me company.
Processing.
Sifting through my thoughts and my worries.
The deep-seated need to cling to this day—to the memory of Sydney—to give her the devotion that she’d deserved.
The other part was all fucked up over Nikki.
Nikki. Fucking. Walters.
Invading my life when I didn’t know how to keep her there.
How to make her fit.
The girl so fucking wrong. So fucking right.
Like I said, I’d never been so torn.
Finally, I forced myself to get it together, got behind my bar, and went to work.
Seemed impossible, but the smile tacked to my face wasn’t all that hard to find, considering I was surrounded by the group of people who had gathered directly across from me.
Laughing and treasuring and cherishing.
Most of all . . . Nikki was right there.
Safe.
I poured Lillith a glass of chilled white wine, whipped up a pitcher of margaritas for Rynna, Hope, and Jenna. After that, I handed a beer to Rex, filled a tumbler of whiskey for Kale, and passed a glass of red wine to Broderick.
I went to work on Nikki’s drink, listening to my friends carrying on, having a great time.
Their laughter rang free, blending with the beat of the band where they’d taken up residence at the bar like they owned the place.
Their voices were loud and their mood a little bit rowdy.
From across the bar, Nikki met my eyes.
Tentatively.
Tenderly.
The girl sending me her soft encouragement. Aware and sweet and filled with all that light I’d taken for granted for all these years.
I sent her a covert smile back as I slid her pink cosmo across the gleaming wood in her direction.
Telling her I saw her. That I felt her. That I knew this day wasn’t easy on her either.
That she had just as much on her mind as me.
Maybe more.
I was grateful there was a smile on her face, too.
That she was acting like her normal self.
Her old self.
Laughing and teasing and playing with her friends.
Jenna, who was Hope’s best friend, squealed, jerking my attention away from Nikki’s hypnotizing stare. “I knew there was a reason I loved you.”
She wrapped both hands around the margarita glass rimmed with salt, bringing it to her nose and inhaling like it was some kind of rose or some shit.
My brows pitched high. “That’s the reaso
n you love me? My bar?” I razzed, shaking my head like I was completely outraged.
Jenna’s brown hair swished around her face. “You’ve got to admit that having a friend who owns a bar is filled with all kinds of perks. I wish I would have known you earlier. A girl could use a guy like you right about the time she turns twenty-one. I have major catching up to do.”
“I take offense to that.”
Rex waved his beer in the air. “Why do you think I still put up with your sorry ass?”
I lifted my arms out to the sides. “Uh . . . because I’m awesome. That’s why.”
This was always just our way, going from heavy to light in a second flat, giving each other shit as if they hadn’t just been right there, coming beside me when they always knew I needed them most.
Kale laughed. “Sure, sure, man, you just go on thinking that.”
Hope swatted at his chest. “Leave Ollie alone.” She turned her attention to me, her eyes wide with playful sympathy. “I know you’re awesome. Ignore these monsters.”
Incredulous, Kale snorted. “Monsters?”
“Monsters,” I agreed, giving Hope a smile.
Kale pointed at me with his index finger, the rest of his hand still wrapped around the glass. “If anyone looks like a monster around here, it’s you. Seriously, I’ve seen grown men shudder in their damned boots at the sight of you. Little do they know, you’re nothing but a pansy under all that muscle. What a damned waste.”
A smile threatened at the edge of my mouth.
Assholes.
All of them.
“Keep dreaming. Nothing wasted here.” I flexed like one of those fuckers showing off on Venice Beach. “Guys piss their pants when they see me because they know I’m not to be fucked with. Unlike you.” Was doing my best to keep a straight face and not bust out laughing as I played along.
Kale puffed out his chest. “Oh, come on, Ollie. You know I could take you.”
I laughed under my breath.
“You think so, huh?”
“Yup. Remember that time in fourth grade behind the swing sets? Totally whooped your ass, my friend.”
My brow lifted. “That’s because I let you win.”
Nikki widened playful eyes, her attention bouncing around the group, that mesmerizing color so pretty where they glinted under the lights.
Lead Me Home: A Fight for Me Stand-Alone Novel Page 22
