She leaned forward and put her head between her knees to stop the onslaught of faint. As she closed her eyes against the black curtains of consciousness, the past rushed to meet her. It flooded her mind, loosed the memories, buried her in the old heartbreak.
A speck of kindness…It had been so much more than that. It had been everything.
Eleven
Five Years Ago
“Man, what’s this Heathcliff guy’s problem?”
Ava glanced up from the tree she was doodling in the margin of her notes. “He’s tortured. Because he loves Catherine and he can’t have her. He hates her for toying with him, and for leaving him behind. And he hates himself for being the orphan that he is, and not being good enough for her.”
Across the picnic table, the very blonde and very blue-eyed star quarterback of Knoxville High, Carter Michaels, blinked at her, his pencil held suspended over his notebook of discussion questions. “That’s…a lot of drama for one guy.”
“Heathcliff’s a dramatic dude,” Ava agreed. “What’s your next question on the list?”
Carter’s golden eyelashes caught the sunlight as he glanced down at his notebook, his voice slow and careful as he read, like he was worried he might mispronounce a word.
He was very pretty, Ava reflected. All-American, well-built, athletic and benign and popular. Exactly the sort of classmate with which she never fraternized. But he was failing Lit, and their teacher had paired them up as study buddies, asking Ava to tutor him in exchange for an extra English credit. Whatever. The credit was great. And though Carter was disinterested in the material, he wasn’t much like his friends Mason or Beau. He wasn’t cruel, at least not to her face.
They sat on a picnic table just beyond the Lean Dogs’ clubhouse portico, the five o’clock sun slanting golden shadows across the pavement. The calls of bikes served as white noise.
Ava saw Mercy’s shadow before she saw him. It fell across her from behind, across the table, casting Carter’s face in darkness.
She felt her heart jump; felt a smile bloom. At some point during those shy awkward years between girl and young woman, her love for Mercy had taken on a new dimension. With puberty had come a visceral awareness of him. His near-constant presence was warm and masculine; the weight of his arm across her shoulders sent delighted shivers crawling across her skin. Her absolute trust in him, the wonderful way he’d always treated her like an adult – those things had fueled a growing need in her, a restless heat. Her body wanted him, and her heart already loved him. Ava had stopped calling it a “crush” in her mind. She didn’t have any such tepid feelings about this man who’d shadowed her life for so long.
Now, she watched Carter’s head lift, saw the panic flare in his eyes; then her attention went to Mercy as he moved to stand at the end of their table.
He leaned forward and placed his big hands on the tabletop. His bare arms glistened with a film of sweat. His faded old Bell Bar shirt with the cut-out sleeves clung to the heavy muscles of his chest. His expression, as he sent her a fast glance, went from little-boy mischievous, to downright murderous, his brows tucking low over his dark eyes. He was a terrifying sight. He was a vision. Ava wanted to curl her hands around his biceps and bury her face in his throat, urges she wasn’t sure she even understood at seventeen.
“Hey, kid,” Mercy said in his low, Louisiana-tinged voice. “Who told you you could be here?”
Carter gulped. “I…I, um…Ava said…”
“Oh, Ava said? I guess that makes it okay, then.”
Ava bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from cracking up. Mercy was so stern and serious.
“I-isn’t it?”
Mercy leaned down lower, so he was on eye-level with the petrified quarterback. He looked like a panther about to pounce. It was easy to imagine him with claws and fangs. “What do you think?” he asked Carter in a voice that was truly dreadful.
Carter’s lips quivered; his hands shook until the pencil dropped from his fingers. He took a deep breath…and then bolted. In a flurry of arms and legs, he snatched up his books, pens, crumpled paper to his chest, grabbed his backpack and took off toward his red Mustang.
When Carter was gone, all the tension left Mercy’s body; he laughed and dropped down beside her on the bench, his eyes bright with humor, his smile white and striking.
“That was rude,” Ava said, trying not to smile.
“That was fun,” he corrected. He reached for her notebook and turned it toward himself, studying the tree she’d drawn. “That’s good.”
“It’s just a doodle.” She felt the color in her cheeks and glanced away from his radiant face, toward her paper. She’d drawn craggy roots with grass shooting between, a little bird on a lower branch, the tree’s shadow across the ground. It wasn’t bad, she admitted. But even the faintest praise from Mercy melted her insides.
“What are you doing hanging out with Abercrombie models all of a sudden?” he asked. “I thought you hated that kinda kid.”
Was she imagining it, or was there a thin note of jealousy in his voice?
“I do,” she assured, pencil returning to her doodle. “My Lit teacher asked me to tutor Carter so he’d pass and be able to take his football scholarship.”
“Ah.” No, she wasn’t imagining it: there was relief. Her heart pattered happily against her ribs. “And what do you get out of it?”
“An English credit. And a pat on the back, I guess.” She shrugged.
“Well that ain’t fair.”
She glanced up at him…and got caught in the sharp fall of his gaze, words gluing to her tongue. Sometimes, moments like this, she looked at him, and her body was flooded with a paralyzing physical ache.
“It–” She had to wet her lips. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“ ‘Cept you’re stuck with Varsity Blues over there.”
Ava glanced away, before she lost complete control of her tongue.
Mercy’s big hand, his finger dark against the stark white of the paper, came to her notebook, and he pointed at the bird she’d drawn. “What’s that?”
Grateful for something mundane and safe to discuss, she said, “A cardinal. I kinda messed up his little hat, though.”
“It looks like a pine cone. But freakishly big.”
“I don’t have anything against the freakishly big” – she shot him a sideways grin – “do you?”
There was a pause, one of those moments where they existed in a perfect golden bubble, eyes locked, the energy between them electric and nothing like the safe, warm love they’d shared during her childhood years. This was new. This was friction and tension all wrapped up and delicious. This was tangible. This was within reach. This was right.
“Nah.” He grinned…
And then they both realized at the same moment what was happening: she was flirting with him.
Mercy’s expression blanked over, like a switch had been flipped. He broke their moment on purpose. He shoved up from the table and refused to meet her gaze. His voice took on a cold, false quality.
“It’ll be good, you tutoring the jock.”
She made a faint reach for him and he stepped away. “Mercy–”
“You need to spend more time with kids your age.” He offered her a tight, humorless smile as he started to walk away. “You hang around dirty old men too much.”
“Merc.”
But he was leaving, striding toward the clubhouse with ground-eating strides that forced a wide gap between them.
Ava sighed and propped her chin on her fist as her adrenaline ebbed. Too hard, she’d pushed too hard.
But all she’d done was look at him!
But that was too much for a man who slept with groupies at random, wasn’t it?
She scowled.
“I’m gonna laugh my ass off when Mags proves right and your face finally sticks like that,” Aidan’s voice intruded upon her thoughts.
She looked over her shoulder and saw her brother slouching past in his uni
form of faded jeans, cut, and old threadbare band t-shirt. He needed a haircut, his dark locks too curly and unkempt on top. He needed a shave, too, and probably a breath mint, though she wasn’t close enough to tell that. Tango was at his side, as per usual, his lean frame decked out just like that of his best friend. Tango’s pale hair was swept back with too much product and hung down almost to his shoulders in back, the sides above his ears shaved. His left ear was pierced from the lobe to the top, and the rings caught the light.
“Look,” Ava deadpanned in return, “the Lean Dogs brain trust. How’s the nuclear fusion going?”
Aidan wagged his finger at her. “That’s no way to talk to the future president of this club.”
“I take it you never learned that old saying about making assumptions.”
“Hey.” He held out his arms in a helpless pose. “Dad’s vice president. It’s just natural I’d follow in his footsteps. Leadership’s in my blood, baby.”
Ava glanced at Tango and made a face. “How do you stand him?”
Tango, ever the gentleman, gave her a wink. “I don’t have anything in my blood but beer and poor white trash. Figure I gotta get in good with these leader types.”
She snorted.
Aidan dug a smoke from his back pocket. “What’d Mercy want?”
Ava shrugged and hoped her face didn’t betray her. “He was just saying ‘hi.’ ”
“Don’t be bothering him,” Aidan said as he and Tango sat down across from her. “He don’t have time to babysit your ass anymore.”
“And you apparently don’t have time for grammar,” she shot back, eyes downcast so he wouldn’t see how sharply the comment had stung. No, Mercy didn’t have time to babysit her. That’s all it had ever been, hadn’t it?
“I’m serious,” Aidan pressed. “You wanna hang out with the old ladies: fine. Whatever. But you can’t be tugging on Mercy’s wallet chain anymore like when you were a kid. The Carpathians are long gone. You don’t need a bodyguard anymore.”
“Dude,” Tango said. “Harsh.”
“It’s true.”
“It is,” Ava said, rising. Without looking at her brother, she headed toward the clubhouse.
“Where are you going?” he asked after her. “What did I just say?”
“I’m going home, but I left my bag inside,” she called over her shoulder. Venomously: “Is it alright if I get it? Or should I leave my homework here for you to study off of?”
Tango chuckled into his hand.
Aidan flipped her the bird.
Ava slipped into the quiet, AC-cooled shade of the clubhouse without making a sound. Ares was asleep in the foyer, exhausted from a day of running across the property. His ears twitched as she tiptoed past him, but he didn’t stir. Past the gym and business parlor, she stepped into the common room –
And halted.
Impossible to miss, Mercy stood leaning against the bar, smiling down into the face of one of the club groupies. The Lean Bitches, the boys called them behind their backs, the women who wanted a piece of a Dog just for the danger and the thrill. They’d take whatever attention was given to them. The leggy blonde in front of Mercy was one of the favorites: Jasmine.
Today, Jasmine wore cutoffs, tan cowboy boots and a translucent turquoise top. Her hair was done up in artful, brassy waves down her back. She was tan, curvy in the right places; she had a mouthful of straight white teeth and glue-on lashes she batted like a pro. She had a hand in the center of Mercy’s chest, her weight shifted toward him, laughing at something he’d said, her posture suggestive without being lewd.
Every red-blooded man’s fantasy, that was Jasmine. And Mercy had a hand on her waist, at the little wedge of tan skin showing between her top and waistband.
Ava felt the heat rush to her face, the mingled hurt and betrayal. It wasn’t justifiable: she was seventeen and “a kid,” as Aidan had said. Mercy was a grown man with urges he would naturally want satisfied by a real woman. He had half-raised her; he wouldn’t see her in the sexual light in which she saw him. He wouldn’t want her, not the way he so obviously wanted Jasmine. He would never hook a finger through her belt loop and tow her back to a dorm. He would never let that wicked, lascivious gleam come into his eyes with her the way it had here now in front of Jasmine.
He would fuck Jasmine, because that’s what guys like him did. It wouldn’t mean anything, he wouldn’t think anything of it, and then he’d move on to some other groupie, and do her good too. And God, it had to be good, didn’t it? Six-feet-five-inches of gator-hunting fury – she could only imagine, superimposing movie scenes and book passages, filling the hero’s shoes with Mercy’s massive tread.
She was aroused; she was infuriated. She was seventeen and frustrated and she loved him and she couldn’t have him.
Ava whirled and fled, stepping over Ares, not stopping when Aidan asked her a question; she scooped her notebook and pens off the table, her battered copy of Wuthering Heights, and went straight to her truck, her cheeks aflame, emotion clogging her throat.
With her eyes clouding over, she didn’t see Carter standing beside her truck until she’d almost collided with him. She pulled up short, gasping.
“Whoa.” He reached to steady her. “Sorry. I thought you could see me.”
“No.” She turned away from him and saw her reflection in the satin black finish of her truck’s paint. Her eyes were huge and watery, her lips dry and quivering. She looked like she’d seen a ghost – the ghost of Mercy’s sex life.
“Ava.” Carter laid a hand on her shoulder. It was a soft, benign touch, but he’d never touched her before, and it felt like he was trying to take a step, like he was bringing a new closeness to their tenuous bond. It was kind, and though she normally wouldn’t have, she now found comfort in the gesture. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She dashed at her eyes and grabbed for an explanation. “Just something my brother said.” Which wasn’t really a lie.
“Oh.” His hand stayed put. “I thought maybe that huge guy scared you or something.”
Oh, yes, he’d scared her with the truth: he’d never want her the way she wanted him.
“No.” She shook off the last of her freakout and turned back to him. His hand fell away. “I’m fine. Just” – she made a gesture to the air – “sibling stuff, ya know?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Not really. I’m an only child.”
“Right.” She hadn’t known that. To be fair, she didn’t know anything about Carter save he played football, was failing English, and was friends with Mason Stephens.
“I get it, though,” he rushed to say. “I’ve got friends. My brothers on the team. I get it.” He nodded and chewed at his lower lip, like staring at her head-on made him nervous.
“Yeah.” She reached for her keys in her jeans pocket. “So I’ll see you Monday then.”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t step aside. The lip-chewing intensified, and he asked, “So you’ve heard about the party at Hamilton House, right?”
Hamilton House was an old ruin of a pre-War era mansion that sat just beyond city proper. It was a halfway mark between the Teagues’ house and Grandpa Teague’s old overgrown cattle property. A once-sweeping feat of Greek Revival architecture, the mansion had passed down through the hands of the Hamilton ancestors until it reached the grubby mitts of fourth-generation owners who didn’t care for the place or its historic value. The decades of neglect had seen the shriveling of the clapboard siding, the denuding of the roof, the death of the great towering oaks, and the feral overtaking of the gardens and lawns. It had been condemned ten years ago, and never demolished. It was a monument, a massive middle finger to all other haunted houses. Kids had been sneaking in for ghost hunts and dares and secret parties for twenty years now. Fifteen minutes inside its walls could send the biggest, burliest football linebackers running for the street.
Tonight there was a party at Hamilton House, and Ava would have had to be blind, deaf, and stupid no
t to know about it. Even if she wasn’t part of the popular crowd.
“Uh-huh…”
Carter scuffed the toe of his sneaker across the pavement like he’d been doing since the day she met him. “Um…I was wondering if…”
“Yes?”
He took a deep breath and said on the exhale, “If you’d like to come with me.”
“With you?”
His face colored. “Yeah.”
“As in…like a date?”
“Um…yeah. If that’s what you wanna call it.”
Ava rocked back on her boot heels, shocked. “I thought you were dating Ainsley Millcott.”
He shook his head.
“But…you didn’t mean to ask me, did you? You meant to ask her.”
His crestfallen expression told her she’d blundered. “I meant to get kicked in the nuts, I guess,” he muttered. “I shoulda known you’d just be…” Shaking his head again, he turned away.
Shit. “No, wait, Carter. Hold up a sec.”
He gave her a wary sideways glance.
She forced a smile. “I just didn’t think you’d ever do something like that is all. Ask me out. Guys like you–”
“Are stupid?”
“ – go for girls who are – not me. I’m surprised.”
He twitched a wry half-smile. “Surprised, but still kicking me in the nuts.”
“No…” Ava sighed. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t like Carter in that way, no, but she hadn’t counted on that mattering – not to him, of all people. In the moment, she found herself, more than anything, caught up in a desire not to hurt his feelings – and a need to distance herself from Mercy’s hurtful indifference. Mercy didn’t want her. That was plain. So what was to keep her from seeking succor somewhere else? Maybe if Carter threw his arm across her shoulders and bent to kiss her in the party lights of Hamilton House, it wouldn’t shatter her heart the way just looking at Mercy did.
She wasn’t a girl who made snap decisions, but that’s what she did. “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to go with you.”
Now it was Carter’s turn to be surprised. “You would?”
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