Emerge: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

by Lena Mae Hill

  Cruel laughter filled the bathroom as they banged noisily into two stalls.

  “Ignore them,” Peyton said, tugging the sleeves off my arms. “It’s my favorite pastime.”

  At last, I pulled free of the shirt. I still had some spaghetti sauce in my hair and on the neck of my t-shirt, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

  “Can we get out of here?” I whispered.

  We left the bathroom, still echoing with Jen’s mean laughter.

  “What’s with those girls?” I asked, relaxing as we headed down the hall.

  Peyton shrugged. “They’re just being themselves,” she said. “You know. Bitches.”

  “You’ll have to introduce me to this girlfriend of yours,” I said, cutting my eyes sideways at her. I wanted to ask her more about that, but I didn’t know how to say it without sounding completely ignorant.

  “Of course,” she said. “I can’t waste this fabulousness being celibate my whole life just because it’s a small town.”

  “That must be hard,” I said. For some reason, I felt weird about her revelation. I’d never actually met a gay person before, but I didn’t think that was it. It was more that I didn’t want her spending time with someone else.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “That wasn’t the point I was about to make before we were interrupted. I know we’re lucky in a million ways. I’m not even comparing it to what you grew up with. And there’s people even worse off. We’re so privileged, Gwen. But sometimes it has down sides. Like when people want to use you, or destroy your dad’s company, or break up your family. Xander, he was the oldest, and he got it the worst.”

  She tugged on my sleeve, leading me into the little lobby off the gym. I’d passed through it on my way to PE, but Peyton pulled me over to a trophy case and pointed to a picture behind a trophy. “Can you believe that’s him?”

  I squinted at the picture, trying to make my eyes see what she was seeing. And then I spotted him in the second row of the football team’s picture. He was almost unrecognizable, with short, neat hair and a huge smile, his eyes crinkling and a dimple the size of the Grand Canyon in his cheek. He was smaller and younger looking, too, but the smile was the big thing. That and the fact that Xander, the delinquent who skipped class to smoke cigarettes and do god-knows-what under the bleachers with his three stoner friends, used to play football surrounded by dozens of friends.

  I probably would have stood there staring at that picture for another hour if the bell hadn’t rung. Peyton took me by the shoulders and turned me to face her. “You sure you’re okay? Because I will find that hussy and bitch-slap her into Helheim if you say the word.”

  “Say what word?”

  Time seemed to hiccup as she reached for my face. Slowly, her soft fingers skimmed my cheek as she tucked a strand of stiff, crunchy hair behind my ear. “Never mind,” she said, for once unsmiling.

  I swallowed hard, suddenly tumbling with a million conflicting sensations. Alice must have felt like this as she was tumbling into Wonderland.

  The sound of footsteps in the hall broke the spell, and Peyton dropped her hand, laughing nervously. “I’ll see you after school,” she said, quickly turning away. “And this weekend, we can go into Boston and go shopping. Get you some new clothes. Unless, you know, you want to check out holes in the fabric of the universe.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want anything to do with that. All those years, I’d thought we were running for Mom’s sake. But now I wondered if I hadn’t benefited from it, too. Now that we were settling in one place, I didn’t know how to get away from the things I didn’t want to think about—my mother’s condition, the insanity of what our parents had said, the weird things that happened when I was in the same room with my new siblings. Even, apparently, Peyton. If I couldn’t hop in the car with Mom, how could I escape it?

  And then I saw Jen’s friend walking by, texting as she went, and it came clear in my mind. There were distractions all around me. New clothes. A new phone. A new life. If I refused to acknowledge the thing living inside me, maybe it would go away. I wasn’t going to let something else control me the way Mom’s illness had. It was time for me to make my life my own. I didn’t want any part of being a god. I just wanted to be a teenager.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gwen

  That afternoon Peyton and Zeke had practice, and Xander went off with his friends. Finn and Eliot gave me a ride home. Finn disappeared into his art studio while Eliot helped me find a phone to order online. I tried not to let his nearness distract me, but it was hard. My fingers ached to reach out and touch that soft, dark hair at the nape of his neck. Curling my hands into fists, I tried to push away the overwhelming impulse. It was like something had been sleeping inside me all my life, and now it had been awakened.

  Maybe that was how it happened. The thing that came through from the other world had been unlocked when it came in contact with the others.

  After ordering a phone, I escaped to my room and lost myself in a book. When the house had been silent too long, I climbed off the bed and meandered downstairs. The sun had finally come out, and it fell across the gleaming wood floors and brightened the whole house. Looking around, I marveled at the vaulted ceilings, the windows that stretched all the way to the roof, the sparkle of the sun off the gentle ripples in the water below. A boat bobbed in the water, and far off I could see the strip of land that hemmed in the bay.

  Suddenly, a raven landed on the windowsill. I jerked back, stifling a cry. I didn’t actually think they signaled evil, but I’d spent my life looking for them. A few times, I’d kept sightings of them from my mother, not wanting to pack up and leave yet again. But we always left, raven or no raven.

  Glancing around, I tried to slow my beating heart. She wasn’t here to freak out. She’d gone into town with Rosa to shop for groceries.

  The thought of leaving made panic clutch at my heart, though. I had gotten used to the luxury of good food and comfortable beds with startling rapidity. Not to mention the company of people my age.

  I turned down the back hallway and hurried in that direction, away from the raven. Without intention, I found myself standing at the glass door to the long, rectangular pool room. One long side of the room was made entirely of glass, while the opposite long wall backed the rest of the house and was made of slick white and blue tile. One of the two short walls that formed the ends of the room featured huge windows and a set of French doors that opened onto the deck. Opposite that was the door I was standing before.

  I stepped through, my eyes immediately drawn to the left, where clouds of steam billowed from a showerhead against the long tile wall. For a second, the clouds were so thick they obscured the person standing there. A wetsuit hugged his bottom half, but he’d unzipped it and peeled it off the top of his body. His head was back, hot water pouring from the showerhead and cascading over his tan body.

  Now he looked like a god. I knew I should say something, but I couldn’t break the spell. I’d never really seen a male body before, and it was different than I’d imagined. Angular as I’d heard it described in books, but the curves of his muscles under the skin were more graceful than I’d expected, more delicate.

  I stood there for a second, rapt by the strangeness of this body, before he slid his thumbs into the wetsuit clinging to his hips and peeled it down to his feet. I gasped in shock. It had happened so fast. I didn’t have a chance to warn him that I was there before he snapped back upright. He threw a shock of blonde hair back, and I had a second to think that wasn’t right, that no one in this house had hair like that.

  He met my eyes, a grin splitting his face in two. That familiar smile, slightly too big for his face.

  Joaquin.

  He reached back to slide both hands through his hair, standing unashamed in all his full-frontal glory. As always, instinct told me to run, but the shock held me rooted in place. Still grinning, Joaquin ran his hands from his hair down his body, over his chest, his abs. He grabbed himsel
f, grinning like a hyena all the while.

  Before I could turn and run, the door flew open behind me.

  “What the fuck,” Zeke yelled, leaping past me.

  Finn grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, and I clung to him as if he’d saved me. Even though he was wet and sandy and also wearing a wetsuit, his embrace comforted me more than anyone else’s would have. I was relieved beyond measure that someone had interrupted, that it had been Finn rather than Xander or even Eliot. Finn was the only person I would have touched in that moment.

  “Thank you,” I whispered into his shoulder. Conflicting emotions raced through me—shame, curiosity, elation, excitement, fear.

  Zeke and Joaquin were yelling at each other behind me. “I was just taking a shower,” Joaquin said, his voice a mixture of whining and laughter. “She’s the one who wanted to watch.”

  “Dude, that’s my sister,” Zeke yelled.

  “For like a day,” Joaquin protested.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn murmured into my hair.

  Zeke’s voice spoke before I could. “Have fun out in the cold, asshole.” A cool breeze swept through the damp pool room, and I heard the glass door slide open and then closed.

  “Hey,” Joaquin yelled, pounding on the glass. “Give me back my clothes!”

  “Let’s go,” Finn said, detaching himself and pulling me into the hallway.

  I couldn’t look at him. I felt like I’d been caught doing something shameful, something I wished he hadn’t seen. I didn’t want him to think of me differently because I’d been watching Joaquin. But I had been. Now, I followed Finn, trying not to notice how tightly the wetsuit clung to his body. His shoulders were broader than I’d noticed before, his muscles defined through the clinging material. When he wasn’t standing next to Zeke, who was built like a football player, he looked bigger and stronger than he had before.

  But now that I’d seen Joaquin, my mind didn’t stop there. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if Finn looked like that under his wetsuit. I couldn’t help but know that he was probably not wearing much—if anything—under it. I couldn’t help but wish it had been him under that shower when I walked in.

  Finn led me upstairs and into his room. While Zeke’s bedroom had been strewn with a few clothes, with some shoes randomly kicked under the bed, and a messy desk and shelves, Finn’s was so neat and sparse it looked like no one lived there at all. If he hadn’t told me he was taking me to his room, I would have thought he’d taken me to a guest room.

  “This is yours?” I looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of his artwork, to see some comics on his desk. But his desk was bare except for a little stand with a few pens and pencils in it. Instead of his own art, the walls had the same kind of beachy watercolor paintings as the room Mom and I had been sharing.

  Finn nodded, his wet hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I’m sorry about Joaquin,” he said. “He surfs with us, so he usually rinses off here before heading home. I didn’t know—I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

  “Okay,” I said, concentrating on breathing deeply.

  Finn looked as uncomfortable as I felt. “I—I might rinse off,” he said. “If you want to hang out here, or…”

  “Or join you?” I squeaked, my jaw dropping open.

  “No!” Finn practically shouted. Dark red swept over his face like he’d flipped a switch. My own blush must have matched his. Because, well, now my stepbrother thought I was a sex-crazed weirdo, which was quite possibly true, but beyond the point.

  “Or go back to your room,” he said, more gently this time.

  “I knew that.” The tension was so thick the air nearly hummed with it, and I fled in humiliation. As soon as I was in the hall, I breathed a sigh of relief. But it didn’t last long. In a house with five kids, it seemed I was never alone. Peyton came skipping down the hall in a pair of pink Ugg boots, black leggings, and a slouchy white sweater with a pink scarf over it. The girl I’d seen with her in the cafeteria ambled along the hallway behind her.

  “Hey, I was looking for you,” Peyton said, grabbing both my hands in hers. “I wanted to introduce you to my girlfriend. Alejandra.”

  Heat crackled up my arms.

  “Uh, okay,” I said. “Hey, Alejandra.”

  The girl behind Peyton stepped up and slid her arm around Peyton’s waist. Her black hair was cut in an edgy pixie style, and her eyes were lined with heavy kohl liner, but my eyes kept returning to that hand sitting so casually, so possessively, on Peyton’s hip.

  “It’s great to meet you,” Alejandra said, giving me a wide smile.

  “Are you okay?” Peyton asked, her brow furrowing. “You seem…”

  “I kind of walked in on Joaquin showering,” I blurted out, because I couldn’t exactly tell her I’d just accidentally propositioned her brother.

  “Oh, man, I’m so sorry,” Alejandra said, eyes widening.

  “Can we call him Teeny Joaquin-y?” Peyton asked, holding up her pinky finger.

  For some reason, her joke made the panicky feeling in my stomach melt, and I found myself laughing with the other girls.

  “Just take my word on this, whatever’s in his pants, you don’t want it,” Alejandra said.

  After agreeing, Peyton said they were hanging in her room if I wanted to join, but I’d had enough company for the day. My head was still in a whirl over all that had happened at school and since then, so I excused myself and escaped to the library. The room was empty and quiet, and a sense of reverence fell over me when I entered. I collapsed into a chair, feeling drained.

  I wasn’t used to so many people, so much going on. My life with Mom had always been chaotic, but I’d never had to worry about anyone but her. And even though I wanted to be alone, I found myself thinking about the others. About Peyton hanging out with her girlfriend. Eliot and Xander off somewhere, maybe with their girlfriends. Finn in the shower. Zeke had also been in a wetsuit after surfing. Was he showering in the pool room where I’d interrupted Joaquin?

  I got up and perused the library, trying to forget my worries. Instead, I found myself drawn to a section with a bunch of mythology books. All day, I’d avoided thinking about the stories of gods and monsters, of giants and death. But it had nagged at me, and as soon as I was alone with no distractions, it came raging back. What if Neil was right? What if there really was something living inside me, inside all of us? If it had been there all along, then maybe my mom wasn’t really crazy at all.

  Afraid to let myself believe it, I ran my fingers along the spines, looking for one about Norse gods. When I found it, I tugged it out and opened it. If there was something powerful inside me, and if it had even the slightest chance of helping my mother, I couldn’t ignore it. I had to find out what it was and what it could do.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Finn

  “Fuck. God dammit, son of a fucking bitch.”

  I stood in the hot shower, muttering curses under my breath. I couldn’t get the picture of Gwen out of my mind. How shocked she’d looked. How naked Joaquin had been. How she was now tainted, her purity smirched by my friend. I’d invited him to go surfing. I’d invited him to come hang out. I’d done it out of charity, but what had it gotten me? I’d violated my stepsister.

  What did it matter if I added swearing to my list of sins?

  The thought of Gwen made my body stiffen.

  “Fuuuuuuck.” I rested my forehead against the wall and looked down at my growing hard-on. What was happening to me? She was legally my sister, for God’s sake.

  God. Ha. Probably another fucking lie I’d been told my whole life.

  Doubt—add that to my list of sins, too. I was full of them.

  So what did it matter if I gave in to the sick and twisted desires in my mind? Lust was just one more deadly sin to check off the list.

  And what did it matter if I let that burning seed of anger blaze up, like Xander did every day. I wasn’t better than him. I was a sinner like everyone else. Wrath—I had
it in spades. Toward my lying father, toward my dead mother, toward my brothers, all of them. Toward Joaquin for being the one she walked in on. I wanted to fucking kill him.

  A month ago, I hadn’t been like this. A month ago, I had been good. Not blameless—no mere mortal could be perfect. But I’d been a good person.

  Now, I was jerking off in the shower, thinking about my stepsister. Her flawless ivory skin. Her flowing blonde locks. Her sweet, innocent eyes. And I was corrupting her. Was it worse or better if I pictured her as an angel while I took her innocence?

  This was how far I had fallen.

  My life was a crumbling pile of dog shit. From the day I was born, it had been one big fucking lie. I was a bastard, destined to hell from the moment I was conceived. Why even try to be good?

  A month ago, I’d had this tidy little life. I did my silly little comics, I surfed, I kept my head down, and my nose to the grindstone. I didn’t let myself get distracted by parties and girls. I went to church three times a week. I prayed every night and every morning. Sure, I sometimes “woke” to find some pretty weird scenes painted on the walls or canvases of the studio Dad had put in for me. They weren’t sinful things, though, just unexplainable. That’s why I kept it locked, where even Dad wouldn’t see them.

  Though the “dad” part was a joke. I wasn’t his son at all. I wasn’t the twin brother of Eliot the Lady Killing Genius, as he’d called himself when we played knights and sandcastles on the beach as kids. I wasn’t the shy one of the Keen family. I didn’t have a family. I was the bastard orphan son of a junkie whore.

  Not the mother I’d known. Not the one whose bed I had sat by, whose hand I had held in her worst moments, moments not even my brothers had witnessed. Moments when she’d done and said things only a dying woman could, things that made me grey with shame for her. I’d believed her when she called me her son. We’d stood by her through the breakdowns and the valiant moments of bravery and strength, when she thought she could overcome. I’d stood with my brothers behind her, like an army, always having her back.