“Not now,” he whispered, pressing his cheek against mine.
Now that our bodies were separated, I felt cold. I longed to feel him pressed up against me again, like that. God, was he solid.
“What about you?” he said. “This can’t be easy, cleaning out your father’s house.”
“Does it get easier?” I asked. “Does the pain subside in any way?”
His hand landed on my thigh and squeezed. I wasn’t sure if it was meant as an advance, or was just a mindless gesture. Either way, I put my hand on top of his and squeezed.
He shook his head. “No. The pain stays the same. But you get used to it eventually. And you become numb to it. It’s both a good and a bad feeling. It’s like learning to walk with a limp. The limp never gets better, but you learn to adjust your way of being to it. The thing you’ve got to realize is, things will just never go back to the way they were, and that’s a fact you’ve got to come to terms with. Or you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
A wave of emotion crested and a tear rolled down my cheek. I thought of my dad, Louisa, and her dad.
Shane’s dad.
“The silver lining,” he said, squeezing my leg, “Is that it makes you appreciate the people you do have in your life a whole lot more.”
“Ouch,” I choked out, grabbing his hand.
He looked down. “Oh shit, sorry. I forgot that was your leg.”
I giggled. “Who else’s would it be?”
“I don’t know, mine, maybe?”
“Wouldn’t you feel it if it was your leg?”
He spun his body around to face me, a slight grin on his face.
“You’ve got a big mouth, you know that?”
“Just pointing out the obvious,” I said, playfully.
My pulse raced furiously as he reached a finger out toward me, and traced it around my lips.
“No. I mean you actually have a big mouth.”
My cheeks flushed red. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”
“No,” he smirked, and grabbed my finger and placed it on his mouth so I could trace his lips. “I think mine’s bigger. What do you think?”
Okay…so are we back to him being flirty again? His hot and cold nature was confusing to me.
I let out a small gasp as I ran my finger around his lips, feeling myself falling under his spell. A shadow fell over his face, and in the moment, he looked devious. I got the feeling as though he was trying to control himself around me for some reason.
“Yours is bigger,” I whispered.
“That’s what she said,” he smirked.
I squinted. “I don’t get that one. Can you explain--”
He didn’t explain.
In an instant, his lips were pressed up against mine, and he moaned into my mouth. The short, deep, nasally noise reverberated through my entire body. Reaching behind my head, he grabbed a knot of my hair.
“You’re right. Mine’s definitely bigger,” he said.
“I was thinking about this last night,” I admitted, my heart pounding. My chest ached, desire pouring into every one of my limbs. “Why did you just leave yesterday? You still haven’t given me a satisfactory answer.”
He didn’t say anything, and I backed away, my brain searching for an answer.
“Do you not find me attractive?” I hypothesized.
“I find you incredibly attractive. I want to do very--”
“Inappropriate things to me, right. I get it. So…” I reached out and touched his chin. “Why don’t you?”
He looked away. “It’s complicated.”
“Don’t give me that ‘it’s complicated’ bullshit again. Is that your relationship status or something?”
“That’s not my relationship status. What are you talking about?”
I sighed. “When I was dating my first boyfriend freshman year of college, it turned out he had two girlfriends. Well, three, actually. He would tell me he was going home for the weekends, but he was really just going to hang out with his ‘weekend girlfriend.’”
Shane’s eyes went wide. “Are you fucking serious?” I nodded.
“That’s fucked up. Real fucked up. But that doesn’t mean I’m like that too.”
“Okay. So...you just lost your nerve yesterday?”
“I’m not the kind of guy that loses control. But when I walked in and saw you yesterday, something bubbled over in me. If I didn’t pull away then...” He trailed off.
“I just get the feeling like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Look,” he stood up. “It’s getting late. I do have to go to work tomorrow early in the morning. So I should probably go to bed. I’ll drive you to your house in the morning so you can keep going through your dad’s stuff. It’s on the way to tomorrow’s job site. Sound good?”
“Alright,” I said, and I stood up, too. “Goodnight?”
He headed up and I stomped after him, up the stairs to my room.
Were we not just making out? What was going on with him?
What about those thoughts he claimed he had about me?
What is with this dude? I couldn’t keep up, between him flirting like crazy one moment and slamming on the brake with me the next.
In the hallway, I paused for a few moments, looking at Louisa’s old room. What was in there that was so forbidden for me to see?
Later that night, as I tried to sleep, I cursed the fact that the only thing I could think about was Shane.
He was hiding something, and I was going to find out what that something was.
10
Shane
I rolled over in bed, and my eyes fell on the picture I kept at my desk of Louisa and I when we were kids. Natalie had snapped it ten years ago.
I’d built Natalie up in my mind as this spoiled brat who relished in taking her mine owner Daddy’s money down to Florida and blowing it every way she could.
But I’d gotten anything but the party vibe from her. And having attended a state school for three and a half years, I had been around plenty of party girl types.
On the contrary, she had this innocence about her. Reliving the moment tonight with her was heating me up like crazy.
You’ve got a big mouth. Nice lips. You ever use them?
I was dishing out insults like I was in high school again. Big Mouth? Really, Shane? That’s the best you could come up with?
As attracted as I was to the new Natalie, I needed to hate her. If I didn’t...what would that mean for the past ten years? That my friends and I had been hating on her, saying all the ways we would get back at her, for nothing?
Even if she didn’t have the spoiled vibe, she benefited from daddy’s money, I reminded myself.
And Daddy Toft had been responsible for the deaths of our parents. If he had listened to the work complaints my dad had filed, maybe the accident wouldn’t have happened. Maybe things would have turned out okay…
I let out a loud growl as I sat up in bed. A soft, pink glow came from outside, so I stood up and looked out. The blizzard hadn’t been nearly as bad as they’d said.
Maybe they’d fix the heat in her house tomorrow, and Natalie could be gone and out of my hair. I needed her to be removed from me, because with every second she stayed closer to me, she was weakening my resolve.
She took my indecision as playing with her. The truth was, I had competing desires battling in my head every time I was around her: the desire to be with her, and the desire for revenge.
As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the devil on my left shoulder played checkers against the angel on my right.
You hate her. You always have. It’s her family’s fault your dad and your sister died and that’s a fact.
But she’s so sweet and innocent. There’s no way you could possibly blame her for everything that happened.
She’s inheriting the money from the mine and benefiting from everything her father did. Remember watching your father and sister die? Someone has to pay.
She didn’t ask
to inherit the money. She didn’t even know what was happening when she was twelve years old, for God’s sake.
You and the guys dreamed about finally having this opportunity to get back at her for years. She ghosted your sister and didn’t respond to any of her letters. And it’s payback time.
But those lips. Those beautiful, luscious, soft lips. They’re like pillows.
I got back under the covers and tried to sleep for an hour or so, but it was no use. So I headed downstairs, made myself a bowl of cereal, and sat down at the kitchen table to eat it. Taking the envelope out of my pocket that the scout had given me today, I read over the contract. It wasn’t much money, as was the norm for minor league contracts, but it was more than I was making right now doing odd construction jobs around town.
Something that he’d said to me had stuck with me, and Natalie had echoed it again, too, with what she asked me tonight. “Are you happy here?”
That question had stung, and I’d done my best to sidestep answering it.
Even more than the question itself, it was the genuineness with which she had asked the question that got to me. She’d really, truly cared about my answer, and I knew she could tell when I bullshitted my way through the answer.
No one had asked me that question in years. Not my mom, not my friends...everything they wanted to know was about how I could help them.
Her other question had struck a chord with me, too. I didn’t want to have straight talk with her, I was afraid of where they might lead.
Why did you just walk out of there when we were hooking up?
She would hate me if I told her the full, uncensored truth.
How, when all three of our fathers—Jared’s, Bob’s and mine—had perished in a mining accident in the Toft coal mine we’d vowed revenge. And we didn’t only want to take it out on Mr. Toft, but on his daughter. Yeah, if she knew that, she’d think twice about being with me. As she damn well should.
We all knew Mr. Toft as a vicious, greedy Scrooge of a man, who didn’t have a care for any of his employees. He’d ignored safety regulations to turn a profit. We’d joked about how the only thing in the world he cared for was his daughter.
And how would that make him feel to take that away from him? It was the only way to make him feel the pain he’d inflicted on our families, the pain that cut so deeply by our community.
How does it feel to know I’ve fantasized about tying you up, Natalie?
And probably not in the way that a girl wants to be tied up.
Fuck. I took another swallow of water.
I’d pegged her as the horrible friend who’d never called back her best friend, never even tried to get in touch with Louisa in high school.
Louisa hated Natalie after that. Natalie was simply referred to as ‘that bitch.’
She was too young for me to blame her for not staying in touch with my sister. Still, Natalie could have done a better job of keeping in contact.
When her mother called my house to have me ‘look after her,’ I was in disbelief, seeing her. It was like seeing an artifact out of the past.
She was so doe-eyed and innocent, and evil feelings percolated inside me when I saw her. From the starry-eyed look she had, I knew she wanted me, and part of me wanted to just make her feel the pain I had over the past decade, losing two family members.
But something transformed inside me whenever I kissed her. She softened me, reminded me that she was just a little girl while her daddy was destroying his work force. She made me want to forget our silly revenge plans.
But I wasn’t going to let her get the best of me again.
There would be no more touching and no more kissing. No more flirting, as badly as I felt my body pulled toward hers.
Because we had to go through with the plan.
After I dropped Natalie off the next morning at her place, I left for today’s job site located a few miles to the south. We were rehabbing the interior of an old lakefront summer home, ripping out the drywall and installing some new electric. Jared and Bob were already there when I arrived.
“What’s up, fellas,” I said to them as I went inside and slapped hands.
“Shit,” Jared said. “Just working on this rich motherfucking mansion. I wish I could afford something like this. Know what I mean?”
I gazed upward. In the winter, it was barely usable because the insulation was horrid, but we’d fired up a space heater to deal with the cold, and kept our hoodies on. Summer lakefront homes around here could go for as much as a one to three million dollars. This one was probably somewhere in the middle.
“Rich fucking bitches coming in with their city money, ya know?” Bob said. “Who knows the shady shit people who owned this place did to make their fortune? I bet you they had a part in the great mortgage fraud of 2008. Really fucked over our generation with their bullshit, yet they reap the benefits.”
“Fucking capitalism,” Jared snorted, agreeing with Bob.
I could smell the alcohol on the two of them. This didn’t surprise me, because the more hungover they were, the more bitter their monologues against anyone who had money were.
I hoped to God that was all they’d been up to last night at the bar. A couple of nights they’d called me to pick them up at the town meth house where shit was getting out of hand.
“Fellas, anyone start the electric upstairs yet?” I asked, trying to redirect the conversation to something productive.
“Nah man,” Jared said. “Shit, you shoulda came out with us last night. What were you up to?”
“Nothing,” I shrugged.
I walked up the stairs, and there was a giant A-frame window gazing outward at the small lake in front of us. For most people, it wouldn’t be paradise until the summer came and the sun came out and you could go swim in the lake.
Personally, I had always been more of a winter guy. That was probably the Canadian in me. Everything was so calm and still and dead in the winter, and the stillness was soothing to me.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass for a moment. Maybe it was the angle, but I suddenly felt I looked much older than the last time I’d seen myself. And having not shaved in a few days, my stubble seemed extra thick. Was it growing in faster?
Focusing my gaze on the stillness of the frozen-over lake, I thought about the warm feeling that had come across me for a fleeting moment last night when I was talking to Natalie.
I hadn’t brought up my late father to anyone besides my mom in years. It had felt good to talk about him.
It had felt even better to hug her.
And press my lips into hers.
Standing on the ledge of this million-dollar house, I had to wonder, what if my life took a different path? The scout’s words rang in my ear.
You’d be able to help a lot more people if you had some actual money.
My thoughts were interrupted when I felt a slap on the back.
“Rich bitches, right?” Bob said in his gruff, smoker’s voice. “I can’t believe they’ve got the money to just overhaul this entire place.”
“Hey, at least we’re getting paid,” I said. “Right?”
“Hey, North!” Jared yelled up. “You want to get in a smoke before the boss gets here?”
“You know I don’t smoke,” I yelled back. “But I’ll join you and stand outside for some fresh air, sure.”
Outside, I stared at a beautiful layer of snow that had settled on top of the dead-looking trees.
“So man,” Jared started. “You got my text last night, right? She’s back in town.”
My nostrils flared. At this point, I felt more defensive of Natalie than anything else.
“I know,” I said.
“So why didn’t you get back to me? We’ve got to finish off the plan.” Bob added, taking a deep inhale of smoke. “She’s gotta pay for her father’s sins.”
“That was high school shit, Bob. We’re not doing that. It was cloud talk.”
“Cloud talk?” Jared scoffed. “We wer
e talking about that just a year ago. Remember last winter when you dropped out?”
I scrubbed a hand across my stubble and said nothing. Fuck. I had mouthed off and said some stupid shit just last year, one night when I was drunk and it was the anniversary of Louisa’s untimely death.
Another reason I was laying off the drinking these days.
“Since when have you gotten so goddamn soft, North?” Bob added. “College turn you into a little puff ball?”
He poked me in the side.
“It turned me into a sensible fucking person. We’re going to...what, exactly? Rob her of her father’s inheritance, somehow?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “It was your idea, remember? You’re the mastermind behind the whole thing.”
“You always have had the brains,” Jared added.
I looked at both of them. They’d been my friends ever since I could remember having friends.
Moreover, when our fathers were three of the seventeen miners killed in the Toft mine accident, it solidified our bond beyond anything we’d all been able to put into words, a special band of brothers.
In the years that followed, we’d vowed revenge on Mr. Toft, that evil bastard. Bob was right that it had been my idea to start, one drunken night in the wake of the tragedy. I had been the angriest of us all.
But knowing who Natalie was now—I wanted to be sensible. I wasn’t about to go overboard on some silly revenge plot that could get us thrown in jail.
As I looked into Jared and Bob’s sunken faces, I realized something. They didn’t have anything much to lose anymore.
Come to think of it, did I?
My mind flashed back to the contract the scout had left me to look over to play for Chicago. I couldn’t go, though. What about my mom?
She was doing a little better now, but what if she had a relapse?
“North! Cut the crap. Are you in? Or out?”
I looked at their faces. I remembered the cold, bitter nights I felt after my father passed away, how my mother wept, and how it drove my sister and I to drugs and alcohol. I had Jared and Bob, but she didn’t have anyone close. And it was what eventually led to Louisa’s demise.
Black Ice: A Standalone Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 9
