C
HAPTER
S
IX
I
dressed for school in dark brown knee-high boots over a new pair of skinny jeans paired with a deep green satin blouse I pretended didn’t remind me of anyone’s eyes. As had become our habit, Lucy and I rode to school together in her car with her talking my ear off the whole way. I refused to be nervous about seeing Asher again and was determined to stay away from him for my own good.
The first temptation of the day occurred as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. Asher lingered a few spaces over, leaning against his black motorcycle—a vintage Indian according to an envious Ben. The black helmet he held in one hand had tousled his long, wavy hair. All lean muscle, he stood in a rare beam of sunlight and for once, a flirting hussy wasn’t attached to his side. His eyes glowed hotter than the weak sun as he stared at me, daring me to walk to him. Giant monarch butterflies flitted about in my stomach.
Lucy whispered, “Down, girl. Put your tongue back in your mouth.”
The distraction worked, though it hurt to tear my eyes from him. Looking up at the cloudy sky, I said, “Okay. I can do this.”
It didn’t sound convincing, even to my own ears. Lucy shook her head in pity. “Are you sure you want to?”
She didn’t know why I’d decided to avoid Asher, only that I had. That was reason enough for her. Glad of the support, I hooked my arm through hers, and we strolled past Asher. I felt his eyes follow me, but I didn’t look back. “Oh, ye of little faith. We O’Malleys are made of sterner stuff than that. A pretty face and a gorgeous, perfect, out-of-this-world body will not break us.”
She looked doubtful, and I supposed I’d tossed in one too many accolades about Asher’s body.
I didn’t see him again until lunch. Unlike that morning, he didn’t acknowledge my existence as a small brunette curled into his side and made cow eyes at him. Despite my mission to ignore him, his dismissal smarted.
All’s fair.
I returned my attention to my new friends. They were making plans to go sailing for the weekend and appeared shocked when I admitted I didn’t know how to swim. That surprise was nothing compared to the look they gave me when talk turned to cars, and they found out I couldn’t drive. A car had been way beyond our keep-Dean-in-beer budget.
Glancing away from their horrified expressions, I looked right into Asher’s eyes. He studied me from his table, ignoring the brunette who’d finally given up on burrowing her way into his side.
Lucy shoved my arm to get my attention again. “Have you taken driver’s ed?”
“Yes, and I have my learner’s permit, but I need practice.”
“Well, for God’s sake, make sure Dad takes you. I thought I’d kill Mom when I was learning. She’s a nervous passenger.”
“You know, Remy,” Brandon said. “You are seriously damaging all my fantasies about city girls.”
Greg smacked him in the back of the head, and Brandon grunted. “Nobody drives in New York, dumbass.”
They moved on to insulting each other, my deficiencies shelved for the moment.
I laughed along with everyone else and ignored the empty spot in the pit of my stomach when I noticed Asher had left the cafeteria.
Lucy’s friends were regulars at the Clover Café after school. We’d hit the coffeehouse to drown in espresso, accomplishing equal amounts of homework and intake of gossip. The Blackwells showed up from time to time, including the older brother, Gabriel, who did not deign to socialize with the high school crowd. Usually, he brought a companion—dubbed Sorori-toys by our group since they appeared to be a variety of particularly clueless sorority girls—to keep him entertained. I wondered how it was possible that some judge had given him guardianship of his younger siblings.
If I’d assumed Asher would strike up a conversation with me once we were alone, he proved me wrong. About a week after he showed up at my house, I found him sitting alone at a table reading a book. My friends had yet to arrive, and I hesitated. Things had been uneventful, though, so I took a seat at our regular table next to him, and he acknowledged my arrival with an impersonal nod.
After ordering a large café mocha, I picked up my copy of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
and pretended to read. Despite his distant behavior, I felt Asher’s gaze on me often. At one point, I could have sworn I sensed his energy cresting toward me. It arrived with a slow roll and very little power behind it. Rather than the tidal wave he’d sent my way twice before, this was more of a . . . prod. I strengthened my mental barricade, and the current bounced away without causing any harm.
Asher’s eyes widened in mock innocence when I swiveled my head to glare at him.
Lucy and the others arrived, and I turned to greet them, unsure of his game.
Several minutes later, as I listened to Greg complain about our math teacher, the next wave of energy hit. Like before, it was the mental equivalent of having someone poke me in the side. Exasperating, but not painful. My walls held, and this current bounced away, too.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging him.
From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed his full lips tilting in a smile.
Another hour played out the same way. Every so often I would feel one of those mental pokes. He made it impossible to ignore him. Around the fourth time, I realized his goal—to make it impossible for me to ignore him.
My smile turned grim.
Two can play that game, jerk.
Later, as my friends gathered their things to head home, I guessed he planned to touch me to throw me off guard like he had at the Underground. I kept my expression relaxed, waiting for the others to clear out so I could follow them.
Then, I let my mental guard crash down, remembering how he’d reacted before.
Asher knew instantly. His body tensed as he seemed to struggle for control. His eyes flashed, and I wondered if he was fighting a desire to attack me. Whatever he was up to, he wasn’t trying to hurt me. It was like he wanted me to keep my guard up around him, and those prods were warnings. Reminders that my unguarded energy looked like a chocolate sundae to him.
While he sat surprised, I rose to my feet and walked away. By the time he recovered, my mental barricade was once more entrenched. At the door, I gave him a haughty smile.
The staggered look left his eyes. He glared and I could almost hear him reprimanding me for playing dirty. Shrugging, because I knew it irritated him, I stalked away and heard his laugh follow me out of the café.
The next few weeks passed the same way, except Asher’s mental prodding wasn’t restricted to the café. It was before school, in English, at lunch, in the hallways between classes. All fair game.
I’d be walking along talking to Lucy or Greg, and a wave of energy would sneak up. There’d be scant seconds to reinforce my shield before it hit me. Always, Asher stood nearby, watching me with studied casualness and barely hidden delight. When I’d scowl, he’d toss an arrogant, satisfied smile my way to show he knew he’d gotten under my skin.
After the first week, I didn’t bother relaxing my guard, except in classes I didn’t share with Asher, and then only because I needed the short respite. Staying on high alert exhausted me, but the fatigue was worth it the day he realized his game wasn’t working anymore. The prods had become easier to ignore with all the opportunities he’d provided for practice.
In English, he’d made it a point to always sit next to me in class and then ignored me while he flirted with our female classmates. All the while, unbeknownst to them, he tested my defenses for fractures. One day, I grew fed up with the game.
When I felt a wave of energy coming at me while Mrs. Welles took attendance, I turned on him. “Seriously, do you mind?”
Mrs. Welles glanced up from her computer when she heard my fierce whisper. She looked like every English teacher I’d ever had—part librarian and part frustrated artist. A brave pencil speared a lopsided, haphazard bun to her head. Her clothing was persistently colorful, in a blinding kind of way, and mismatched as if she dressed in the dark.
She turned back to her computer, and I faced Asher. He looked as if it had finally occurred to him that he no longer took me by surprise. The impulse to touch me to force a reaction rested there in the long, tense fingertips that tapped his desk with impatience.
I lowered my walls all the way for a brief second to remind Asher he wasn’t the only one with power. He tensed as he always did when he sensed my vulnerability, as if he fought an internal battle to stomp down his need to attack—his conscience or whatever held him at bay had become my ally.
“Tease,” he whispered.
I smiled with grim satisfaction and mouthed,
Bite me
.
His wide grin gleamed perfect and content. He’d gotten to me again and knew it.
Disgruntled, I stared straight ahead.
The weekends brought a welcome respite.
Brandon, a lifeguard during the summer, had agreed to give me swimming lessons at the community pool after Lucy bullied me into it. A ton of kids shared the shallow end with us, and Brandon acted like a professional, both gentle and firm as he taught me how to hold my breath underwater, and then supported me while I learned to float.
I grew impressed by his restraint from cracking jokes at my expense and relieved to find another of my new friends healthy. One by one, I’d tested them and hadn’t detected any illnesses. The knowledge had enabled me to relax with them. As for the group, they followed Lucy’s example and touched me frequently with small hugs or an arm looped through mine as we walked through the halls. I didn’t mind as much as I’d thought I would.
When Brandon and I clambered out of the pool to dry off, he reverted to his regular self. His gaze dropped to the top of my bikini and, as Greg always did, I smacked him in the back of the head. His coffee-brown eyes crinkled in amusement, and he chuckled.
“You’re such a guy, Brand.” My tone had less disgust than resignation as I mock-scowled at him.
He threw a tattooed arm around my shoulder. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, babe.”
He gasped when I elbowed him in the ribs. He laughed again, and I couldn’t help but smile back, surprised to have found a good friend in him.
Later, Laura drove me to the BMV to transfer my learner’s permit, and Ben took me for my first driving lesson in his Mercedes that evening. When I almost steered the car into a large tree to one side of the yard, his foot sought an imaginary brake. I stopped at the last possible second, slamming us both forward against our seatbelts.
Ben’s sigh of relief turned into a chuckle, his head thrown back against the seat as he stared at the tree trunk less than a foot from the front bumper of his very expensive car. I would have quit right then and there, vowing to take the bus for the rest of my life, if Ben hadn’t insisted in a calmer voice that I reverse the car out of the front yard so he could teach me how to parallel park.
Later, we gained a long stretch of Highway 9, and I stepped on the gas. For the first time, sitting in the driver’s seat became a pleasure.
“You’re going to get a speeding ticket before the year is out,” Ben predicted. Strangely, he sounded more proud than upset.
By the end of the lesson, I felt far more confident and had earned the affectionate nickname “Lead-Foot O’Malley.”
When we arrived home, Laura had just finished making dinner. At the table, he proceeded to tell Lucy and Laura what a talented driver I was already, leaving out the episode with the tree. That’s when it hit me.
I was falling in love with them.
Lucy, Laura, Ben.
My family.
My life with them was the opposite of the one I’d lived in Brooklyn with Dean and Anna, and it hurt to think about what I’d left my mother to survive alone. I hadn’t slept with the knife under my pillow since a week ago when Laura had discovered it while changing my sheets. She’d replaced it where she’d found it, and I wouldn’t have known if not for the freshly washed sheets. That night, the knife returned to its kitchen drawer.
Loving them would make it ten times, a hundred times, harder to leave if they discovered my secrets and sent me away. I resolved to guard my heart even closer, and my throat ached with unshed tears.
On Sunday, Lucy and I decided to hit the ice rink to watch our hockey team “beat the crap out of our rivals.” Brandon had convinced me to go with his fighting words, but it hadn’t taken a huge amount of effort when I knew Asher would play. We left the house, and a new Ford Mustang GT sat in the driveway. Candy-apple red with gleaming chrome, it stole my breath away. I could imagine driving with the windows down and my hair blowing in the breeze.
Busy coveting the car, I didn’t hear Ben call my name right away.
Distracted, I turned in time to catch the key ring he tossed my way and glanced at it in confusion. Laura and Lucy stood beaming behind Ben. I looked at the car, at Ben, at the car again. My head swiveled back to my father, and he grinned, nodding.