Chapter 10

Hunter

Her lips tremble. “People are here. Downstairs.”

“Yeah.” I release the curtain, not taking my eyes off her. “They’re partying. And in the street.” I lower my voice. “No one will come in here, though.”

A lump moves down her throat, and I drop my eyes to the pink bra strap laying over her arm, having fallen off her shoulder.

“I just…” She flexes her jaw. “I want things to go back to how they were.”

“And I told you they can’t.” I step closer. “If you didn’t think so, too, you’d be naked and washing already.”

We’ve grown up. Everything is different. I’ve always loved her, but now…

Her gaze flits to me and then down, and I can see her chest rising with big breaths. I should just let her off the hook. I knew she would fold. I didn’t actually want to trick her into a shower together, but…

She crosses her arms at her waist, grabs the hem of her tank top, and lifts it over her head. Raising her eyes to me, she tilts up her defiant little chin and drops the shirt to the floor. A gleam brightens her eyes.

It takes everything not to smile back because my heart is swimming and my body is stirring at everything I see, even as I keep my eyes pinned to her face. The pink of the lace—like bubblegum. The golden skin of her stomach and her chest, and her breasts held in cups with flowery trim. Nothing like I thought Dylan would wear.

A lock of hair snakes over her collarbone, down her pretty skin, and I finally lower my eyes, watching it curl over her breast, the flesh underneath looking soft and full.

“You next,” she says.

I meet her eyes again. “My shirt’s already off.”

I let a small smile out now, and to her credit, she doesn’t fight me. As she unfastens her jeans, I feel my groin ache with heat, watching her push her pants down her thighs, and then shimmy a little until they drop to the shower floor.

I almost groan, but I close my mouth and force my breathing to slow as she steps out of them, shoving them to the side with her foot. Her black underwear looks like the bottom half of a string bikini, connected just below her hips on both sides with a thin strap. In my head, I hear it rip in my hand.

It takes a moment, but when she just stands there, I remember it’s finally my turn. I pull open my fly and drop my pants, almost wishing I weren’t wearing briefs. I feel more vulnerable than if I’d just gone for broke and shocked the hell out of her by wearing absolutely nothing underneath. I don’t look down to see what she sees. I know I’m hard. I can feel it trying to grow through the fabric.

“Have you ever seen a naked girl before?” she asks me. “I mean, other than the ones who play against the cars with Farrow and the other guys?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes falter. “Who?”

I tip my head back, wetting my hair. “The first one or the last one?”

Her big eyes narrow, and she frowns. I keep my smile contained.

She’s the only one I’ve ever seen naked, other than Weston’s public displays.

She reaches behind her back, unclasping her bra.

I tilt my head back up, my arms weak as I smooth my hair back over the top of my head and watch her.

“You don’t have a girlfriend right now, do you?” she asks me as she works the hooks.

I watch the straps on her shoulder, waiting for them to go lax. Do I have a girlfriend? No. I shake my head.

The pink bra loosens, and she peels it off, her breasts spilling out for me. I suck in a breath, and the bra disappears. I don’t know where.

“No one’s ever seen me naked,” she whispers.

Jesus, she’s beautiful. Pink nipples already hard, the curves of her flesh perfect, and I’m dying to touch her. I want to feel her in my hands.

Dylan stands there, steam billowing around her wet skin, and she starts to raise her arms but then lowers them again, resisting the instinct to cover herself.

I’ve seen her naked before, but this is the first time she’s aware of it.

And she’s giving it to me.

I lower my eyes, suddenly guilty. This was all a game. A bluff. She shouldn’t have given this to me.

But she never runs when she should. Dylan is childish and defiant and frustrating, but she’s pure. What you see is what you get, and she just wants us all to be happy. Nothing she does ever comes from a bad intention. She would give you the clothes on her back.

I shouldn’t be fucking with her right now.

But I don’t want to leave.

“Can you turn around?” I ask her.

She does, and I push the rest of my clothes off, stepping up to her and stopping within an inch. She slips her panties down her legs, and after our clothes are forgotten and the water runs hot around us, I look down at her ass and my dick throbbing for her.

“Sorry I don’t have any bath toys,” I joke.

“I do.”

It’s just a murmur, but I hear it, and it takes a moment to process what she means. I exhale a laugh. “Seriously?”

She has a vibrator?

“Seriously,” she says. “It’s waterproof. Aro and I bought them online one night on a high of rum.”

She reaches over to the dish and grabs a new bar of soap. I take it from her, wetting her washcloth and soaping it up. I hand both to her over her shoulder, tempted to wash her myself.

“I haven’t even opened it.” She continues facing away from me, rubbing the cloth over her breasts slowly. I stare down over her shoulder, watching her.

“I was so nervous when it came in the mail,” she whispers. “I thought the box might read Giant Vibrating Penis on the side.”

I chuckle, despite the ache in my groin. Her dad would not handle that well. I grab the soap from her and start running it over my chest.

“I haven’t had a chance to try it out with no one in the house yet.” Her soapy fingers massage her breasts before gliding down to her stomach. “I just hid it in my hope chest.”

“Your hope chest…”

I remember that. A huge treasure trunk that sits at the foot of her bed and holds her dreams. Traditionally, girls back in the day put things in there to start a home with their husbands when they got married. Linens, china, family photos.

Dylan, daughter of Tatum Brandt, was never taught to do that. She used it to hold her secrets. Pictures of her celebrity crushes, a Mercedes hood ornament she ripped off the car of the doctor who stole her mom’s promotion at the hospital when Dylan was thirteen, and her bloody bandages sealed in a Ziploc bag from skinning her arm in her first motorcycle accident that her parents never found out about.

She also kept pictures of places she wanted to go, notes she and her friends passed in class, and the ashes of Madman, her parents’ beloved dog. Their honorary “first born.”

I don’t know what she keeps in there now. I mean, other than a sex toy.

“Aro says an orgasm from a vibrator is ten times better than one from my fingers,” she tells me. “I’m hoping that’s true.”

The soap pops right out of my fist and falls to the floor. Jesus, Dylan. My heart tries to beat a hole out of my chest. What the hell?

Images of her in her room at home—in her bed that I’ve crashed in a hundred times—sweep through my head, and I feel like I’m sweating. I draw in a deep breath, but I can’t breathe in here.

“Can I turn around now?” she asks.

She starts to twist, but I close the distance between us, pressing my chest into her back and stopping her.

Unfortunately, it’s not just my chest pressing into her, though. She freezes.

I tremble. Shit. I didn’t want her to see it, but she definitely fucking feels it.

“Are you…hard?” she asks softly.

“Yeah.”

She moves just a hair, like she’s about to turn, but she doesn’t. I grab the shampoo and squeeze some on top of her head and then on mine.

“Don’t read anything into it,” I tell her. “I’m eighteen. It’s hard all the time.”

The corner of her mouth reveals a smile. “Can I see it?”

I don’t reply. Instead, I pull her back with me a few steps, using the shower to lather up her hair. I rub her scalp with both hands.

No one’s ever seen me. I don’t know if I want mine to be the first one that she sees, either.

“Do you remember that week of snow days we had, like four years ago?” she asks me, her head moving as I scrub. “It was in February, I think?”

“I remember.” We had four days off from school in a row. Trees were down, some homes in the rural areas were out of power.

“I hated it,” she gripes. “The extra time off school only meant we’d have to make up the days, which would cut into our summer vacation, but…” She pauses. “More than that, I was sick of the snow. It was bitter cold. Everything was wet all the time. The world sounded dead because no one was outside.”

I sink my fingers into her locks, vaguely remembering how bored she got that year. I couldn’t care less about being outside. She and Kade both needed to feel the wind. Not me.

“It was gray everywhere,” she continues. “Gray smoke from the chimneys. Gray snow from greasy cars and tires. I wanted to swim. Ride our bikes. Smell my dad’s grill in the neighborhood.”

I tug her backward a little, guiding her head back and rinsing her hair. I watch the suds cascade over her ass and down her thighs.

I lower my mouth to her hair, closing my eyes. Fuck.

“So you told me,” she goes on, unaware of how turned on I am. “You told me ‘to make it beautiful.’”

I said what?

She continues, “You said there was a way to find beauty in almost anything. To think about things I like and apply them to how I see. To frame it in a way I find alluring.”

Huh, I did say that, didn’t I?

“You pointed out that I loved nighttime and the tree outside my bedroom window and how it made noises in a breeze,” she says, “and you reminded me that I liked to sneak around and loved to see new things.”

Yeah, by the time we were fourteen, I knew everything about Dylan.

I run my hands down her hair, smoothing out the remaining soap.

“And then you snuck me out of the house that night.” Her voice sounds like she’s smiling. “Took me to Blackhawk Lake, and we shared sips of your dad’s Jägermeister, while we laid in the snow. We listened to the winter wind sweep through the bare, black branches that stretched up into the night sky. I heard the creaking sound of the wood that I never noticed in the summer, because I only hear the leaves rustling or the birds singing.” She drops her head, slowly rubbing the soap off her hands. “But when they’re gone in the winter, you can hear the icicles. See the way they shimmer in the moonlight and how scary the quiet is.”

I don’t remember telling her any of that. Guess the Jäger was a good idea, after all.

“Or you said to just smile to change my perspective,” she adds. “You said if you smile, something is already more beautiful because you’re looking at something with kind eyes.”

Definitely sounds like something weird I would’ve said when I was that age.

“I started to understand that’s why you had your headphones on so much back then. Music makes things beautiful too.”

I slow my hands on her hair. My dad was always on my case for shutting out the world with those headphones.

But…

“You’ve been practicing making something beautiful in your head for a long time, haven’t you?” she asks me. “And it worked, until it didn’t anymore.”

A lump seizes my throat.

She’s right.

I don’t think I even realized what I was doing back then until she said it just now, but the headphones helped me love the world around me. It set my mood. I needed them a lot.

Eventually, though, they weren’t enough. I had to leave.

She turns her face a little. “Can I turn around now?”

I’m still hard.

“Your eyes will be kind,” she says in almost a whisper, and I realize she’s nervous about me seeing her too.

I clasp her upper arm, nudging her around to face me.

Our eyes meet, but not for long. Her gaze trails down my chest, and the closer she gets, the harder I become.

She licks her lips and inhales deep as she takes me in, and in the inches between our bodies, I soak her up. I take my time because she’s letting me.

Droplets of water dot her breasts, making it look like sweat, and I know the curve of her waist would fit my hand perfectly. I lower my gaze to her flat tummy and the thin strip of hair between her legs.

I frown.

It doesn’t grow like that. She’s getting waxed. Why?

My mom has been very vocal that she only endures that hardship for my dad’s sake.

I relax, though. She says no one has ever seen her naked, so I know it’s not for a boyfriend.

“Do you ever rub one out?”

I shoot my eyes back up to hers, processing her question.

Rub one out? Do I ever masturbate? Is she kidding?

I arch a brow, and she chuckles, rolling her eyes at herself. “I mean, how often do you rub one out?”

I laugh, rubbing my jaw. “A…a lot,” I finally reply. “You?”

Her cheeks get rosy, and she looks away shyly. “A lot.”

My chest swells with a hundred fucking emotions. I can’t believe we’re talking about this.

She turns to the wall, propping her foot up on the ledge and grabbing her razor, running it up her leg. I can’t take my eyes off the curve of her ass, her toned thigh, the water spilling down her body. She sees me looking, her gaze falling to my dick again. She opens her mouth, looks at me, closes it, and then opens it again. “Can I…?”

But she doesn’t finish her question.

“What?” I press.

She shakes her head, looking away again. “Nothing.”

What was she going to ask? If she could touch it?

I skim her body with my eyes again. She let me wash her hair. Maybe she’ll let me watch her touch herself.

“What?” she asks.

I look up, realizing she’s staring at me. I need to get out of here. I grab the towel over the rod and open the curtain. “Nothing.”

I wrap the towel around my waist and step out.

She finishes and shuts off the shower, following me out. “Are you going to do it tonight?” she asks.

“What?”

She doesn’t reply, and I look at her, waiting. Something mischievous lights in her eyes, and she glances to my dick again, now covered with the towel.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I tell her, grabbing the only other towel off the shelf and handing it to her.

I want to masturbate. Badly. But I won’t tell her that.

She smiles, happy enough to shoot her shot.

“Did you get the necklace?” I ask.

She nods, wrapping the towel around her body.

“Lock your doors, understand?” I pinch her chin, forcing her to pay attention. “There are eyes everywhere on this street, keeping an eye out for your safety, but that doesn’t mean your old friends won’t try to come for you.”

Farrow will try to stop them, but not if he’s passed out. She needs to lock up and be alert.

I take my phone off the sink counter and turn to open the door, but she speaks up. “I could sleep at your house,” she says.

I look over my shoulder at her, heat pooling in my stomach. She’s not safer in my house.

I narrow my eyes. “You stay here.”

She shrugs, and I open the door, shuffling her through.

“There were some men’s joggers in the closet when I got here. If you want them,” she offers.

“Yeah.” I follow her into the hallway, toward her room. I’d rather not walk outside in a towel.

But I only take three steps when I crash into her.

“Dylan, what are you doing?”

She’s stopped in the hallway, and I follow her gaze to the first floor below.

Farrow, Calvin, and Constin stand in the foyer with beers, surrounded by other students talking and laughing as music plays. But nearly everyone’s attention is on us as Calvin holds up his phone, filming.

“Goddammit,” I growl.

I push Dylan across the hall and into her room, and then I swing back around the banister and charge.

“Delete it,” I snap.

People scurry out of the way, girls squealing, some giggling as Calvin hurriedly types. “Just a minute…” he sings.

I back him into the wall, and he finishes posting, throwing up his hands in surrender.

“Give me the damn phone.” I grab it out of his hand and press the Power button, but there’s a code to unlock. I glare at him, slamming the phone back in his chest. “That’s great. Thanks a lot.”

At least one person has screenshot it by now, I’m sure.

In two seconds, my phone starts buzzing, and Farrow laughs. “Is it Kade?”

I look down, seeing Hawke’s name. Nope. Worse. He’s already seen the picture—a pic of Dylan and me, coming out of a bathroom half-naked together—and if he doesn’t rip out every follicle of hair on my head, her dad will.

“Go!” I shout. “Everyone out!”

Farrow chuckles, leaning on his friends as everyone piles out into the street.

“Yeah, glad y’all are having fun!” I fire back, slamming the door behind them.

They just laugh louder.

My phone keeps ringing.

I hold the wheel with one hand, swiping the screen and ignoring my uncle Jax’s second call with the other.

Hawke’s called and texted, my mom’s called, and I’ve gotten a slew of texts from Pirates. Nothing from Kade.

And nothing from Jared.

Perfect. It means he’s still asleep and missing the action.

I shouldn’t have been dumb enough to shower with her while people were in the house. It should’ve just been us.

Next time, it will be.

But I don’t know if I could take it again. I need more. I need to see her with my hands. God, she’s beautiful.

I cruise down Fall Away Lane, porch lights and lamp posts lit up to boast the beautiful orange, red, and yellow leaves on all of the trees. Lawns of green, with flower beds and small vegetable gardens, pepper the air with the scent of herbs and perfume, and a light stream of water coasts down the pristine gutter, emptying into the sewer.

There are parts of the Falls that aren’t so clean, and parts that are wealthier, but while I loved my house growing up, I was always a little jealous of Dylan’s neighborhood. Not just because these homes look like houses do on sitcoms, but also because you have friends who live next door. Or a few houses away, maybe. You have everything you need. Trees to climb. Streets to ride bikes.

And this was a perfect neighborhood for trick-or-treating in the fall and block parties in the summer.

Dylan grew up with people everywhere around her.

At my house, I’d just had Kade.

Which was great, until it wasn’t.

I pull up to the curb on the other side of Dylan’s house and shut off the engine. Gazing out my driver’s side window, I take in the dark Trent house, except for the lanterns lit up on both sides of the front door, and a dim light coming through the living room window. It’s the small light above the stove, streaming out all the way from the kitchen.

Jared’s old Mustang Boss 302 sits in the driveway. It’s not his only car, but it’s still his favorite. He likes it to stay visible.

Checking down the street both ways, I climb out of the car and jog across the lane. I leap up onto the sidewalk and veer right, to the side of the house, avoiding the front door. Picking up the pace, I run hard toward the tree between Dylan’s house and Hawke’s, scaling the trunk in two giant leaps and hopping up onto the first thick branch. I crawl up another ten feet, glancing at Hawke’s dark bedroom window. He’s a first year at Clarke University and lives in the dorms.

But he’s close if Dylan needs him.

I step in the opposite direction, toward the French doors of Dylan’s bedroom, holding the branch above my head for support. We’ve been navigating this tree for almost our entire lives. Limbs have been trimmed, generations of squirrels have lived, it’s survived storms, even a tornado when we were five, and nearly being cut down in a tantrum between Dylan’s parents who grew up with this tree between their bedrooms too.

But every year, the leaves abound and not a branch breaks. I half-think Jared and Jax kept ownership of the houses just to keep the tree.

I open Dylan’s French doors, always unlocked, and jump over the railing, landing inside. I cringe, hearing my heavy footfall echo through the house. I pause, listening.

After a few seconds and not seeing the hall light pop on from under her bedroom door, I lean over and pull open her hope chest.

I smile, still seeing a stack of magazines, but instead of celebrity crushes, they’re motorcycle periodicals now. I lift them up, finding a box of trinkets underneath: Euro coins from when her mom took her to France, a few keys that even she probably doesn’t remember what they go to, and a nearly full bottle of perfume.

There’s a snow globe that I know she used to have sitting on her desk, and I see books and more books, and I lift the stack, seeing a paperback cover with a couple caught in a passionate embrace hiding underneath.

I lift a coffee table book of Route 66 and finally find what I’m looking for. My throat tightens as I pick up the clear package with the pink plastic vibrator inside. The shaft is long with an extra piece protruding at the base about half the length. Everything all at once starts happening to my body, and I know why I came here when I couldn’t sleep after showering with her tonight. I want her to use this, and I want the first time to be in Weston. In that house.

I want her to have a lot of fun this weekend.

I start to close the hope chest, but I see a glint of silver and stop. Reaching down, I pluck out a steel ring with another chained to it. I hold up the handcuffs, recognizing the ones she mentioned at the bonfire Monday night. The ones I put on her and Kade several weeks ago when Farrow and the guys crashed Kade’s party on Grudge Night.

She kept them.

And I still have the key.

I take them and the sex toy and quietly close the chest.

Holding everything in one hand, I climb back out through the French doors and close them behind me. Twisting around, I suddenly spot a light and a girl in Hawke’s window.

“So, you’re Hunter,” the brunette says.

She leans down a little, hands propped on the window above her head as she peers at me from Hawke’s old room. I glance in, seeing soft grays and a furry pillow on the bed now.

“Aro Marquez,” I say, realizing I still have a plastic, pink dick in my hand.

She looks like she’s holding back a laugh.

I forgot that Hawke’s girlfriend now lives with his parents—along with her younger brother and sister—while she finishes high school. Dylan texted me about her weeks ago.

“How’s Mace?” she asks me.

“Scary.”

Her smile widens. “Still?”

I nod once.

“And Codi?”

I start to make my way for the tree trunk to scale back down.

“Not great, but everyone’s got her back,” I tell her.

“Good.”

It’s nice of her to ask after Codi. The kid doesn’t have much security, but everyone shows up for her.

I pause and look over at her. “How’d you know I wasn’t Kade?”

She just holds my eyes, mischief playing in hers. “It’s rechargeable.” She jerks her chin at the vibrator in my hand. “In case you want to get it juiced up ahead of time.”

Noted.

I drop down to the ground and run back to the car, tossing the toy and handcuffs onto the passenger seat. Speeding away, I stop at the end of the lane and turn right, but when High Street comes up, I don’t take the turn back toward Weston.

I pass it by, continuing down the road until it becomes a highway, the old familiar route amping me up with something between excitement and dread.

I cruise past my favorite pine tree with a base of branches that spreads out wider than my parents’ living room, and see the trail where cross country skiers will be traveling in a couple of months. I speed into the quiet neighborhood of homes far bigger than Dylan’s or Hawke’s, and even though I was jealous of their neighborhoods and the close-knit surroundings, my home never felt any less cozy. And for a long time, it was just as happy.

I see the lanterns flickering at the end of my parents’ driveway and pull over to the side of the road, turning off the car.

I get out and gaze across the street at the house my dad grew up in and his kids grew up in. A light dims and brightens again on the second floor, A.J. probably watching TV, while more rooms glow downstairs.

Kade’s truck is parked in the driveway. It was ours, but it was always his. My parents are probably home, but they tuck their cars away in the garage.

Taking out my phone, I dial my brother.

It rings three times, and I think he might avoid me, but then the line picks up.

He doesn’t say anything.

Neither do I. For a moment.

When I do, my voice is calm. “Sorry we missed you tonight,” I tell him.

“That’s okay.” His tone is steady. Sincere. “You were busy.”

I wait. Kade is almost always cocky. Full of words and a tone that leaves no room for mistake that he’s on top.

Now, he sounds like he did when we were younger. When we used to make tents with our blankets in the basement and work on our superhero gadgets, just the two of us.

We were nine. But it was great.

“You need to talk to Dad to make sure Dylan doesn’t get into trouble for what your friends did in the school tonight.”

“No need,” I reply. “Farrow took care of it.”

“Green Street.”

“Yeah.”

Rumor is that a Shelburne Falls cop is the true leader of Weston’s gang, and Farrow has his ear. The police will chalk it up to Rivalry Week shenanigans.

But the Pirates are coming. Kade won’t warn me. He won’t goad me. He’ll just come.

I hate to admit it, because the football game is more important, but I want him to. I want to see him.

Just then, a figure appears in his bedroom window, and I don’t know if he knows I’m outside, but I doubt he can see me in the dark.

“You know,” he says. “I can’t see you doing it in the shower.”

I blink, looking down for a moment. For a few minutes, I’d forgotten about the picture Calvin posted.

“I’m actually impressed,” he tells me. “I always thought you’d arrange a fancy hotel room and give them flowers and shit before a monotonous two-minute missionary fuck on starched sheets.”

Watching his dark form standing in the window, I breathe in the night air. Slow. And steady.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

His voice turns taunting.

“It’s easy to forget when she starts talking,” he teases, “but she always comes when she’s called. That’s what I love about Dylan.”

I bite down, hard.

“Thanks for those handcuffs, by the way.” I almost hear him grin. “That was a fun night.”

He’s lying.

But she kept the handcuffs.

“Don’t believe me?” he taunts. “Ask her if she slept in her own bed that night. See what she says.”

I squeeze the phone in my fist.

“Ask her,” he tells me again.