Chapter 8

Hunter

She steals glances at me as I drive.

I knew she was talking to Kade on the phone. From fifty yards away, I recognized the body language. The bowed head, the frown, the limited movement of her lips, because he was dominating the conversation, as usual.

“I thought you said I was going to be on my own here,” she says next to me.

Yeah, I remember what I said.

I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to ignore her presence. It’s all I’m aware of since she arrived. I shouldn’t give a shit if she talks to Kade while she’s here. I want her to miss home and leave Weston.

But it pissed me off.

She’s not home.

She’s here. He can talk to her later.

The cool wind sweeps through the car as “Keep the Streets Empty for Me” plays on the stereo, and I hear her unclick her seatbelt. Looking over, I watch her shift in my passenger seat and lay her head back over the open window. Closing her eyes and with her face toward the sky, she lays there, letting her hair whip in the wind as we fly down the highway.

Locks of her hair dance over her eyelids and mouth. My chest tightens.

I turn my eyes back to the road, swallowing hard. “Dylan, sit up.”

My car is old. It doesn’t set off an alert when someone isn’t wearing their seatbelt, and she’s taking full advantage of it.

“Dylan,” I bark again, glancing at her. “Come on, it’s dangerous.”

“I know.”

Her soft voice sounds so innocent, and I shake my head. Of course, she knows. Living on the edge is fun, and putting yourself in unnecessary danger is worth a thrill.

But…I don’t slow down the car, either.

I keep my foot pressed on the gas, flitting my gaze to her every once in a while and seeing a smile spread over her closed mouth.

In a few minutes, we’re pulling into Breaker’s, some ’70s rock song playing over the speakers as vehicles enter and exit. Farrow and the team will be at the party for a while, taking advantage of the keg before they head here for food. We’ll be gone by then.

Servers coast around the parking lot in roller skates, and Dylan sits up, smiling wider as she watches them. She loves anything with wheels.

I slide into a bay and park, the menu with a speaker in the center lit up in bright colors outside my window. I reach out, pressing the blue button for service.

I meet her gaze. “You hungry?”

She nods.

The speaker crackles, and then I hear, “Hi. May I take your order?”

I turn to Dylan again, double-checking. “Bacon?”

Again, she nods.

I lean out the window just a bit. “May I get two number ones?” I call out. “Both with bacon. One with onion rings and a Coke. The other with fries and a strawberry shake.”

“Anything else?”

I glance at Dylan. She shakes her head, smiling a little as déjà vu hits me, and probably her too. It’s our fast-food order. When we were little and both wanted fries and onion rings and both wanted milkshakes, but they’re not good enough for washing down food, so we needed a soda too. Our parents would never let us get that much food, so we each put in an order and shared it.

“No, that’ll be it,” I tell the cashier.

“Nineteen eighty-two,” she says.

“Thanks.”

I reach over, avoiding Dylan’s knee as I open the glove box and retrieve my wallet.

“I have money,” she says, starting to dig in her back pocket.

But I shove the box closed and sit back up, not looking at her. “My parents’ money or your parents’ money, it doesn’t matter.”

She’s quiet for a second and then finally pulls her hand out of her pocket.

I slip out cash, and she opens her door. “I’ll be back.”

I toss my wallet back into the glove compartment, darting my eyes up just in time to see her pull her hair up into a high ponytail. Her hoodie rides up as she raises her arms just enough for two of my classmates, Marius Kent and Daniel Kocur, to turn their eyes on her bare stomach and naked hips as they lean against the exterior of the restaurant. She fastens her hair and grabs the doorknob to the women’s restroom, the guys watching her as she goes.

I slam the glove compartment shut. If people look at her like that here, they must in the Falls too. When I lived there, not many guys were vocal about their interest, simply because they were intimidated. Either by her or Jared. Everyone’s scared of Dylan’s dad.

Except me.

And Kade.

We know him.

But she’ll be off to college next year, and she’ll meet a lot of guys who have no idea who her dad is.

Climbing out of the car, I walk around to the front, leaving the battery running and my music playing. Leaning back on the hood, I unlock my phone.

I want to call Kade. I tried not to think about it at the time or why I had them handcuffed together on Grudge Night. They were both there, together, and I was in a mask. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

But I didn’t consider why I did it until she asked me tonight.

How long were they trapped together? Did they share a bed?

I need to stop giving a shit. If I’m ever going to have a life where he doesn’t matter, I have to give her up too. And Hawke and Quinn and…

A.J.

I lower my eyes, the weight on my heart getting heavier at the thought of my little sister. I’m not sure if she’ll ever see her brothers in a room together again.

She will see us together in a stadium, though.

Sarah Powers rolls up on her skates, holding a carrier with two drinks in one hand and a brown bag in another.

“Hey, Hunter,” she says, handing me the bag. “You ready for the game?”

I set the food on the car and take the drinks, handing her the cash. “Getting there,” I tell her. “Keep the change.”

She smiles, spinning around and passing Dylan as she skates away.

I hand Dylan her milkshake. “Do you need to hit a grocery store?” I ask. “They didn’t leave you any food at the house.”

I pull the burgers, fries, and rings out of the bag. We both rest against the car, unwrapping our sandwiches.

“Well, someone did,” she tells me. “I came home from school and the fridge was stocked.”

She turns the burger left to right, cocking her head, before she finds the perfect place to attack. She takes a bite, her lips pursing together as she chews.

I take a bite too.

Someone put food in her fridge? If it were one of the guys, they would’ve said so at the barber shop earlier. It was probably Hawke. Or his girlfriend that Dylan talked about in her texts. She’s from Weston, I heard.

Dylan jerks her chin at the server, Sarah. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

I glance at Sarah as she takes an order from the window and rolls to a car five spots down from us. Her T-shirt is tied above her belly button, and her pink leggings show all of her curves.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, looking down.

“Where did you find this song?”

“I don’t remember.”

She’s trying to start a conversation, and I guess I asked for it, but I don’t want to talk like things haven’t changed.

I stick the straw in my drink, but she takes my Coke before I can and sips it.

She hands it to me, and I drink while she uncaps her milkshake and dips a fry in. “What colleges are you applying to?” she asks.

“I haven’t decided.”

“Are you going to Weston’s homecoming dance?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

She eats. I eat. And we drink the soda while she dips her fries in the ice cream.

She inspects her burger for where her next bite will happen. “Do you want to know what he said to me?” she asks.

I stop mid-chew and clench my teeth for a split-second.

He. Kade.

I hear her swallow, and then she takes another drink of my Coke before continuing, “I loved growing up with you two, you know?”

Yeah, I know. She followed him, I followed her…

“I loved growing up with Hawke and Quinn, too, but mostly you and Kade,” she goes on. “We were the same age. Same teachers, same milestones.”

Dylan was born a couple of months after us, so we started school together. Got our licenses around the same time.

“Everyone idolized him,” she says. “Kade, I mean.”

I flip the top of the wrapper back over the burger, covering it, no longer hungry.

“He was always the first one to choose a direction.” She smiles softly, musing. “The first one to charge ahead, so before anyone even had a chance to decide what they wanted you to do, they were just following him.”

She dips a fry in her milkshake, and I feel his shadow descend like it always hovered at home.

“He’ll always be dominating conversations, the one everyone gravitates toward,” she continues, “because of that confidence. It’s not that he always says the right thing, but you just listen to whoever’s talking.”

I don’t need to be reminded of the power he has over people.

“He never has any problems.” She just keeps dipping her fry, lost in thought. “He doesn’t tolerate problems, and having his approval or attention makes you feel worth more.”

I swallow my last bite, crumpling the rest of my burger into a ball inside the tin foil.

“Knowing Kade is knowing he’ll always be the center of attention in any room,” she says. “And if you want to be in the fun, you better stay close or you’ll be alone.”

Yeah. Sounds about right. Everyone surrounds him.

“And you know what people liked about me?” I ask her. “That I looked like him.”

She chews and swallows, dusting off the crumb that fell on her sleeve. “He doesn’t feel like you, though.”

My eyebrows pinch together. Feel like me?

What do I feel like?

She stops eating, just stands there as if she realized how that sounded.

It’s good to know that she sees through his mystique a little. She’s never asked why I left. She’s only ever asked why I left her.

Taking her fries, I dump them back into the bag, and then I take my onion rings and do the same. She watches as I fist the bag closed and shake, mixing up the contents. Opening it back up, I pluck out a handful of onion rings and fries, dipping one into her shake as we share the Coke.

We eat and drink, music playing and people pulling in and out of the parking lot, and I want to take out my phone and reply to one of the many texts she’s sent me over the past year that I never answered, and I want to do it with her sitting right here, because I want to see her smile.

But I don’t want her thinking we’re friends. We can never be friends again.

“Don’t race Phelan’s Throat, okay?” I warn.

She doesn’t look at me as she pulls an onion ring out of the bag and a tiny laugh escapes her.

“I didn’t have my lucky charm today,” she says. “That’s why I had bad luck.”

I look away before I roll my eyes. She always races with the same necklace her dad raced with. A piece of clay with her mother’s childhood thumbprint.

“And you don’t look like Kade,” she tells me, swallowing down her food. “You look like your mom. A little more than he does.”

My heart kicks up speed, and I take a big bite of an onion ring to hide my smile.

I inhale a deep breath, close my eyes, and lock my fingers behind my head. I tense every muscle in my body as I lay in bed.

I didn’t sleep for shit last night.

I couldn’t stop staring at her mouth at Breaker’s. I know she saw it. Every time she chewed, swallowed, spoke…

My cock stretches against my sleep pants, straining to stand.

My abs tighten harder still, and my biceps brush my ears as I try to get everything to burn, so I’ll be too tired to think about her today.

She told me I looked more like my mom, who still has that mildly aggravated, ‘your-idea-of-fun-isn’t-my-idea-of-fun, I’m judging you’ glint in her eyes that she had in all the photos I’ve seen of her as a teenager. I don’t look like that.

And yet, I like that Dylan thinks I do. My mom’s cool. I love my dad, but he thrives off bullshit that I find intolerable. Suits, politics, compromising, and never being able to say exactly what you mean. I know it has to be done by someone, but I’m glad it’s not me.

Light fills the room on the other side of my eyelids, and I focus on a face—any face but hers. Coral’s blonde hair and her eyes that amplify her smile. Mace’s curves. Arlet washing Farrow’s car weeks ago in a bikini that I couldn’t help rolling my eyes at, because it’s ridiculous how he coerces women into being his maids, but I also did a double-take at the view too. She likes me. She’s been sending me signals the size of Mack trucks.

But all I see is me last night, tearing Dylan’s phone out of her hand at the bonfire and almost crushing it in my fist, because I’m sick of how he troubles her. Her spine straightened like a steel rod, and she barely looked like she was breathing.

Not nervous.

Tense.

Maybe I want her to feel like that with me.

And maybe she will, now that he’s not here to interfere like he always did.

“No, I don’t want to get in,” Dylan cries.

But she’s totally smiling too.

Kade grabs at her ankles, water sloshing around his waist as she leaps around the pool deck, just out of his reach. Stoli and Dirk have Danielle Hardy and Gemma Ledger on their shoulders, the girls trying to push each other off and into the water. Dylan wants to get in the pool, but she and Ledger aren’t okay. Kade doesn’t give a shit.

She pops a grape into her mouth from the handful she holds as she slides out of his reach again.

“Kade, leave her alone,” I say.

But he captures her ankle with one hand and then snags the hem of her shorts with the other and yanks her in.

“Ah!” she screams.

She crashes into the water, and Kade and the guys howl with laughter. I swim, one stroke carrying me over as she pops up, hair draped over her face and her grapes gone.

She heaves breath after breath, rising to her feet and hugging herself as her teeth chatter. “It’s cold.”

She shivers, and I grip the back of her neck, pushing her hair out of her face with my other hand.

I meet her eyes, and she smiles up at me, her chest shaking with laughter.

Everyone blurs behind her.

Her blue eyes under dark lashes gaze up at me, and I feel her thighs press into mine as I become aware that she’s wet. Her clothes stick to her, and I blink, my gaze dropping to her white T-shirt plastered to her stomach, her belly button visible just underneath.

She takes a step closer, coming in to get warm. She trembles against my body, and everything starts throbbing. Heat rushes down low, and my chest caves, feeling her hips in my hands even though I’m not touching her there. I want to. I want to hold her close so badly.

Her smile suddenly falls, and I know she feels me. I rip my hand off her hair and back away. “Dylan, Jesus Christ…”

I say it like she did something wrong, and her brow pinches together.

I chuckle a little to shake it off, about to tell her she can have my towel on the deck chair, but Kade sinks beneath the water, through her legs, and rises back up with Dylan on his shoulders.

He spins her away from me, taking her to the others.

But she holds my eyes over her shoulder as she goes.

I wish they hadn’t been there. I wouldn’t have pushed her away.

Maybe I would’ve. I don’t know. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten hard, but I think she noticed, and it freaked me out because I didn’t want it to freak her out.

I just couldn’t help it. Kade had started having sex a couple of months earlier, and it’s not like I took that as my cue to start doing it, too; but it gave me permission to want it, at least. And he seemed to know, because he never let us be alone together for very long from then on out.

I told myself a hundred times it had nothing to do with Dylan. She was a girl, and I trusted her completely. My thoughts about her weren’t a choice. They were simply a lack of options. I thought that whenever I left home, I’d find that there were others who made me feel good too.

I reach down and fist myself over my pants, too fucking hard.

“It’s dangerous,” she whispers against my mouth.

In my head, we’re somewhere dark. Hidden. Soft.

A bed.

I thrust into her, desperate to remove my jeans, her underwear. “I know.”

I bite her lip. She whimpers, pants. I grip her cotton panties, throbbing.

I squeeze myself, groaning at the daydream. There are others out there who will make me feel just as good. She could be anyone.

I close my eyes, trying to imagine another face. Another body.

“Fuck,” I moan as I dive into her mouth. “Are you sure?”

“It’s dangerous here,” she tells me in between kisses.

“I know.” My chest presses into her breasts. “But I want your first time to be in a bed.”

I draw in a deep breath, feeling her body underneath mine. She wants to have sex, and I don’t trust anyone else to touch her right.

“Are you sure?” I ask again, clenching her underwear in my fist.

She arches her back, holds me between her thighs, and digs her nails into my arms. “Don’t stop, Hunter.”

I grunt, swelling painfully and feeling her in my arms, but then…a clamor hits the wall on the left side of my bed.

“Fuck!” a girl cries out from the other room. “Yeah, yeah, yeah… Oh!”

I open my eyes, sighing, and my hard-on already ebbing away. Seriously?

“Ah! Yeah!”

Farrow’s headboard hits the other side of the wall, faster and harder, over and over again, and I remove my hand from my cock before running it through my hair.

“Oh!” she moans at the top of her lungs.

I punch the wall with the side of my fist, her laughter following quickly after. “Sorry!” she shouts. I don’t recognize the voice. It could be anyone.

But they don’t shut up. His bed rocks against the wall, and I whip off my blanket, rising out of bed.

I walk to the window, the tree outside spilling leaves in the wind, but I don’t have time to appreciate the colors or to even check the temperature this morning when I see Constin walking up the steps of the house next door.

What the hell is he doing?

He was no doubt with Farrow yesterday when she was escorted into the school on her first day, but I don’t want him around her alone.

I crane my neck, trying to see if he goes in, but I can’t tell. I can’t see the door from here.

But he disappears from my sight, and he doesn’t come back. There was no one else with him.

Hurrying to my closet, I yank a T-shirt off the hanger, pull it on, and then push down my lounge pants and pull on some jeans. Slipping into a hoodie, I don’t bother to deal with my hair before I put on some socks and shoes and bolt out of my bedroom.

There’s not one good fucking reason for Constin to be there alone with her.

I race out of the house and slam the door, damn near leaping down the steps.

He’s not standing at her door.

And he’s not on the street.

He’s inside.

I launch up her porch stairs, twist the door handle, finding it unlocked. I swallow the bitching I’m going to do at her later and step inside.

A dish clangs in the kitchen, and I charge through the living room, gaping at them both standing next to the sink.

What the fuck?

Dylan’s eyes meet mine, and Constin turns, following her gaze.

She stands there in a tank top and blue-and-white-checkered boxer shorts. Boxer shorts? Are those hers?

My heavy breathing is the only sound. “What are you doing?” I finally ask.

I don’t know if I’m talking to her or him, but I’m looking at her. She’s barely dressed.

Her expression is soft, a gentle smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “He’s giving me a ride to school.”

Constin grins.

I take a step. “Get out.”

This time I’m looking at him. I don’t know him as well as Farrow knows him, but I know enough, and he treats everyone like shit. He’s not taking her anywhere alone.

“Go,” I bark.

Dylan moves around him, addressing me. “Are you kidding me?”

But this isn’t her decision.

“Out!” I growl at Constin.

He swaggers past me, throwing me a look, and I know I probably can’t make him leave, but he’s not going to be left alone with her like he planned now.

He walks out the front door, and Dylan throws out her arms. “Why do men suddenly think women didn’t survive at all before their arrival into their lives?”

I close the distance between us. “He just walked into your house?”

“He could’ve come in any time while we were both asleep last night!”

“And that’s probably true!” I shout. “It doesn’t seem like you know how to lock a door!”

He could get past a lock if he really wanted to, but that’s not the point.

“Go get dressed!” I yell down at her.

She scowls back up at me. “I need a shower!”

She marches past me and stomps up the stairs, and I glare at her back as she goes.

She disappears into her bedroom, and I cross my arms over my chest, standing in the foyer below. When she comes out again, she’s wrapped in a towel, and I watch her cross the hallway and throw me a glower as she kicks open the door to the bathroom.

I stand guard the entire time.

She pouts all the way to school. She glares at me in Forensics. Ignores me in the hallway. Snarls on her way to P.E.

Every time I look at her, she looks away, and I struggle not to laugh, because it reminds me of when we were kids. The little spats we’d get into that always bummed me out because I hated her being mad at me. Now I realize if she’s mad, she cares. I can still piss her off. Good to know.

“You want to go to the homecoming dance?” someone asks during lunch.

I turn back to the lunch table, seeing Arlet in Farrow’s abandoned seat, except she sits on the table with her shoes propped up in his chair.

“You didn’t ask anyone else.” She peels an orange, her red hair swept over to one side of her head. “I’d like to go with you.”

I glance over at Dylan, sitting at a long rectangular table to my left. She’s alone, acting like she’s preoccupied with her phone and that I can’t see her periodically looking up to watch me.

“You don’t need to babysit your cousin that night,” Arlet tells me.

A couple sits at the end of Dylan’s table, the girl dressed in a makeshift Pirates cheerleading uniform as she bounces on top of her boyfriend.

I narrow my eyes, hearing him chant, “pirate girl, aw yeah, pirate girl” as the young woman laughs.

“She’ll be back in the Falls by then anyway,” Arlet goes on. “To her own homecoming.”

Another guy comes up, pawing the cheerleader’s breasts while she moans, as if Pirate Girls love to be sexually harassed.

I start to stand, forgetting Arlet, but then a guy is behind Dylan, emptying a bottle of water into her lap. She flies up from her seat and shoves him in the chest, and I throw my chair back, running over.

The whole room erupts into cheers and chants as Dylan attacks and the dude grabs her by the collar. I’m there, pushing him away from her as the teachers rush in.

I wrap my arms around my cousin’s thighs, picking her up and feeling the water on her jeans seep through my hoodie. “I got her,” I tell Mr. Green before he has a chance to say anything.

I carry her back to my table.

“Let me go,” she grits through her teeth.

The excitement dies down, and I pull my chair back in, sitting and plopping her down in my lap.

“Let me go!” she shouts this time.

I pull my tray in and secure my arms around her waist. “Eat,” I tell her.

I’m not letting her go to retrieve her own tray.

But she glares. “I’m not hungry.”

“If you don’t eat,” I tease. “I’m not giving you your surprise.”

My table goes quiet, Calvin, Mace, Arlet, Farrow, and Constin all listening. Dylan stares at me but keeps her mouth shut.

I quirk a smile. “We’re going to sneak into the Falls tonight and get your good luck charm.”

Laughter and snorts go off around the table. “Really?” Calvin asks me.

But Dylan frowns a little, looking guilty. “We’ll have to sneak really well,” she warns.

I cock my head.

She grabs my apple and lifts it to her mouth. “I left it at your house.”

The table erupts in squeals, someone pounding on the table in excitement.