“Let's go win you this swimsuit competition,” I tell her, and Monica grins right back.
On the way to the beach, Cody sits in the front seat which is weird. The whole reason I jumped in the back is because I thought he'd be sitting next to me. With the top down on the convertible, it's too loud to chat, so we just listen to some pop song that Monica sings to, completely and utterly off-key.
Once we've parked and I've done the rounds of hugging a dozen different friends that actually seem more excited to see me than my best friend or boyfriend, we hit up the swimsuit competition, and Monica struts her stuff down the boardwalk.
It's nice to be back by the beach, with the surf rolling in, and the sun shimmering on the water. And it feels good to be dressed in a bikini, and not trying to hide a secret at the same time. Plus, I'm out of reach of those Student Council assholes.
My fingers curl against my chest, and I exhale. I should be on top of the world right now, standing in the California sun with the scent of sea salt, taffy, and fresh corn dogs perfuming the air. But … I feel like a fish out of water. Worse. I feel like a fish who's just been dropped back in a pond she used to know, but can no longer navigate.
Ugh.
I shake my head and force a smile, feigning excitement for Monica's swimsuit win, and then trying my best to relax in the curve of Cody's arm as we all sit around in the boardwalk arcade and eat chili fries and burgers.
Eventually, as we drive back to Monica's place and she lets us into the dark house, I realize that there is no surprise party waiting. Monica and Cody, my closest friends, the people who've known me since we were five years old … have forgotten my birthday.
“Something wrong, cutie?” Cody asks as we pause inside the foyer, and I feel my heart stutter and skip a few beats. This cold feeling takes over me, and I suddenly just wish I were back at Adamson Academy, having maple syrup poured in my hair. That'd be better than this. Anything would be better than this, feeling like an outsider in the one place I thought I belonged.
Now, I don't belong in Connecticut … and I don't belong in California either.
“It's …” I start, and Monica cocks one, perfect curved brow at me. A sour taste coats my tongue, and I decide it's just not worth it to say anything. What's the point. Exhaling, I force myself to breathe past the disappointment, and put a smile on my face. “Cody.” I turn to my boyfriend, the guy I had a childhood crush on for years, and all I feel is sad. “Can I borrow your Jeep?”
“My Jeep?” he repeats, glancing over at Monica. They look at each other like some secret, silent communication is going on between them. Cody glances back at me with his pale blue eyes, and throws out a grin that he probably thinks is panty-dropping. It's more like wedgie-inducing. It just makes me cringe. “We were thinking of watching a movie, and then hopping in the pool for a little midnight swim. You don't want to join us?”
Join us? I think, looking between the two of them and not liking what I'm sensing, what I've been sensing since just a few weeks after Dad and I moved.
“I just need to … go visit my aunt,” I lie, feeling this sweaty, itchy sensation in my palms. All I want to do is get the hell out of there.
“Will you be back?” Cody asks, passing over his keys, but I just shrug. Will I? I have no idea.
I turn and take off for the front door, heading down the steps, and hopping into Cody's shitty old red Jeep Wrangler. The engine kicks back at me a few times before it finally turns over, and I peel down the gravel drive with rocks flying.
Santa Cruz isn't exactly a big city, so there's not a lot open late, but I head over to the boardwalk. They're having some special late-night competition at the arcade, so it's open several hours later than usual. Once I park the car and weave through the crowds, I buy myself a corn dog and sit on one of the horses at the carousel. It's closed for maintenance, but the lights are still on. Two horses over, there's a couple making out on one of the benches. Not long after, they get up and run off holding hands and laughing, like they’re off for somewhere more private.
“Lucky bastards,” I murmur, my mind briefly drifting back to Spencer. The way he kisses is … criminal. His mouth is hot, and his hands … I wonder what they'd fall like if they slid up my waist to cup my breasts. “Don't think about Spencer,” I whisper, taking a huge bite of my corn dog and closing my eyes. As soon as my lashes flutter closed, I try to imagine one of my hot and heavy moments with Cody. Instead, all I can see is the clumsy way he groped me, and how he smells like suntan oil all the time. “Fuck.” My eyes open back up, and I find myself staring at the haunted house. Cody and Monica are screwing, aren't they? I'm no idiot; I can see it plain as day.
Tears prick my eyes, and I lean my forehead against the gold pole.
“Why the long face?” a pair of voices ask in unison, and I jump, spinning around in the saddle to find the twins standing on either side of the faux horse's rump. “It's your birthday, isn't it, Chuck?” they repeat, leaning in and grinning at me. They each have one hand on their hip, and they're dressed in loose jean shorts, and red tanks, the rose tattoos on their shoulders bright and beautiful under the sparkling lights of the carousel.
My eyes fill with tears, and even though I sniff hard and try to hold them back, I end up crying. Just a little.
The twins exchange a look, and step forward, one on either side of me.
“Are you crying, Chuck?” Tobias asks, reaching out and brushing one of the tears from my cheek, his green eyes dark with concern. He leans in so close that when he blinks, I swear his eyelashes brush my forehead.
“I think my best friend is fucking my boyfriend,” I say, and then sigh, reaching up to brush the tears from my face. Tobias leans back and studies me while Micah crosses his arms over his broad chest. “That, and they both forgot my birthday.”
The two boys look at each other, and it occurs to me suddenly that … we're not in Connecticut. We're in California. What the hell are they doing here?!
“Um, what are you two doing here?” I ask, and they both turn to look at me.
“Our mother is the dean of the university,” they tell me, shrugging their shoulders in unison. “She wanted us here for break.” They both blink big, beautiful eyes at me before cocking their heads. “How do you think your father got scouted out for the position at Adamson?”
Damn. Hearing them say one or two words in unison is impressive, but entire sentences? It's eerie … and maybe just a teensy-weensy, little bit sexy.
“They forgot your birthday, huh?” Tobias asks, breaking up the twin routine again. “That's pretty fucked-up. Why do you think they're sleeping together?” He hops on the next horse over and curls his long arms around the pole as Micah wanders off.
“Monica can barely look at me. And Cody only seems interested in peering down my shirt.” Both Tobias and I pause as a creaking sound emanates from beneath us, and the music starts up. The horses begin to bob, and the carousel starts to spin.
Micah saunters back around the other side, and hops onto a gold unicorn with pink bows on its head, spinning around in his seat so that he's sitting backward, fingers curled around the edge of the saddle. He's looking at me so intently, I shift uncomfortably in my seat.
I can't help the smile that takes over my lips though.
“How did you get it to start?” I ask, and he gives me this dark sort of smile that makes him look completely different than his twin brother. It's in that moment that I wonder how I could ever confuse the two.
“Magic,” he says, and then shrugs his shoulders like it's no big deal. “Are you going to confront them? Sometimes these things get ugly.” I turn away sharply and exhale, that sour taste churning in my belly. There's no way around this: I have to say something. And yet part of me knows that as soon as I do, there's no going back to the way things were. My friendship with Monica and Cody, the life I had before Dad and I moved to Connecticut, it'll truly be over.
“You sound like you know what you're talking about?” I say, phr
asing it as a question. But when I turn back and look at Micah, he's gazing out at the ocean, his eyes dark and far away.
“What do you want to do for your birthday?” Tobias asks from behind me, and I glance over my shoulder to see a naughty smile take over his full lips.
“I have no idea. Honestly, all I was looking for was a Happy Birthday, Charlotte.”
Tobias smirks and hops off his horse to come stand beside me, putting one hand on my bare thigh. I can feel the heat of his palm, a small line of fire from my leg straight up to my heart. My pulse begins to race, and I have to swallow three times to clear the lump from my throat.
“How about racing a Lambo up the coast, right next to the beach? Would that be a fun birthday present? We can get pancakes after, and I'll buy you some ugly boy clothes to hide your pretty figure.”
“Perv.” I stick out my tongue and put my foot on his chest, shoving him back a few inches as he laughs. “But okay. Anything is better than going back to that awkward tension between Monica and Cody.”
Tobias holds out his hand and helps me down from the horse. Good thing, too, because there's a security guard coming our way.
“Time to bail, brother,” Tobias says, and Micah nods, sliding off the end of the horse and following after us. We run the rest of the way to the exit, and I end up at the driver's side door of Tobias' canary yellow Lamborghini Aventador. Holy. Mother. Of. Shit.
I'd lose my virginity on this car.
The thought makes me flush as Tobias hands out the keys, grinning stupidly at me.
“Okay, what are the rules for this little shindig? Micah?” He glances over at his twin who's leaning against the side of his matching yellow Lambo with his arms crossed over his chest, his red-orange hair falling across his brow. His eyes are still dark and contemplative as he watches us.
“She gets until we hit the access road to warm up, but that's it. Then we line up at the gate, and you can call start. Winner is the first one to get to the peak.”
“What does the winner get?” I ask, my heart racing. This is seriously dangerous stuff we're talking about doing. I shouldn't even be agreeing to this, but my heart is racing, and I suddenly find that I can't think about anything else. I feel alive in a way I haven't since we moved.
“How about if I win …” Micah starts, pushing off the car and moving toward me. He takes my chin in his fingers and smirks, lending him this cruel edge that I've never seen in his brother. “I get a kiss.” My cheeks flush bright red, and I slap his hand away while he laughs. Meanwhile, Tobias is looking furiously between us. “What do you want on your end?”
“You are not getting a kiss,” I grumble, but then when I think about it … about Micah pushing me up against the side of his yellow sports car, sliding his fingers into my hair, and pulling me in close … it doesn't sound half-bad. Actually, it sounds like heaven. He smirks at me, clearly not impressed with my feeble protests. “Okay, fine, you can have a kiss if you win”—when you win is more like it because I don't know shit about racing cars—“but if I win, I want to know everything about Jenica. Everything.”
Micah and Tobias glance at each other, but I guess they're as aware as I am about my chances of actually winning this, so they both shrug before turning back to me.
“Deal,” they say, and then Micah swaggers back to his own car as Tobias opens the driver's side door for me.
“My lady, your chariot awaits,” he says as I grin and slide onto the sumptuous black leather seat. Just before he closes the door, he leans down, smelling like sweet and tart cherries and cedar, and puts his lips up close to my ear. “Happy birthday, Charlotte.”
Tobias stands up, closes the door, and moves around to the passenger side while I try—and fail—to get my thundering heart under control again.
That … is the best birthday present I've ever had.
The road we're racing on is an old access road to the state park. There's a locked gate that Micah has no problem picking, letting it swing open with a creak of rusty hinges. On our right is the bay, glittering under a nearly full moon. On the left is a mountain, dotted with trees and climbing up into the night sky.
There's a guardrail on the beach side, and Tobias has promised me we'll be the only traffic on this road.
“When Micah and I race here, we cap the speed at ninety. No faster than that, no exceptions.” Tobias leans back against the driver's side door, watching me from the shadows inside the car. “Do you have any questions?”
I shake my head.
“You gave me a pretty good tutorial on the way over here. Plus, I'm dying to just let loose for a minute.” Dad would fucking kill me—and rightfully so—if he knew what I was doing. I turn my gaze back to the road as Tobias rolls down his window.
“You ready, bro?” he asks, and his brother nods, fingers clamped around the wheel.
“Let's do this,” he growls, and the intensity in his voice makes my blood feel hot, adrenaline coursing through me. My own hands curl on the wheel, and I slide my tongue across my lower lip. Oh yeah. I'm at least going to give him a run for his money.
“Ready, Chuck?” Tobias asks, and I nod. He grins, and the lights from the dashboard make his teeth look green. “On my count. One … two … GO!”
My foot hits the gas, but I push down too hard and the car fishtails while Micah shoots ahead. Relaxing the pressure just a bit, I get us going forward, but I can barely see the red blaze of his taillights in front of me as he takes the first corner so sharp he nearly scrapes the car on the rocks.
I'm too cautious for that—and besides, it's not my car—so I take the turn wide and accelerate, the wind blowing through the open window and ruffling my hair. With the ocean on one side, and the forest on the other, it's a magical moment.
“Slow down a bit up here,” Tobias shouts over the wind, and I nod, putting on the break just enough that when a sharp corner appears out of nowhere, I'm ready for it.
Micah is still so far ahead of me, I couldn't dream of catching up, but I'm laughing, and I most definitely do not want to die out here tonight, so I take it slower than I would if I were actually trying to beat him.
The road winds up and around, and eventually, the ocean falls away, and it's just trees on either side. The ground is made of hard-packed dirt and gravel, but the tires of the Lambo grip it like strong fingers, and I don't feel in any danger of skidding.
By the time we get to the old, cracked parking lot at the top, Micah's already waiting, sitting on the hood of his car and staring out across the city with its twinkling lights.
He smirks as we pull up, and I shut off the engine.
“You know, he won't make you kiss him if you don't want to,” Tobias says, and the smile on his face is far away and sort of wistful. I feel like I'm seeing the real him for the first time since we met. And I kinda … maybe like him a little.
“A bet's a bet,” I say, and then open up the car door before I climb out and hop onto the hood next to Tobias' twin. He takes up my other side, and then the three of us sit there for a while, the engine hot and ticking underneath us.
“Should we get this over with then?” Micah says finally, breaking the silence. He turns to look at me, the cool breeze ruffling up his red-orange hair. His eyes look black in the darkness, and the expression on his full mouth is one part terrifying, two parts enthralling.
I swallow hard, and glance away, out toward the city again. My phone is in my pocket, but I shut it off as soon as I got to the boardwalk. I don't want to know if Monica and Cody messaged me … or if they didn't. That would be worse, I think, finding out that they haven't even bothered to send me a message.
“We probably should,” I reply with a long sigh. On the outside, I'm calm and cool. On the inside … I'm slightly terrified. What if I like kissing Micah better than Cody? Then I really can't pretend that the situation with Spencer is a one-off. If I like kissing Micah, then it means my relationship with Cody is done—regardless of whether my suspicions about him and Monica are true.<
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Before I can even decide how we should go about this, Micah's curling a muscular arm behind my back and pulling me into his lap. That's when I remember what the twins said about being into MMA—mixed martial arts. I don't know much about it except that every girl I've ever met swoons at the mention.
“Well, hello Chuck,” Micah purrs, and I swear, I can feel Tobias bristling behind me. His twin runs a single finger down the side of my face and then under my jaw, down my throat, and along the edge of the cover-up I've got on over my bathing suit. It's got a sweetheart neckline that he traces reverently before lifting his eyes from my collarbone to my face. “Who knew the short, ugly guy at school was actually a hot chick underneath it all?”
“You're a serious jerk, you know that?” I snap back, reaching up to adjust my glasses before I realize that I've got contacts in. Micah grins and captures my hand in his, bringing it to his lips for a kiss. He kisses each knuckle individually, and then curls his fingers through mine. My heart is racing so damn fast in that moment that I can barely breathe, our eyes locked, his body warm beneath mine.
Finally, he leans in toward me and brushes our lips together, this barely-there tease that leaves me aching and wanting so hard that my mind is obliterated for anything else.
And then the dickhead pulls away, and I'm left blinking in surprise.
“That was it?” I ask, and Micah smiles mischievously at me.
“What? You didn't think I was going to press my advantage and try to tongue you or anything, right?” He touches his long fingers to his chest and bats his eyelashes at me. “I'm just not that sort of guy.” Micah shrugs his shoulders loosely and smirks. “Besides, I think my brother's getting a little jealous.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I catch sight of Tobias staring out at the city with his lips pursed, his fingers tapping an easy rhythm on his knee. He's acting nonchalant, but I can see the tense muscles in his back and shoulders. He flicks his eyes our direction and shrugs.
“Jealous? Please.” Tobias turns toward me and reaches out, sliding his thumb over my aching lips. His green eyes flicker with mischief. “I already told you: we share with each other. And that's not hyperbole, Chuck.” He leans in close, and I swear, my heart's about to beat right out of my chest and go hopping across the yellow hood of the Lamborghini.
The Secret Girl Page 13