“I have been eating vegetarian because Jason’s doing it anyway, and I thought it was healthier for me. It wasn’t because of a lifestyle choice to do with animals. I mean, I like animals, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to eat vegetables all day long.”
Wow, that was the longest speech Ashley had given to any of the guys in front of Tess yet. Did this mean there was some flexibility in their special diets?
War cleared this throat and turned to face Ashley. He caught Jason’s eyes as well. “Eating vegetarian can be healthy for you but like anything else, if you don’t do it properly or if you do things in excess and don’t make up for bad choices with other calories and nutrients, then you can do your body a lot of harm as well. Any fad diet is no good for you. Vegetarianism and veganism both can be healthy but they do require a lot of educating yourself. What kind of place did you look up information about these kinds of diets?”
“I talked to my friends about it on the team,” Jason admitted.
“Well, are you sure that you want to stick with a vegetarian diet or would you be willing to incorporate some days of vegetarianism and other days to eat like your older sister is eating? It certainly would make it easier for the rest of you if you were eating the same way instead of making custom meals. What about you, Ashley. Are you eating a special gluten-free diet because of a medical restriction that’s new, like celiac disease, or is it because you’re trying to eat healthier too?”
The kids didn’t react the way she thought they would when War probed them about the diets they had chosen more. Tess had thought they would be resistant and rebellious about it, presuming that the twins were trying to find their limits with her, like any kid might when they were around a new adult. Tess wasn’t an adult and they knew that, so the pushback against her should be even harder.
In the end, they decided to try eating the same way Tess was except they would incorporate some extra gluten-free products when possible and they would all try to eat more vegetables and healthier fats. It actually would work out better for Tess to be eating healthier. She had developed some pretty bad habits at the school with a preference for the convenience of her meal plan and already prepared foods.
Once everyone was done putting away the food, they got to see the chilli War had gone outside to retrieve. Bastion carried in a large pan of cornbread, which Tess popped into the oven to heat it up. She didn’t have any sour cream but nobody seemed to mind as they dug into the delicious chilli. It was spiced just right.
Tess was feeling warmed up by the way the guys were treating her and the kids like family. This is what friends should be like. This was what she had been missing out on, locked away in her scholarship school all by herself. Tess had thought she had a family, but she hadn’t understood the connections that she had been ignoring.
No wonder the twins had been mad at her. The move to her private school had kept her busy with school work, then it was the small jobs Tess worked and the time spent putting together her university application. Always, there was something Tess prioritized over her family.
She had stopped trying to ask for the kids to talk to her, accepting her mom’s excuse that the twins were busy, and now, she wondered if it was because nobody wanted to talk back to her, either. As if they had all given up on each other and stopped being a family.
This was her second chance. It was as if the guys had given it to her. Tess had been struggling when she moved back, trying to understand why the twins treated her the way they had, writing it off his teenage rebellion and their own difficulties coping with their mother’s diagnosis. No, now Tess could see that it was something that was all on her and what she had been doing.
She was the one that had left. It was up to her to ask for the twins to let her back in their lives, even if it meant asking over and over, showing them she wasn’t going to disappear from their lives again.
Keir and Kade helped clean up all the dishes, but they didn’t do it on their own, asking Ashley to put the dry dishes away and getting Jason to carry out the crockpot and cornbread pan once it was clean back to Bastion’s car. The kids didn’t usually offer to help Tess, but she didn’t usually ask either, and perhaps, this was something else she had to learn to do as well. They all had to learn better how to be a family together, especially because their mother needed them together more than ever.
Family makes a home.
Chapter 19
Bastion
SHE WAS HIDING SOMETHING.
Bastion knew that the secrets went both ways. They hadn’t been honest with her. All of them had gone along with the lies that Kade had told Tess. It was the story that had been going around town, and she knew enough to question it. The truth of it, what really had happened to the twins and their mother a few months ago. It was something they had to protect.
That was why they became the Musketeers at school, their group drawing on solidarity to keep the secret Kade was hiding safe from those that had already sought to destroy him.
Tess had a lot to protect as well. Bastion could see how much she loved her siblings, anybody could tell how much she had given up to be there for them. He hadn’t met her mother yet, but he had heard enough from Kade and Keir when they had a moment to talk over the group text, to realize that Tess’s mother was the heart of their family.
It was a heart that was struggling to beat normally; a heart that required medication to regulate it. This illness that wasn’t so easy to fix as a zap or putting in a pacemaker. Tess’s mother had a heart problem that was a little more complicated.
Bastion wished he had gone today to the hospital so he could understand things better. He could have been there when Tess talked to the doctor or asked to talk to him afterwards and tried to figure out what exactly was going on. His experience with mental health wasn’t that much but he had looked up a lot the last couple days since meeting Tess. He actually had researched more on schizophrenia but he also looked up on depression and bipolar illness, trying to cover his bases with more serious diagnoses that could send a person into the psychiatry ward in an involuntary admission.
There was an intimidating amount of information online and the resources had to be checked for validity. Everybody had an opinion and biases were thick to wade through.
He resolved to go meet with Tess’s mother tomorrow and ask questions. It wasn’t in his nature to take advantage of those more vulnerable than him without good reason but sufficient motivation was sitting sweetly between the twins as they talked over a chemistry problem.
She was their solution to solving the difficulties that had arisen after Kade’s misadventure as they were now labelling it. Tess was a catalyst of a sort, something to stir up their simmering cauldron and Bastion had to hope she didn’t unbalance the intricate ingredients they had already added.
That was why Bastion had to go meet her mother. He needed to understand what drove Tess, all of the players involved because her mother was eventually going to come home and that might change everything.
Was Tess going to stay the rest of the school year and finish things off, or was she going to take off as soon as her mother came home? No doubt, that rich kids’ prep school Tess had attended on scholarship sounded a lot better than what she was doing here. Bastion had already hired a private investigator to start checking into things and so far Tess was the girl she claimed.
Her school records were spotless. Those had been expensive to obtain copies of but worth every penny. Other people would be shouting marks like that from the rooftop.
What Tess had done at the school, everything to earn that scholarship? Bastion thought of her more as a diamond in the rough than the ordinary girl she projected. She had the smarts to tutor them all, was modest about it, and she had already proven herself capable of getting into the best universities.
Who gave up a top scholarship to babysit bratty siblings that could have temporarily been cared for in a foster home? Tess risked her future for them and worried over getting the groceries righ
t for their special diets. She went to school all day and rushed to the hospital to check up on her mother and talk to the doctor. Tess did it all for her family, and Bastion, he wasn’t a guy that understood family well.
It made him wonder, as if he was on tenterhooks, if they should risk getting so close to Tess when she might decide to go back to her easier, nicer world.
What was it that kept her here? He had to understand. Was she real? That kind of selfless love was something that Bastion only read about with derision, but damn if Tess didn’t make him want to believe. She was a Cinderella in the flesh and Bastion was afraid of touching her and making it all disappear.
He couldn’t let her know it. That vulnerability was something he kept smothered underneath the charming personality his stepmother preferred. It was all an act and he was good at playing his role. When the masks came off, though, that was when you really learned about a person.
Bastion was going to try to peek underneath Tess’s mask.
“Okay, enough for today. My brain is cooked. Anybody have any homework left, or are we all done?
They had gotten through their homework with Tess working between them. She had provided some extra help here and there. He hadn’t seen her working on her own homework, which bothered him. He didn’t want her giving help to them at the cost of her own work and grades.
If anyone needed to get into a good university in order to make something of themselves, then it was Tess so she could escape what was obviously a difficult life. What she had given up could be re-earned with her smarts. She had something to work towards, whereas the rest of them only had to make par. Such was life, even if it wasn’t fair.
“I think the real question here is whether you finished your homework?” Bastion said, looking at her unopened backpack by the bed.
“I got through most of it by helping you guys out here, and we all have the same work. We share most of the same classes. Religion doesn’t really have a lot of homework, and the reflection is something I can do tonight before I go to bed.”
Tess looked stubborn about it already. Bastion inappropriately felt himself getting turned on, discreetly keeping a textbook on his lap. She needed to learn that her students weren’t simply going to take and not give back. They were more than that to her, and Bastion wasn’t going to let her write them off as a paid job.
He also wanted to see how Tess reacted to getting ordered around a bit.
“That’s not good enough. We’re not leaving you with more work to do tonight on your own when you told us you’re exhausted. Copy off the answers for the rest of your homework from ours and then work on your religion paper with War. You two share that class, don’t you?” Bastion said. He kept his tone reasonable but let slip in a little dominance that said Tess better think over this option and not dismiss it too quickly. He had other ways to convince her if she turned querulous.
“Yeah, we share religion,” Tess admitted. “But I don’t wanna keep you guys late again. You don’t have to stay here while I work through the rest of my homework on my own. I’m your tutor. I shouldn’t be copying answers from anyone. If I can’t do my work on my own, what kind of teacher am I? I need to understand the material as good as you, in fact, better. Your parents sure aren’t going to think they’re getting their money’s worth if I am the one needing help to get through it all.”
Bastion was about to engage her again—especially about worrying about keeping them up late when she was proposing she stay up by herself to do her homework alone, anyway—but Kade beat him.
“You’re looking at this all wrong. We already worked through all the homework together for the shared classes, except for religion. And to be quite honest, religion class works better in groups, so why don’t you share ideas with War about the paper and at least outline it. Is it due tomorrow?” Kade asked.
“The paper isn’t due until next week,” Tess said and Bastion knew she was going to keep digging her toes into the sand.
“I would actually enjoy working through it together with you as I had a couple of ideas of things I want to write and maybe we could pick one of them together,” War said, surprising Bastion. Normally, War wasn’t the one of their group to push. He was physically intimidating enough that he tried to back off, stop himself from forcing someone to do what he wanted. That meant War thought this was important enough to compromise his behaviour towards a lady.
It was a gentle nudge.
Bastion nodded in agreement while wondering if it would be enough. Tess needed encouragement in order to work together with them or to ask for help. It wasn’t that she needed help with the level of work, but it still felt wrong to leave her doing everything on her own after she had provided them with her own time and expertise. She was a smart girl. They were smart boys and unlike Tess, it seemed none of them were above a little manipulation if it was for the greater good.
Bastion had been known to selfishly offer things in order to get what he wanted. Other girls used him back, but he didn’t kid himself that all of them were different from Tess. He had broken a few hearts too along the way, of the sweet and innocent variety. If Tess knew what kind of person he was inside, she probably wouldn’t be helping him at all.
Maybe there was a part of him that actually hoped she would see him for who he really was, but he didn’t know if that part also wanted her to stay or run away.
“I’m going to have to get a bigger bed if you guys keep staying over so late,” Tess complained, wavering finally. Bastion smiled and pulled himself from his darker thoughts. “Seriously, between staying late and coming to pick me up so early in the morning, I don’t know why you guys even go home.”
“Do you realize, you just asked us to sleep with you?” Bastion said, taking delight in teasing her for all the trouble she had given them about accepting their help.
As expected, Tess blushed. It was cute and something that couldn’t really be faked. She probably had no idea how much he liked it, something so different from the girls that he was used to seducing. She was nothing like his stepmother's friends. Of course, this time he had made her blush for her own good but it felt so nice seeing it, he wanted to keep finding things to make her do it again.
Even the darkness of his desire to see her blush wasn’t going to make him stop pushing her buttons. He knew he was being selfish, doing it because he liked it, and making her a little bit uncomfortable on purpose. But that was how he worked, finding people’s limits and testing them.
“I’m certainly in no rush to go home. Are you trying to shove us out the door now that you’ve used us?” Bastion asked, letting the implication of a sexual innuendo be hinted at by stressing the used.
“No,” Tess denied, and yes, she blushed harder. “I really am thinking about how you guys will feel tomorrow without enough sleep, once more. I’m a pretty cranky-pants myself if I don’t get my eight hours. All of us are in our last year and need to focus on our studies, and that means getting enough sleep and preparing our homework ahead of time. Why don’t you all go home and we can hang out some more tomorrow?”
She was trying again to make them believe leaving her alone was for their own good. Nothing had been resolved. She still was going to have to do all her homework on her own after having worked out the problems for them. He doubted she had it memorized, although it would go faster the second time. There was no good reason for her to refuse to copy their homework.
Surprisingly, War was again the one that intervened. Normally he was the more easy-going of them, especially when it came to girls, and he could be a bit of a pushover despite his appearance. Bastion was the one that was the hardest on the girls and he looked like the prince; all of them enjoyed the irony.
“Pumpkin, we all would like to help you as thanks,” War said.
“Are we really back to Pumpkin again?” Tess complained. “I thought you guys were going to come up with more creative nicknames for me than a fat squash. I see that Keir came up with some really good nicknames in my chat. Wo
uld you guys like me to share them with you so we can get our creative juices going?”
Tess sidestepped the subject of doing homework, which Bastion noticed but the others might let slip. He also knew that she meant the last bit about ‘creative juices’ quite innocently, but he couldn’t help thinking about them getting her wet when she talked like that.
He had sex on the brain. Hearing what Tess had been doing with the twins in the car when she was supposed to be going to visit her mother hadn’t helped Bastion get his mind out of the gutter. Those two were taking things in a different direction than they had all discussed in chat. They should’ve known better, especially Kade. It wasn’t his first time with a girl, nor was it for Keir, but Kade was always the one that had gone through more girls. Kade was the most experienced next to Bastion on how to handle himself around ladies.
His stepmother made it difficult to be smooth about it by shoving society girls at him, but Bastion was good at refusing with flare. He made the girls think that it was their idea to go slow and she was worth the wait, or the opposite, he would make the girl rush through to the end without enough satisfaction to make her want to go at it again.
Unfortunately, all of those rushed girls still liked to brag about it to their friends, lying for their own reputations, so Bastion was stuck doing it over and over again, meaningless sex. If anything, he was a prince of really rushed and terrible hook-ups, not real charm. It’s not that he didn’t know better, he just didn’t care.
He really was the bastard that Keir called him and they all knew it. The last person that should be making a move on a sweet girl like Tess would be a someone like him. Despite knowing that, he still wanted to flirt with her, to tease along with the rest of them.
And kissing? Yeah, he wanted to know if Tess’s lips did taste like strawberries. He didn’t care if he polluted her sweet lips with his kiss. A fake prince like him only got so many chances to kiss someone that was true and lovely, as unattainable as the moon.
Impetuous (Victory Lap Book 1) Page 28