by Lindsey Hart
Apparently, the blonde, with her matching stupid-ass outfit, didn’t like what her date was saying. It became obvious when her face changed to a shade of lobster red and she threw back her head and her hand at the same time. Her hair flew everywhere as her hand flew through the air and connected solidly with Ross’s cheek, with a resounding smack that even Alix heard inside the house.
And of course, because Ross always had to be the center of attention wherever he went, the bastard had to stumble, trip over his own expensive as hell shoes, and plunge in what was probably a two-thousand-dollar outfit straight into the pool.
CHAPTER 2
Ross
One minute everything was fine. Boring. Pretentious, but fine.
Ross knew that the Deroy’s only put on the stupid party because it was another excuse to get together with the rest of their friends. His parents were there and everyone at the place was older than fifty. He didn’t know why they bothered to say it was for Alix. She wasn’t even there. He’d counted on seeing her twenty-two-year-old-graduated-from-college ass for years. Somehow, she always managed to evade him whenever she’d come home on breaks or at Christmas.
He didn’t think she’d be able to escape him this time, at her own damn party. He wouldn’t have come, but he couldn’t miss out on a chance to piss her off, though he was pretty sure he did that just by breathing and existing.
How did that saying go? Hell hath no fury like that of a scorned woman? Whoever said it, they were exactly right.
Ross waited four years to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to patch things up, mostly because Chance was her brother and the fucker never missed an opportunity to bust his balls and grind his gears where his sister was concerned. A person would think that as an older brother, he’d be protective and want to keep his sister clear of said douchebag best bud who clearly had only bad intentions where she was concerned. That was a big hell no.
Chance didn’t care. He found it far too enjoyable to bug Ross about that night four years ago. A few nights before Alix’s prom. Her date fucking canceled on her, epic bag of dicks that he was. She’d asked him, of all people, to take her. He was four years older than her. He thought it would look bad. He used to babysit her ass for god sakes.
His mother was horrified when he’d turned her down. His father told him that he should have manned up and done the right thing and taken that girl to prom.
Only Chance knew that Alix hadn’t just asked about prom. She’d asked alright, but it was just a euphemism for what she really wanted, and there was no way he was going to deflower his parent’s best friends’ eighteen-year-old daughter who he’d practically grown up with as a little sister.
Chance thought that was great.
There was something very, very wrong with Chance. He didn’t have a protective bone in his body. If Ross hadn’t been around half the time, looking out for Alix, she probably wouldn’t have made it past ten years old.
Anyway, the whole Alix fiasco of four years ago was the reason his evening went to shit in an epic fucking hurry. One minute he was chatting with his date. A pretty blonde who had wanted to know what he was wearing, just so she could color coordinate with him, this after just three dates, two of which involved him sticking his tongue so far down her throat that he thought he could actually feel her stomach at some points. There hadn’t been a lot of talking…. Whiiiicccchhhh was probably the reason he’d forgotten her name mid-sentence and called her something else. He didn’t even know what it was. That was the shit part. One minute he was talking, the next, out of nowhere, she wound up and slapped him on the face.
Whoever coined the term, hit like a girl, had probably meant that shit as a compliment and over the years it just got diluted into something with a different meaning entirely, because that open-handed slap packed more heat than a punch.
He wasn’t prepared for it. He’d wobbled to the side. Tried to correct. Tripped over the new shoes he’d just picked up from the stupid shoe store that his dad was always trying to drag him into. His dad liked to talk about quality and handmade soles, and blah, blah, blah. He’d just gone along for the ride in his dad’s new sports car. He preferred a different make and his daddy dearest was trying to win him over to the dark side before he went and bought his.
Being freshly rich, with his own money, less than six months in the bank, was as terrifying as it was thrilling. To be fair, he’d been an asshole before. The money hadn’t changed that.
He would have forgotten his date’s name before. Fucked up. Tripped over his own feet. Overbalanced. Ended up in the pool while pain flared inside his skull like someone was in there chipping away at his brain with a chisel- though he wasn’t sure why, exactly. The money had nothing to do with it.
It turned out that his dad was right. Those shoes were real quality. Soaking wet, they felt like two bricks that dragged him straight to the bottom of the pool. He’d never been a good swimmer, even though they had their own pool.
Ross bent at the waist, trying not to panic and suck in water, even as he bent and tried to get the stupid shoes off his feet. No luck. The laces stuck tight. He tried to kick off the bottom of the pool, but the blinding pain behind his eyes turned into an explosion. It felt like he was looking into the lights of a truck careening straight for him, right before it plowed him straight off the road.
What a way to go out. Bitch slapped straight into a fucking pool. Death by expensive shoes. That’s what the headline would say. People would laugh at him. They’d say that karma was a straight up bitch and that on occasion, it liked to give rich assholes a punch up said asshole. They’d be glad, all those nameless faces.
It was a hell of a last thought to have as the air bubbled out of his lungs and they filled up with acid that burned nearly as badly as the blinding light behind eyes that he couldn’t actually manage to open.
Something tugged at his shirt. For a split second, he thrashed out, the fight not completely gone out of him. He punched through the water, the movements slow and ineffectual. He opened his mouth to scream at whatever monster was clinging to him, whatever otherworldly being ushering him off into the gates of an unknown land that was ten to one not going to be heaven.
He tried to open his eyes and face his demise head on, bravely, to flip death off with one final middle finger salute, but his eyes weren’t cooperating. They were heavy. Burning. Why the hell did his head feel like it was stuffed full of cement?
He was pretty sure that someone had once said that drowning was extremely painful, if brief. They were right. Everything hurt. It hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced, including the dislocated shoulder that Chance once popped back into place on the football field while everyone watched. He’d never said a thing about it after, not even to his parents. He thought he was tough. A badass.
It wasn’t very bad ass to drown in a shallow pool while wearing a three thousand dollar shoes after having just been slapped because he’d called the wrong chick the wrong name. Tasteless. Classless. He imagined those two words on his tombstone.
Ross realized, through the sludge of pain tormenting his head, through the burning explosion going on in his lungs, that he was floating, rather than falling. It must be the end, the part where he had that out of body experience and looked down on his sorry drowned carcass while middle aged party goers in ugly dresses ate cubed cheese and expensive pickles.
The second he crested the surface, his face tugged above his would-be watery grave, his lungs remembered what to do. It turned out that something hurt worse than drowning. Living. Living hurt worse. He’d swallowed a fuckton of pool water and trying to breathe through all that shit was like taking in liquid fire.
A hum of voices buzzed around him like background noise. Maybe he was in hell after all and it was a group of demons assessing him. Maybe he was breathing in eternal damnation and that’s why it hurt so much.
He thought so, until he was hoisted, lifted, and the buzzing got worse. A set of strong hands turned him and beat ferocio
usly at his back, hammering him like whoever it was wanted him to throw up his lungs. What the hell was wrong with his head and why couldn’t he open his eyes? Everything still hurt. The gagging, retching combo his stomach and lungs were performing wasn’t helping the gnawing pain tunneling through his brain either.
He coughed and gagged. Gagged some more. He retched until he was sure that it was just strings of spittle hanging from his lips and that any traces of pool water had been banished completely.
Why did his head feel like a murder scene had taken place inside of it?
A shrill, frantic, hysterical voice that sounded pretty damn close to his mother’s finally reached him, cutting through the black tide of pain clogging up the thing in his skull that was supposed to pass for a brain. Some people would say it was never there in the first place. He now had scientific proof that they were wrong.
“He’s bleeding!” The voice got closer, shrill, cutting up his splitting head like someone threw him under one of those industrial saws and was cutting him apart. “Oh my god, look at all that blood! What’s happening! Why is there so much blood?”
Blood came out sounding like BLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDD. The cry rang through the air until he finally realized that he’d done something to his head. Which was why he couldn’t swim. Why it currently hurt like there was another living being, who hated the hell out of him, had taken up residence inside his skull.
Then, parting the darkness like the sun parts the rainclouds, piercing through the darkness, a full moon in the thick of the night, was a voice so beautiful that it would have brought tears to his eyes if he’d had any moisture left in his body to leak out. As it was, his eyes felt as grainy and acidic as the rest of him, like he’d been dumped into a pickle jar full of brine and turned into a human olive.
He could see his future in a martini glass. He really fucking could.
Which probably meant that he’d hit his head harder than he thought.
Which also meant that he likely imagined that clear, birdlike voice and that puff of breath right below his earlobe.
“Thanks for ruining my party, jerk face.”
CHAPTER 3
Alix
Life was always about Ross. Alix’s parents were in love with Ross. He was like a second son. He could do no wrong. He was a good influence on Chance, who didn’t seem to give a shit about anything half the time. They loved having him around. He could pretty much get away with just about anything. They still talked about him like he was literally the best thing since sliced bread, if you wanted to get really corny and clichéd.
Shit was literally always about Ross.
Even when it wasn’t.
He’d actually managed to derail her party completely. Suddenly the spotlight wasn’t on the fact that she’d worked her ass for four years to graduate from a college she could barely stand, from a program she hated even more. Like she wasn’t the proud owner of a BA in Business. Like she was just the girl who pulled everyone’s favorite son/rock star out of the pool.
She hadn’t really even done that. She’d seen what happened from her room and she hadn’t thought twice. She’d bolted down the hall, burst through the patio doors, since her room was right by the living room, and jumped in. She knew Ross wasn’t a good swimmer. She hadn’t even seen the blood when she went in after him. Something just registered with the part of brain used for self-preservation that something wasn’t right. He should have surfaced before she even burst through the patio doors.
She’d tugged at his shirt until she got him to the surface. Made sure his face was above the water and guided his nearly limp form over to the edge where her dad and Ross’s dad dragged him out and set him on the concrete.
She’d always been a good swimmer. So was Chance. It was Ross who was always shit. Chance once saved him from nearly drowning when they were daring each other to swim in the deep end. They were twelve. She was eight. No one told anyone’s parents about the floundering that went on and the way Chance had to drag Ross out and stop just short of giving him mouth to freaking mouth.
Alix pulled herself out of the pool. She wasn’t even pissed that no one was paying any attention to her. Ross was still breathing. He was spluttering and gagging, which made her insides twist up into a writhing, coiled mess, and not just because she thought puking was gross.
She didn’t want to see the blood everyone was screaming about.
Her mom streaked past her at a hundred miles an hour into the house, probably looking for bandages, while Alix trudged by in the same jeans and t-shirt she’d arrived home in. Welcome back to San Fucking Jose.
Home to the only guy she’d ever loved. And hated.
Was there really a difference?
While people rushed about all around her, Alix stalked up to the makeshift buffet where her mom no doubt, had laid out copious amounts of food. There were even a few casseroles. Potato salad. Marshmallow salad. Some of the guests had been generous.
Still soaking wet, Alix helped herself to the salads, heaped up a hell of a lot of cheese, and added a few pickles and black olives at the end.
Bon-appetite. Welcome fricking home to home unsweet home.
People were right about one thing. Home was where the heart was. Her heart was with Ross Rivers. Always had been. Probably always would be. She’d lived without it, across the country, for four years. It hurt far worse to have it slam back into her chest and resume beating.
Play it cool. Stop it. Stop freaking thinking about it. Don’t look at him. Don’t let him see how much it hurts to see him again.
Not that he was capable of actually noticing. Ross always stole the spotlight. She could forgive him for that. She could forgive him for just about anything. Except for the fact that he’d never wanted her, even if that really was beyond his control. The heart just wanted what it wanted. It couldn’t be stopped. She knew she wasn’t his type. That he saw her as a sister. It wasn’t his fault that he’d turned her down when she’d asked him to take her virginity on prom night. She’d been rational about it, on the outside, while inside, her heart was withering and dying a slow, aching, brutally violent death.
He thought he was doing her a favor by saying no. What he’d really done was broken her heart, and he was too dense to figure that out. Two days later, she’d packed her bags and left for New Jersey, where she’d worked for two months before college started. She’d been accepted to three different colleges, all in San Jose. She’d only applied to New Jersey on a whim, since her math teacher had just happened to hand out applications for the college months before grad.
Her parents were pissed. They didn’t want her so far from home. She was pissed too. At Ross. For forcing her to leave, even if that wasn’t fair.
“Alix! Set that down and come help me!” Mom ran past her with a first aid kit in hand and like seven boxes of bandages, as well as a bottle of whisky, though whether that was for the patient to pickle his liver with or to be poured over the mysterious leaking wound, was unclear.
“For fuck sakes,” Alix muttered under her breath as she set her plate aside. She rarely swore, even in her own head. There was no one around to hear. Chance would have congratulated her, just like he’d high fived her the one and only time he’d ever heard her fart.
She set her plate down on the patio table. It wasn’t like she’d just spent the better part of the day packing and flying or anything. It wasn’t like she was starved. It wasn’t like this was supposed to be the one day that was actually hers.
Fucking Ross. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkkk.
By the time Alix made it over to the side of the pool, Ross was up, a tea towel with a dachshund dog and little tiny red bows all over it, pressed to the side of his head. She didn’t see any more blood seeping out, but there was a small crimson puddle where the outline of his body just was. She swallowed hard and tore her eyes away.
Between the frantic clucking of Ross’s mom and her own mom, and the rest of the guests, it was somehow decided that Ross
would take her room to go lie down in until someone decided if an ambulance needed to be called or if he needed to be taken to the hospital.
He kept saying he just needed to rest for a minute.
She wanted to snap that her bed was off limits to him. She’d offered it once. He turned her down. Humiliated her. Made her feel like she was two inches high and the ugliest girl to ever grace the planet. He made her feel like there was something wrong with her. She still hated him for it.
Ross ended up walking through the house, holding that stupid tea towel, straight to her bedroom. Of course, he did. He still had the grace and athletic bearing of the star quarterback he’d been back in high school. He propped up the pillows of the bed she hadn’t slept in since Christmas break, her bed, her damn bed, and sprawled out.
Alix was glad there were a few other people buzzing around the room. Her mom rushed off to go get god knew what. Her dad hovered behind her. Finally, her brother made an appearance and everyone else found something else to do now that the drama was safely in hand.
While Chance joked with Ross about bringing his matching date to the party and then getting decked by her, Alix pretended like she could blend into the wall. She wished she could unsee Ross’s huge form sprawled across her twin sized bed. Taking up the whole thing. Owning it like he belonged there. Like he’d always belonged there. She tried to banish thoughts of how she’d grip those pillows later, turn her face into the case, and try and inhale whatever scent of his clung to them. Of course, there likely wouldn’t be any, given that he smelled like pool and not much else and her bed was going to be soaking so of course she’d have to change the sheets after.
She hated how Ross didn’t just take up the bed. He took up the whole room.