by Henry, Max
Dares me.
“How long you gonna make me wait, baby?” Gravel taints his voice. Tuck’s muscles tense beneath my touch.
I edge closer, pushing up on my tiptoes to reach him. “Not long.”
I could kiss him all night. Pretty sure I could waste most of the following day, too. I get what he means about us. I’ve felt lust before. Hell—I lusted after Barrett for the better part of two years.
This isn’t the same.
Lust burns white-hot. An insatiable curiosity that makes you overlook reason for a chance at discovering what your fantasies feel like in the flesh. This, though. The heat remains, yet it’s a steady burn. A singe that you find yourself fascinated with as you slowly turn over and over to ensure that the other person leaves a mark on every exposed piece of your heart and soul.
Tuck’s is a heat that I long to bask in. A warmth that seeps through to my core.
He grips my bottom lip between his teeth, letting it go with a cheeky smirk. “You need a damn phone.”
“Why?” I tease with a slight laugh, leaning back.
He runs his roughened palm beneath my jaw, along the slope of my neck and to my collarbone.
I silently beg for him to slide his touch lower. To go back to how it was between us in the forest.
To take it further.
“So you can message me when you get into bed.” His eye glints in the dying light.
“My, my, Mr Brallant,” I tease. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”
He flicks my nipple and jumps back with a chuckle. “Maybe. But even if I’m not, I like where your filthy mind takes things.” He vaults the fence, startling Major into action.
The horse lifts its head and gives a little snort.
“Don’t you start,” I mutter, folding my arms over the now pointed buds.
Tuck slings himself in the saddle, still grinning as Major spins on the spot. I figure I’ll collect the bucket we used to water him later, and take a step back toward the side of the house.
“Use the door, young lady,” Tucks calls, laughing while he rides away.
I smile, at least until the sound of Major’s hooves fades and the same sinking feeling I had before he climbed through my window returns.
School tomorrow.
Shit.
COLT
Bent and bruised, used and abused.
Every hit I take for her is worth the pain. My sister blooms in the country while I let the city bleed the life from me, body and fucking soul.
“I honestly nearly fell on the floor when Tuck said Greer had come to visit,” Lacey recounts down the line, the joy in her words warming. “It would have been better if you had come too,” she adds on a whisper.
I feather the pad of my pointer finger across the healing split on my lip. “Something came up. I needed to deal with it tonight. Otherwise, I would have been there. This weekend, maybe. Yeah?”
“Yeah. Okay.” She sighs. “So what was it you needed to talk about?”
I frown a little at the echo of her words. “Where the hell are you? In a closet?”
She giggles. “No. My phone was flat when I fished it out, so I’m still on the charger.”
“In the corner of your room?”
“Uh-huh.” The rustle of her moving penetrates the line before her voice comes through a little clearer. “Be better if my damn bed wasn’t over the plug. I have, like, ten centimetres of cord if I’m lucky.”
I cough a laugh. “I’ll try to make it quick then.”
“Please,” she groans. “My neck is already killing me.”
I take a step back to let a trio of women pass by, one of whom decides I’m worth a second look as her group swing into the bistro on Carvello Ave. “I had a lovely sit down with Christian.”
“Did you now?”
I wink at the woman who looks old enough to be my damn mother and duck my head to focus on my conversation with Lacey. “He needs us to back off the Chosen, but he also needs a favour from you.”
“What the hell do I owe him a favour for? I don’t owe that guy a thing,” she hisses down the line.
“I know.” Light rain speckles the back of my hand. “But he’s promising to get our convictions quashed.” I tip my head back to watch the mist as it passes through the street light.
So slow. So docile.
So purposeful.
“Shit.” Lacey adjusts her position again, her next words muffled and loud. “How do you know he’s not playing us on a weakness?”
“Because the pay off is exclusively his, nobody else’s.” I shift across the footpath to the cover of the restaurant awning. “I don’t think any of the Chosen know about it.”
“Really?” She sighs. “What does he want from me?”
“Help.”
She snorts, her laugh comes out so sudden. “Nice one. You almost had me there.”
“I’m serious, Lace.” Two jackasses pass by, talking loudly about the curves on some woman. “He needs you to be his insider out there.” When the fuckers walk into the bistro, it validates my suspicion on who the men discuss.
That woman had one hell of a set on her.
“Insider for what?”
“An investment.” I draw a deep breath. “Don’t flip on me, sis, but your toy-boy’s old man needs cash, and Christian has more money than sense.”
“What do you mean?” She scoffs at the idea. “Tuck’s never mentioned anything about money problems to me.”
“Do you honestly think he would?” I counter. “If you were him, wouldn’t destitution be the last thing you broach with your wealthy new girlfriend.”
“But we’re not wealthy anymore, Colt,” she levels.
“You aren’t.”
Her silence speaks volumes.
“All he needs is for us to smooth the waters between Arcadia and Riverbourne enough that Tuck’s father won’t dismiss an offer on the farm.”
“He wants to buy their home?” she whisper-yells. “No way. I’m not helping him do that.”
“Not the whole property, Lace. He wants to invest.”
“Then get him to do his own dirty work,” she growls. “I don’t care what charges I have against me. I will not do that.”
“I figured you’d say as much.” Now that the rain has eased, I shift back to the light post and peruse the brightly lit windows before me.
“Why even ask, then, Colt?”
I find the trio of women, and sure enough, the two dropkicks sit at the bar with them. “Because I needed to know you’d be mad enough to agree to what it is I actually want to do.”
“Which is?”
“I can’t say yet.”
“Colt …”
The light fades with each step I take toward my new home: my grandparents. “You have to trust me, Lacey.” God knows I struggle to do it myself most days. “Can you do that?”
She huffs. “You ask me to trust you after what you did at Libby’s?”
“I don’t know what else I can do to make up for that, sis. I really don’t.”
She stays quiet a beat before whispering, “You can come home, Colt. Come to Arcadia. Be with Dad and me.”
“I told you.” My throat thickens. “Not yet.”
“What is it you think you have to do?” She sounds close to tears. “You’ve done enough. You’ve been through enough.”
“Just trust me, okay?”
“Colt. Please.” I no longer have any doubt as to whether tears track her cheeks. “Just tell me what you’re doing.”
“It’ll make sense in the end. I need you to promise me one thing, Lacey. One thing only.”
“Anything.”
“Stay out of trouble.” My pace quickens, the rage needing an outlet. “Keep your head down and remember that no matter what anyone says, I love you as only family can.”
She laughs through her tears. “This is our family, you talk about, Colt.”
I huff a laugh as well. “You have a point.”
“You’r
e worrying me,” she whispers. “Will you be okay?”
“When it’s all over.”
“Jesus,” she breathes. “Okay. I’ll behave. For now.”
“That’s all I need.”
“I better go. Dad’s calling me.”
“Say hi for me.”
“Love you, big brother.”
“Always will, little sis.”
She disconnects, ending the call that I can’t find it in me to wrap up. After this, she might never talk to me again.
But it has to be done.
I pocket the phone before I send it sailing across the street and regret my impulse, sidestepping right instead to slam my fist into the pretty fucking tree that hangs over our abode.
“Fuck!”
My fist throbs, knuckles screaming in protest.
Who fucking cares, though, right?
This pain has got nothing on what lives inside my irredeemable heart.
LACEY
“I can’t explain what it was, but something’s not right, Tuck.”
He runs a rough hand through his messy hair, letting his arm flop on the pillow. “It’s hard for me to offer any advice, Lace, when you don’t tell me what he said.”
“I can’t involve you again.” I stop pacing beside my bed, turning to face where my phone is propped up on a cushion. “This is our mess.”
“It shouldn’t be anyone’s mess.” He frowns. “Why can’t Colt just back off and leave those arseholes alone?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“What?” He scoffs. “You going to tell me it’s some shit about pride, right?”
“Maybe.” I smile, tapping my lips as I turn to pace again.
“For fuck’s sake,” he growls, extending the phone away from himself. “Stop your goddamn fussing.”
“I can’t.”
“And here I was hoping you’d called to follow through on that dirty exchange you promised me.”
“Seriously,” I hiss so that Dad doesn’t hear. “Focus.”
“I am,” he groans. “I have my cute-as-fuck woman pacing in front of me in nothing other than her goddamn pyjamas, and you want me to think about your brother?” He sighs. “Babe. Please.”
I chuckle, diving on to my bed and scooping him up in the process. “You have to promise to help me figure this out tomorrow, okay?”
“Listen to me,” Tuck levels, eyes wide. “Colt can look after himself. Okay?”
“You expect me to believe that after the mess his face is in right now?”
“Getting beaten isn’t a sign you can’t take care of your shit, babe.”
“Speaking from experience, huh?” I lean back against the head of the bed, balancing him between my knees.
“Jesus,” he moans, sending tiny zaps of lust racing across my flesh. “So that’s how it looks from down there.”
“Tuck!” I promptly set the phone on the pillow beside me and turn to face the screen.
“I suppose that’s just as good.”
“You’re wicked.”
“I goddamn miss you,” he rumbles. “So sue me.”
“Answer my question,” I tease. “Got a bit of experience with schoolyard rumbles, huh?”
He grins, making my heart to flitter-flutter things that have me making a mental note to Google cardiovascular conditions.
“Maybe.” The screen wobbles while he shifts the phone, setting me on what I think is his bedside table. “Schoolyard.” He rolls to his side, leaning his head on one hand, elbow bent beneath him. “Backyard. Street. A few places.”
I can’t stop staring at his arm. Those muscles. Those tanned lines. Oof.
“What are you doing?” His eyes narrow a fraction with his curious smile.
“Taking a screenshot.” I save his image for later and then settle back again.
“Knew you were dirty deep down.”
“Takes one to know one.”
All he can do is smile.
“What did I do to deserve you?” I muse out loud.
He shrugs. “I wonder the same thing, babe.”
“We shouldn’t work.”
“Why?” He seems genuinely perplexed.
“Because we grew up so different,” I point out. “We literally have, like, nothing in common.”
“You like me. I like you. I’d say that’s something in common.” He turns his mouth down, eyebrows raised.
“I’m serious,” I whine. “What do we have in common?”
“We’ve got all the fucking time in the world to find out now, right?”
“I guess.”
“Lacey!”
Tuck’s eyes go wide, a cheeky smirk tugging at his lips. He stifles a laugh while I reply.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Bed, girl. You have school tomorrow.”
“Okay! Two minutes and I’ll switch off.”
Tuck waits another second before asking, “You in the clear?”
I tip my head toward my closed door. “I think so.”
“Chuck me under the sheets.”
“What?” I grin.
“You heard me.” He nods toward the bottom of the screen as though gesturing toward my bed. “Get me under the covers so that you don’t get busted when your light’s out.”
“I like the way you think.” I lift a finger and then crawl off the bed to catch my bedroom light. The screen guides me back to the far side of the room. “Hey.”
“Ooo,” he teases. “It’s all spooky with your face lit up like that.”
“Boo,” I sass, diving under the covers.
He falls silent when I bring him with me.
I stare at him a beat, a soft smile unable to be taken from my face as I drink in the guy I call mine.
“I like being in your bed.” His whispered words heighten the sense of danger, of an illicit thrill having him here with me after lights out. “Stay there.”
Tuck vanishes, his room also plunged into darkness a second later. I wait for what feels like forever, wondering if I’ve lost connection and the screen’s frozen when he lunges back into view.
“Boo!”
“You tool,” I chuckle. “That wasn’t even remotely scary.”
“It was funny, though, right?”
“Stupidly, so.”
“I’m glad you’re back, Lace.” He readjusts the screen so that I nestle in the crook of his bent arm. His shoulder holds the sheets tented over his naked torso. “Can we plan our next date already, because I really want to take you back to the forest now it’s warmer.”
I get the urge to dress in the first clothes I find and run toward him. “As soon as we can, alright?”
“You promise?”
“Pinky promise.”
He cocks one eyebrow. “Now that’s a contract that can’t be broken.”
I softly laugh so Dad doesn’t hear, burying my face in my arm.
“God, you’re beautiful, babe. It’s all I want, every day, is to see you smile.”
“Always got a reason when you’re with me.”
“Stay with me tonight?” he whispers, husky and eager.
“Tuck.” I frown. “That’s impossible.” He lives so far away.
“Not really.” He flattens his lips. “You’re there, an I’m here. We’re together the best way we can be considering the circumstances.”
“Far out.” I slap my free hand to my face. “I understand now.”
“You thought I meant actually to come here?”
I nod.
He lifts his eyebrows. “I mean that would be awesome too, but this will do for now.”
“You’re such a goof.”
“Your goof.”
We fall silent, staring through a slimline device at one another.
My eyes grow heavy. Tuck yawns.
I readjust the phone so that he’s a little lower down, tilted up toward my face and in a spot I’m not likely to bump the screen.
A kiss to his fingertips, and his hand hovering above the screen. “Night, baby.�
��
“Night.”
My eyes slide closed and, somewhere in my dreams, the whispered words, “Love you,” set my heart on fire.
Love you too.
COLT
The bruised muscles in my face ache each time I find it in me to smile, yet I endure the pain as I fire off a last message to Lacey. She tells me she spent most of the night, last night, sorting through the mountain of notifications her social media gave her after her phone and laptop had received enough charge.
My guess is the majority of the “concerned” acquaintances simply dug for dirt. And if I know my sister well enough, she would have dodged the need to answer their questions without them realising she’d done so.
C: Keep your head down today and remember – take nothing to heart.
She fires back with lightning speed.
L: I could tell you the same :P I’ll let you know how it went this afternoon.
A sigh passes my lips, lost on the spring breeze that coasts past the school gates. I pocket the phone in my blazer and shrug my shoulders to force them back. I’ve always been proud of who I was. I’m not about to start doubting my intentions now.
These entitled pricks think they can make me fall. Believe they can command me to cower at their feet and repent my misgivings. They feel that their inherited wealth gives them an iron-clad advantage over the likes of me, but what they fail to see is that hardship builds character.
Every time I fail; every time I fall back and lose ground; every goddamn time that I play the game wrong, I learn.
I discover where the faults lie. And if those faults are the very thing stopping me from tipping their golden platform into the sea of hungry faces at their feet, then surely those same faults are the weaknesses the Chosen work so hard to hide.
Conquer one, defeat them all.
Letting my gaze roam left to right, I scour the main entrance for any sign of trouble. Curious gazes fall upon my battered and bruised face—no doubt a hot topic for the lunch hall—but aside from the morbid curiosity of the student body, I see no sign of the three amigos.
Richard, Ingrid, and Arthur.
“Hey, handsome.”
I whip my head right and instantly regret it when pain shoots down my spine. Greer giggles at her joke, flitting across the polished marble to stand at my side.
“Where were you yesterday?” She tilts her head to the side, auburn locks falling over her shoulder. “I tried to find you after fifth period for that ride out to see Lacey.”