by Mary Martel
Neither one of us talked about the possible shift in our relationship or what that meant for us now. It wasn’t like Franklin to avoid anything important, but I think he understood I couldn’t handle one more thing today. There was a look in his eyes, though, that told me he wouldn’t let it go for very much longer.
I wasn’t looking forward to that day. I didn’t think I could handle a real relationship with Franklin or anyone else. I grew up with people who didn’t understand the meaning of monogamy, and I knew my weird draw to the Ken doll wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. As sick as it was, I wasn’t about to lie and say I wasn’t sexually attracted to Riley.
I despised cheaters and would never become one myself. Not ever. Franklin was my best friend, and if I was being honest, there was no missing how attractive he was and it was something I had always noticed. You’d have to be blind not to. But with Franklin, it was becoming more than that. There was a spark growing between us that would soon grow too large to put out.
Did I want to snuff it out because I was freakishly obsessed with my dead sister’s boyfriend?
I had no answers for myself and that scared the shit out of me.
I knew one thing for certain though, and that was I absolutely could not lose Franklin from my life.
He was the only person I had left.
Chapter Six
Worth Every Penny
Gem
My obsession with Riley, coupled with my need to avenge my dead sister, won out over my common sense.
Not even halfway through the summer, I switched schools for my senior year and would be attending Gin’s high school. Since it really was too far away from my father’s house to commute every day, I went ahead and bought a house.
The house was bigger than what I needed, but I liked the location and couldn’t resist the beachfront property. My views out the back windows and sliding glass doors along the back of the house would certainly never suck. Even when it snowed, the view would still be breathtaking.
The house sat on top of a hill with a level enough backyard for there to be a fabulous pool with plenty of room left to spare. I could even get a dog to run around and play back here if I wanted. Not that I needed a dog. I didn’t.
The front porch spanned around to the sides of the house where they met up with private decks that came off of a master suite. There were two of them, one just slightly bigger than the other, and they were both on opposite ends of the house.
In the backyard beyond the pool and the grass right before the hill dropped down, another wooden deck began. It jutted out over the hill and was where you found the wooden stairs that took you down the hill to the beach. There were so many stairs I had asked my realtor if she was sure this wasn’t considered a cliff and not a hill. She had laughed but assured me it was a hill, just a steep one.
I didn’t really give a shit about the hill. It was well worth the climb down to the sandy beach and the ever beautiful Lake Michigan.
If you weren’t careful, the current could be brutal, deadly even. It had been known to carry away not only children, but grown men to their deaths.
The view, however, was nothing shy of absolutely stunning. Worth every penny I spent on it.
The house was one story, rambling, and long.
There was a three-car garage with a spacious loft above it. The garage wasn’t attached to the house, which was the only stupid part about it because the winters here could be hard, especially right here along the lake. Walking through that, even the ten feet it would take to get to the garage from the front door, was going to suck come winter. People didn’t usually use their beach houses all year round to actually live in, but I was going to give it a go.
Again, I felt it safe to say it was still worth every penny I paid for it.
The house itself had five bedrooms, two of them being the masters on the end of each side of the house. Both masters had their own massive en suites and huge closets. Two of the other bedrooms were the exact same size and shared a Jack and Jill bathroom. The other bedroom was larger than the other two and had its own bathroom that was also substantially larger than the Jack and Jill one.
There was a den and a formal living room, and then there was the rest of the house which was one big long room—family room, kitchen complete with an eat-in area with huge windows that had bench seats in front of them, and a formal dining area. It was all one large opened up space with glass doors that pushed and slid into each other until they were wide open and pressed up tight against the wall. Those doors, whatever they were called because they weren’t exactly sliding glass doors, were a huge selling point for me because the unencumbered view of the lake was everything and so much more.
My mother had no idea I’d bought it, and I had zero intention of telling her what I’d done or that I now planned on living a fifteen-minute drive away from her.
I hoped she never found out, and just to be safe, one of the first things I did immediately after signing on the dotted line was hire people to put a gate at the bottom of the driveway, which was actually on the bottom of the hill, and hire different people to put in an intense security system.
I never wanted to see the woman again. I’d had more than my fill of the last living member of my family. I had half-siblings, but they were always my father’s family to me. Being forcefully separated from my twin at eight had really messed with how I viewed my relationships with every single person in my life. I thought that had a lot to do with my relationships or lack thereof with my half-siblings.
I didn’t like thinking about them. Call it my guilty conscience. I knew Gin, if given the chance, would have been an excellent older sister to the three of them. She’d never been given the chance, and honestly, she’d only ever even seen them in pictures. My parents and their messy bullshit had really done horrible things to me and my sister.
A small, bitter, rotten part of me wondered if I had been sent away and permanently removed from my twin’s life, and she’d been allowed to grow up with both a mother and a father, if she’d still be alive and maybe even happy right now.
Was that why my mother had said those awful things to me that no mother should ever say to her child? Because she knew they’d creep up on me and would always haunt me for the rest of my life?
You see, this was why I needed a fucking gate and a security system. I couldn’t allow the woman to be around me anymore and plant more of those landmines in my brain that held the potential to bring me to my knees.
I walked around my empty house, finally really alone for the first time in over a month, not knowing what to do with myself. I ended up in the family room with my face almost pressed up against the glass doors, staring out at the water and the hill before me.
The longer I stood there watching the waves roll in and crash against the beach, the more that unease inside my belly settled. It had been there long before Gin died. It had only gotten worse since then though, and it had been making it hard for me to eat and sleep even.
The first time I walked through this house and caught sight of the view was the first time I could even breathe with ease since my father had sat me down and, surrounded by his harem, told me the other half of my soul had taken a tumble and snapped her neck and was ultimately no more. Since then, I’d lost at least fifteen pounds, the dark circles under my eyes told the tale of how much sleep, or lack thereof, I really got every night, and it had honest to goodness hurt for me to simply breathe.
One look out these windows at the breathtaking water and something inside my soul settled. I knew this was where I needed to be right now in my life if I was ever going to heal. Not that I thought I could ever be whole again, because I knew that was impossible for me. But I could breathe again, and maybe if I went to bed with all the windows wide open tonight and I could hear the water, just maybe I’d be able to sleep without waking up every other hour because I had some horrible nightmare that made it impossible for me to go back to sleep.
One could only hope.
I pressed my palm up against the glass and closed my eyes briefly, just enjoying the calm of the moment while it lasted, hoping I could take the feeling with me when I walked away from the glass and allowed the rest of the world to invade my life once again.
I lowered my hand and reluctantly turned away from the view. I walked back through the house and straight out the front door to my SUV. I had a car my dad had given me on my sixteenth birthday. She was a pretty silver Aston Martin Vanquish. But I didn’t like driving her in the winter because I was worried about wrecking her. I wasn’t that horrible of a driver, I swear! But you know, winter. Icy roads, snow, the whole shebang made me a nervous wreck to drive in. So my dad bought me an SUV, a black Escalade, to drive around in the winter. Or whenever I felt like driving it around. It was mine, I could do what I wanted with it. Same with my Vanquish.
Today I’d driven the Caddy over here instead of my girl because there was more room for all of my crap in there. My crap had been loaded into the Caddy for the last several days when my dad’s house was asleep and his family had been all tucked away for the night. I’d not told a single one of them about my new house on the beach. I knew they’d react badly to it, and I honestly didn’t feel like it was really any of their business at the moment. My moving didn’t affect them financially, I’d make sure they were set for life, and they could have the house and all that was inside of it for all that I cared. My dad tried to do right by me in the end, but he still ended up being a giant fucking dick.
I just knew if I told Maxine I’d bought a house on the beach hours away and intended on living there full time, she’d have a fit and lose her fucking mind on me. She was the youngest out of the bunch at twenty-five, and even though we were the closest in age, she never viewed me as a friend or even—gag—a younger sister. She attempted to take on a somewhat parental role without trying to boss me around and parent me. It was more like she was there for me and let me know she had my back in any way I needed her to. She had big ole lady balls too, and I didn’t think there was much she was afraid of. I knew if I told her what I’d done, she’d call me out for being an asshole and tell me to get my ass back home where I belonged and to stay there.
No thank you.
So I did the only thing I could think of to avoid that particular confrontation, and I packed my Caddy all up in the dead of night like a thief. Or a coward.
Take your pick, I didn’t give a fuck.
I unpacked my Caddy and carried everything into the family room.
I had no furniture to speak of, but I did have boxes of clothes, purses, shoes, makeup, picture books, and LV bags full of things I’d taken from Gin’s bedroom when I’d stayed the night in there after her funeral. All of my personal belongings from my bedroom had been packed up into my ride and were now sprawled out across the floor in my family room.
I had nice designer clothes to wear tomorrow when I got up in the morning, but I didn’t have anything to sleep on tonight. There was no bed and I’d even left my sheets and pillows behind with it. It wasn’t even that I wanted a fresh start, because I knew I’d never get ahold of one of those, but it didn’t seem right to take the sheets with me to a new place and, eventually, a new bed.
I needed to go out and get something to sleep on unless I wanted to pile my clothes in the corner and make a nest out of them. I didn’t feel like going out though, not when I’d just got here, but I needed things and I couldn’t hide out here for forever.
There was also something else I needed to do that kind of terrified me, because I’d never done it before. I needed to go to the grocery store and buy food. We always had people to do that for us at both my mother’s house and then at my father’s house. I doubted my mother had ever even been inside a grocery store before. That was what her minions were for.
I didn’t want to be anything like my mother, though I wouldn’t mind some minions of my own.
I knew I could order groceries online and have them delivered to my house, but I had no idea what I even needed. I just knew that I had nothing and needed absolutely everything. If that made sense.
I also needed to order furniture, which I actually had no problem looking for online and hoping everything I ordered came assembled, because I wasn’t about to be putting together no TV stand on my own. I might need tools or something for that, and I wasn’t down for that.
Furniture could come later though, but I was hungry now, and I needed to fill up my refrigerator and cupboards. And maybe hit up the nearest mall so I could get myself a sleeping bag or twelve to pile up on top of each other and sleep on tonight. And a pillow... or ten. I couldn’t sleep without a pile of those.
Plan in place, I grabbed my phone and keys and headed out to my Caddy.
I had to use my phone to Google where the nearest grocery store was. I lost two hours of my time in there, and we won’t even talk about the price tag at the end of it all.
Good fucking God, I had no idea food cost so much money. And half the stuff I had no idea how to make. I figured I could Google that shit too.
When I got home and had the groceries all put away, I got a load of the lake, it was calling my name, and I almost said fuck it and stayed home. The problem was not only did I not have a freaking pillow or a blanket, but I didn’t have basics for anything like a fork or even a plate or a cup or even a damn coffee machine. Coffee was a necessary evil I needed in my life every single day or I could be a real bitch.
I needed everything, so as much as I wanted to climb down my stairs, plop my sad ass in the sand, and stay there until the sun went down, I couldn’t do that.
So off to the mall I went.
After I Googled that shit too, of course.
I should have kept my ass home.
Chapter Seven
We Got That In Common
Riley
My mother was lucky I loved her, or no way in hell would I be at the fucking mall of all places on a Saturday night before I had to go into work.
But I did love her, she worked her ass off to support her family, and her birthday was tomorrow. She deserved nice things, and I was bound and determined to give her as many of them as I could.
I had already bought her a bottle of perfume that cost way too much money but smelled fucking awesome. I knew she’d love it, so I bought it for her. The stuck-up bitch at the counter flirted with me shamelessly as she rang me up and then went on to gift wrap the box for me.
Six weeks ago, I would have snatched up the offer she put on a plate and held out to me, and I’d currently be banging her against a wall in one of those dressing rooms in the back.
But this was now and not six weeks ago. Things had changed for me. My dick got hard for a mint-haired girl I couldn’t get the fuck out of my head no matter what I was doing.
“Can I help you with anything else?” the girl behind the counter purred, as she placed her elbows on the counter and leaned forward suggestively. All that creamy skin on display threatened to spill out of her top, showing off her tits.
Tits that did absolutely nothing for me. My poor, sad, lonely dick didn’t even twitch, the stupid fucker. He’d lost his damn mind over a girl who had completely disappeared off the face of the earth, and I couldn’t track her ass down no matter how hard I searched for her.
Because of where I worked and the people who owned the joint, I knew people who knew people who could find people no matter how hard they tried to hide. I asked my boss’s son for a favor and he told me he’d look into it. So far nothing had been found. My girl was proving to be slippery, and I was beyond frustrated. I even went to Gin’s house to ask her mom where I could find her other daughter, and after she laughed in my face the door was slammed shut and locked.
Fucking rich people, being able to hide in plain sight. I was going out of my damn mind, and I needed to see Gem again or I might lose it.
Was she even okay?
The last time I’d seen her had been outside her father’s funeral in the rain. She’d looked so damn
sad but still trying so hard to keep her shit tight and together. It had hurt me to see, but I didn’t approach. She’d been with the psycho again, and I didn’t want to get into a fight with someone who was clearly important in her life on the day her POS father went into the ground for good.
That fight could come on a different day, and believe me, it would come.
I wasn’t giving up until I found Gem and forced my way into her life, and maybe even a piece of her heart if I was lucky enough.
No, not just because the thought of her did make my dick twitch, but because I didn’t even know the chick and she’d already wormed her way into my heart in a sense. Did I love her? Fuck no, that’d be crazy. But I didn’t like seeing her in pain and not being able to do anything to take some of that pain on myself, which was how I knew she’d made her way into my heart in some capacity.
Shit.
I needed to find her so I could stalk her in a hopefully non-creepy way. A way that would make me feel better but wouldn’t freak her out.
Was that even possible?
I sure as fuck hoped so, because I needed it to happen like weeks ago. For my own fucking peace of mind.
“Are you okay?” the clerk asked in a soft, hesitant voice as she touched the top of my hand gently.
I flinched and jerked my hand away as if her touch burned me. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I snapped at her. I didn’t feel bad when she jerked her hand back and pressed her palm flat against her stomach. “And no, you can’t help me with anything else. I got my own girl, and if I need to get my dick wet, she can take care of all my needs. I don’t need some nasty ass bitch at the mall to get on her knees and handle my dick. Shit, do you put that offer out to all your customers or just the ones who buy nice shit?”
Okay, so, no joke, I knew I sounded like a complete and total asshole, and I didn’t give a shit about that either. I also didn’t give a shit about the lie I just spat out of my mouth about having a girl to take care of my dick’s need, because I absolutely didn’t. But I would. Just you wait and see.