by Chloe Walsh
I shrugged innocently before adding, "And then I broke his iPad when I poured a bottle of water over his sister's head." I swallowed a bite of my apple and took a swig of water before adding, "Now he wants compensation for the damage."
"He's an asshole," I growled and then I mouthed the word slowly so Noah knew I meant him, before itching my nose with my middle finger.
Noah's eyes narrowed and he shook his head as if warning me not to push him further.
Of course I pushed him further, and I did it by taking my car keys out of my pocket and rattling them next to my face before raising my middle finger. I couldn't stop myself from antagonizing him – the thrill was addictive.
"He's dangerous," Ash corrected in a no nonsense tone of voice as she leaned forward and swiped a napkin from my tray. "I believe the word you're looking for is dangerous."
"Yeah, well I can be dangerous too," I replied as I continued to watch Noah watch me.
He wasn’t just dangerous…he was treacherous. I tried to ignore the weird tingly sensation that coursed through my body when Noah stared at me, but I just ended up getting more pissed with him because the feelings he evoked inside of me were entirely inexorable. . "If Noah or Ellie think I'm going to roll over and let them bully me, then they need to think again."
His brown eyes were locked on my face, his expression intense, and I swear I could feel my body temperature rising from one single glance.
Leaning forward, Hope reached for my hand, pulling me out of the trance I was in. Squeezing it tightly, her blue eyes burned with sincerity when she said, "He's not the kind of boy you should pick fights with, Teagan, and I mean that in the kindest way. He's friends with my brothers, and he's always been polite to me, but there's just something…" Hope paused and let out a sharp breath. "Noah Messina is all kinds of dark and dangerous, wrapped in the body of a sex god."
"Isn't that always the case," grumbled Ash. Sighing heavily she added, "Hot boys are mean. Nice boys are gay. The good ones are taken…" She trailed off before casting a fleeting glance around the room. "Every time I look around at the male student-body in this school I consider becoming a lesbian."
"Give me strength," Hope muttered as she rolled her eyes in despair. "Look, Teagan, babe, from what I've heard he's the kind of guy who gets off on taking your v-card and then revels in your despair."
"Who said anything about sex," I grumbled as fierce heat coursed through me. "All I'm trying to do is defend myself, and besides," I shrugged. "I'm not attracted to him." Liar-liar pants is on fire…
Ash smiled knowingly at me. "When you're dealing with Noah Messina it's always about sex."
"So be careful," Hope added quietly. "He's broken more hearts than you've had hot dinners."
My eyes locked on Noah's once more, he smirked and a cold tremor of unease crept up my spine.
****
Noah
Sometimes I wondered if Lee Carter regretted her kids ever meeting me because I spent most of my time in their home, helping Low and his triplet brothers Cameron and Colton raid the fridge and make a general mess of things.
As per usual the four of us were pigging out in their living room, playing Xbox and wasting away another Friday evening.
"Is it still on later?" Low asked in a quiet tone, eyes locked on my face.
I nodded, not wanting to say much in front of his brothers. I got along well with all of the Carter's but Low was the one I trusted explicitly. He'd never given me a reason not to and trusting people didn’t come easy to me. Before moving to Thirteenth Street I'd never stayed in one place long enough to make friends or feel grounded, my father's job entailed a lot traveling and moving around. It wasn’t until my dad died and we moved to The Hill that I discovered what a real family was – because it sure as hell wasn’t the family I lived with...
When Ellie's father, George, signed me up as a member of the gym in the Henderson Hotel when I was fifteen years old it was one of the few great things he'd done for me.
Of course he had his own agenda for wanting me groomed and primed, but I didn’t care about his reasons. Joining that gym led me to meet the owner's family who for all intents and purposes had become the family I never had. George had unintentionally given me a lifeline that three years later I still clung to…
"It is what it is, Low," I said calmly as I met his stare head on.
I was sitting on the couch between the Cam and Colt, watching them as they beat the shit out of each other in a wrestling game. Across from me, sitting on an armchair was a pissed looking Logan. I knew why he was mad, and he knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change it.
I didn’t have a choice.
"What it is, is bullshit, Noah," Low hissed and I couldn’t have agreed more with him.
It was bullshit.
My whole life was one complicated concoction of bullshit.
"Boys will you please take your feet off the table," Lee Carter said with a heavy sigh as she pottered into the living room with an obvious look of dismay on her face. "I just polished in here."
I dropped my feet to the floor and earned a megawatt smile from Lee.
"Thank you, Noah," Lee praised before shooing both Cam's feet and Colt's off the coffee table. "If only the rest of you were as obliging." She tried keep her expression stern, but failed miserably and ended up smiling lovingly at her children.
"Thank you, Noah," Colton mocked in a feminine tone as he tapped on his Xbox controller.
"Good boy, Noah," Cameron snorted.
Colton waited until his mother left the room before asking me, "So what's going on between Ellie and Teagan?" as he tapped furiously on his controller, eyes locked on the huge flat screen television in front of us. "My sources tell me your sister's got some major beef with blondie across the street."
"Your sources," Cam snorted as he leaned forward, concentrating on the game in hand. "Why don’t you just say your sister, dude?"
Colt, ignoring Cam's comment, continued his lecture. "She was spreading some nasty rumors today."
"Do I look like Ellie's keeper?" I muttered, even though an abnormal amount of anger bubbled inside of me at the thought of those bitches at school whispering about Teagan. The girl pissed me off worse than anyone else, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see her get bullied…
"That's true – she told Amy that Teagan has an eating disorder," Cam grumbled, brows furrowed. "And a lot more besides that."
My gut twisted. Fucking Ellie… "And you guys are telling me this because?"
"Teagan's all right, Noah," Colt said in a serious tone he rarely used. "She doesn’t deserve to be Ellie's next victim."
No, she didn’t deserve to be Ellie's next victim.
"You bagged her during the summer, didn’t you?" Cam accused. "Ellie only targets the girls you've been with."
"No, I didn’t fucking bag her," I spat, anger bubbling inside me.
"It would explain why she annihilated your car, dude," Colt offered. "There's no worse wrath than a woman scorned and all that…"
"I didn’t bag her," I snapped. "Whatever's going on between Teagan and Ellie has nothing to do with me."
"Whatever. Denial is a river in Egypt, dude," Cam said with a shrug. "Either you bagged Teagan, or you wanna bag her. There's no other probable explanation for Ellie's jealous behavior."
"I don’t have time for this crap," I grumbled, checking my watch as I climbed to my feet. I cast a meaningful glance at Logan. "I'm late for work."
Logan let out a heavy sigh and shook his head sadly. "I'll give you a ride."
"Thanks, man," I replied gratefully when we reached the front door and were out of earshot of his family.
"Doesn’t mean I agree with this, Noah," he muttered under his breath. "I don’t and I never will."
Low was the one person on this planet who knew what I'd been wrangled into, and he stood by me regardless of the danger a guy like me presented.
Our friendship meant a hell of a lot to me, and I fucking hated whe
n he looked at me with disappointment in his gray eyes.
It caused the helpless feeling inside of me to skyrocket.
****
The entrance leading to the Hub was crammed with cars, bikes and trucks by the time I made it up there – an hour later than requested thanks to Cam and Colt's stupid fucking conversation.
Hidden from roadside view, several miles down the secluded dirt-road leading to the old abandoned quarry, the Hub was the hangout of the immoral and undesirable and was based in an old quarry warehouse set in the mountains that had closed down in the early seventies.
Because of Teagan's tantrum I was still without a ride and had to ask Logan for a ride. I fucking hated that he was here and had to see this side of my life and that caused my anger with Teagan for screwing my ride to intensify.
"You should go home, Low," I told him, still mentally cursing Teagan as I walked around to the back of the building. "I can find another way home."
"Yeah, that's not happening," Low replied in a dry tone as he followed me inside the back entrance. "The only way I'm leaving this place is with you in the passenger seat."
Every time I found myself back in this dump, which seemed to be more and more frequent these days, something my old boxing coach once told me always reverberated in my mind.
"Keep your eye on the donut, Messina," Chancy had rasped out, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he watched a ten year old version of me getting an ass kicking in the ring. "And not the hole."
At ten years old I hadn’t realized how big an impact Chancy's advice would be on my future. But now, with my eighteenth birthday around the corner, I recited those words like a Christian would the bible.
The make-shift bar was bursting to the seams with patrons when we stepped inside.
Women were stripping on tables, men were fisting themselves as they watched and I had to swallow my own vomit as I walked through the crowd with my best friend flanking me, my head held high, and my focus on the donut.
****
Chapter 6
Teagan
I had always been a fitness fanatic – nothing to do with losing weight, I just really enjoyed exercising.
Working out kept my body supple and my mind content. At least that's how I looked on the outside and felt on the inside.
I'd been a member of the local gym back home in Galway, but since moving to The Hill I'd been lacking in motivation. That had all changed because of Hope – and her sex-god dad.
Yesterday during lunch, when I asked Hope about good gyms in the area she'd texted her dad and within two minutes I'd been offered a lifetime membership with the gym in his hotel.
Free of charge.
Of course I had accepted and thanked the hell out of her before asking if she wanted to go work out with me at the weekend. Hope had then proceeded to kindly tell me no, not happening, never-ever.
Apparently Hope didn’t do exercise and the only thing that could make her run was the threat of Colton farting near her face.
The second I had walked through the doors of the Henderson Hotel in downtown Boulder I'd been impressed and a little intimidated.
I hadn’t realized the Carter's were rich people.
For one, they lived in a middle-class type home, and two, they were about as posh as a wellington boot. But yeah, I would never judge a book by its cover again.
My workout knocked the tension out of my body and by the time I finished I was feeling like a boss, right up until I walked into the parking lot only to find I had not one, but four flat tires.
Bizarre coincidence?
I think not.
The knife marks in my tires had Ellie and Noah's stench all over them and I wanted to be the bigger person and walk away – I really did – but my inner-child won the battle against my common sense, resulting in a brawl to beat all brawls breaking out the second I made it home…or at least that's what I had in mind as I made my way home to Thirteenth Street.
I marched straight up the neighbor's porch steps and hammered on their front door. "Get your ass out here right now, you knife-wielding lunatic," I shouted through the letterbox before continuing my door-pounding. "I mean it," I screamed, red-faced. "I'm not joking around…whoa…."
The door swung inwards and I barreled into a chest of wet muscle.
"Knife-wielding lunatic?" Noah rose his brow in amusement. "Is that your new pet name for me, Thorn?"
What the hell had happened to him?
One side of Noah's sculpted stomach was horribly discolored and I momentarily froze, struck dumb as I stared at him.
Was he bruised? Yep.
Did it make him hotter? Yep.
Did I still hate him? Decisively.
Stepping outside to the porch, Noah closed the space between our bodies, towering over me with a cocky expression etched all over his face. "What do I owe the pleasure?"
"Tell your sister she owes me for a set of tires," I informed him in a tight voice as I took a step backwards and regained some personal space. "I'm not taking this shit from either of you anymore."
"Step-sister, and what exactly are you accusing us of, Teagan?" Noah asked dryly, tightening his grip on his towel with one hand.
"Oh, I'm not accusing you guys of anything," I shot back, furious. "I'm telling you that your sister deliberately sabotaged my car." I kept eye contact with him and folded my arms across my chest. "Or are you the dick who goes around slashing girls tires?"
Surprise etched his features for a brief moment before the shutters closed. He gazed dispassionately at me for a long time before speaking. "You're a very hypocritical person, Thorn," he said in a tight voice. "You know that, right? Coming over here and tossing around slanderous accusations based on a flat tire?"
"Four tires." I balled my hands into fists and urged myself to calm down and not start a brawl with the half-naked sex god standing in front of me. "One of you slashed the tires on my car," I hissed through clenched teeth.
Lowering his face to mine, Noah stared into my eyes. "Prove it," he said with a smirk.
****
Noah
"This isn’t over, Noah," Teagan hissed as she reached a hand up and tugged on my hair hard and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to throttle her or throw her over my shoulder and take her upstairs.
First, she marched her stuck-up ass up my steps and accused me of slashing her tires – something I had not, did not, and would never do – and then she pulled on my hair like a goddamn toddler.
"I'm not taking yours or Ellie's crap anymore," Teagan snarled, chest heaving, her hazel eyes narrowed on mine. "I don’t need proof. I know it was one of you."
My crap? I hadn’t done a damn thing to her. Girl was paranoid as fuck. "Take your hands off me, Thorn," I warned her.
I had no idea what happened to her tires, but what I did know was I was going to lose what was left of my patience if she didn’t back the hell up.
I was tired, my ribs were aching from last night, and miss prim shouting the odds in my face was something I could do without.
Hot or not, I didn’t need this crap from her or anyone else.
Teagan didn’t let go. Instead she tugged harder, forcing me to lower my face to hers. "Don' threaten me, you tattooed junkie," she snarled. "I could have you arrested for vandalism to property."
Rage coursed through me and I covered the fist Teagan had knotted in my hair with my own before twisting our bodies around and backing her up against my front door.
"One, I didn’t touch your precious car," I spat, getting right in her face. I was so close to her my nose brushed against hers, but it wasn’t lust I was feeling. It was disgust. "And two, don't ever call me a junkie, you judgmental little bitch."
Teagan let go of my hair, her eyes widened in what looked like fear, and I immediately felt like a tool for cussing her out, but then she did something that reminded me of why I wanted to throttle her.
She looked up at me, defiance blazing in her eyes and hissed, "Junkie," into my face before stepping a
round me and stalking off.
****
Teagan
After my altercation with Noah I stayed at home brooding for the rest of the day. A tiny part of me worried that I may have wronged Noah, but then images of his step-sister's face infiltrated my mind and I quickly flicked that worry and guilt away. And I wasn’t sorry for calling him a junkie either.
The guy was covered in tats, smoked like a trooper and fought like a ninja on steroids. He had to be smoking something – or maybe he was right and I was in fact a judgmental bitch.
I drove myself crazy all evening thinking about the douche and thankfully when Uncle Max left for work Hope stopped by.
Hope hung out with me for the evening and even cooked us dinner – which consisted of two huge bowls of mac and cheese – before working on some trig homework together.
It was after nine when she went home and after showering and dressing into my pajamas my only plans for the rest of my Saturday night involved chilling on the couch and watching Netflix, whilst doing my very best to eat my weight in chocolate and not think about the boy next door.
However the second I flicked on the television it became abundantly clear that my plans had been thwarted by the earsplitting rave happening next door.
And that bitch had the cheek to call me a headache…
The walls separating our houses were vibrating from the sheer volume of music playing in the adjoining house, the picture hanging over our mantel piece – the one of my mom – actually rattled from the power of the bass. And the worst damn part was they had no taste in music.
I secretly hoped Ellie was the one in charge of the music, because whatever slither of Noah that was still attractive – personality excluded – in my eyes would wither and die if I discovered he was the one who had chosen to play Man, I feel like a woman.