“Dad! What are you—?”
“Doing here?” her father finished dryly. “I kind of own this house and that sofa you’re contaminating.”
Sophie winced, moving a fraction of an inch away from the sofa. “Dad, I’m sorry—”
“Ben?” Her mother hurried down the stairs, her slippered feet making hardly any sound on the carpet. “You’re home!”
“Spencer, I think you need to go home.”
“Dad!”
“Ben?” Her mother stopped at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes darting back and forth between the trio. “What’s happening?”
But her father had his eyes fixed firmly on Spencer. “Now, Spencer!”
“That isn’t—”
Spencer touched her hand softly. “It’s okay. I’ll see you later?” The uncertainty in his eyes made her take his hand and squeeze.
“Yeah.”
Without glancing at her father, he ducked his head and left, closing the door quietly behind him.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong!” she said at once. “I’m seventeen years old! I’m old enough to be allowed—”
“Nothing!” her father snapped. “You’re still a child under my roof!”
Tears of frustration prickled her eyes. “But it wasn’t as if we were doing anything inappropriate! We were only kissing!”
“Ben.” Her mother moved touched her father’s arm lightly. “Go change while I sort this out.”
Her father turned his blistering eyes down on her. “Did you know?”
“Go!” She nudged him towards the stairs.
Her father looked prepared to argue vehemently. He shot Sophie a hot glare before storming upstairs.
Sophie turned to her mother. “We weren’t doing anything! We were only kissing on the sofa.”
Her mother crossed the room and pulled Sophie into her arms. “I know, sweetie. Your father just doesn’t like the idea of his little girl growing up.”
“I’m seventeen!”
“I know. Just let him cool down. He’ll be better when he comes down.”
That was a horrible misconception. The dark cloud her father had left with returned when he did.
“I don’t want you seeing that boy anymore.”
Sophie stiffened. “What? No!”
“Ben!” Her mother went to him, gently touching his arm again. “You’re blowing this completely out of proportion.”
Her father’s eyebrows nearly disappeared in his hairline. “Out of … Mary, you didn’t see—”
“I didn’t have to!” she interrupted kindly. “Sweetie, they weren’t naked were they?”
It was the wrong argument to use. Her father’s face turned a murderous shade of crimson. “Which is why she’s not allowed near him again!”
“Because I wasn’t naked?” Sophie protested, bemused.
“No! To avoid that possibility altogether.”
“You can’t keep me from—”
“All right. All right!” Her mother put her hands up to silence the impending argument. “Both of you need to just calm down. Ben, Sophie is old enough to date if she wants to.”
“No, she’s not!”
Her mother sighed, a small smile on her face. “She’s not a little girl anymore, Ben.”
The vein in her father’s temple pulsed so rapidly, Sophie half feared it would burst. His face fluctuated between several different shades of red, white and purple before settling on a sick tinge of green. It was several long minutes of tense silence as he stared at her, seemingly raging an inner war that only he could hear. After what felt like forever, he finally jabbed a finger in her direction and said, “This isn’t over!” And stormed into the kitchen.
Her mother smiled at her almost apologetically as she followed him.
Sophie didn’t wait around for her father to return. She grabbed her jacket and phone.
From the kitchen, she could hear her parent’s soft voices arguing and suppressed the urge to groan. She tiptoed to the TV and scribbled a note for them on a piece of paper; gone to Spencer’s. Be back by 10. She left it on the TV and slipped out of the house.
It was still early, the sun a soft, pink mist on the horizon. The clouds were quickly chasing it into the darkness. Sophie shuddered, drawing her jacket tighter around herself as she jogged to the house next door. On Spencer’s porch, she glanced up and down the street, feeling uncharacteristically paranoid. The cul-de-sac was empty except for the smattering of cars parked along the curve, which was normal. Several houses had their front lights on and otherwise it was quiet, but the creepy feeling of being watched penetrated through muscle and bone to ice her marrow. She shivered again, quickly turning to the door and knocking.
Jackie opened the door in her bathrobe, her hair damp, her face flushed. Next to her, round face twisted in annoyance, Suzy scowled up at Sophie.
“Sophia! Hi!” She swung the door open wider. “Are you here to see Spencer?”
Sophie nodded, stepping over the threshold. “I am. Hello, Suzy,” she said to the girl.
“You’re going to get our house set on fire.”
“Suzy!” Jackie hissed, appalled as she closed the door behind Sophie.
“It’s true!” the girl insisted, folding her arms over her thin chest. “Every time she comes around Spencer, something bad happens. Am I the only one seeing this?”
Sophie would have been annoyed and outraged, if for a split second, she didn’t want to laugh. “You and Joe would get along really great.”
Suzy made a face. “Who’s Joe?”
Sophie didn’t answer. She turned to Jackie. “Is Spencer around?”
Jackie looked confused for a moment as she tried to remember where her son was. “I think he’s in his room.”
“Do you mind … ?” She gestured to the stairs.
Jackie shook her head. “Oh no, no, please. I’m sure he’s waiting for you. I’m just going to finish up my bath, then Suzy and I are going to watch Discovery of New Worlds. It’s a new show where they talk about ancient cities that are long gone. Suzy really likes it.”
Suzy pursed her lips, irked by her mother’s babbling tongue. “Can you hurry up please?”
Sophie followed Jackie upstairs as Suzy went to flop down on the sofa and wait. Jackie paused at Spencer’s door and knocked lightly.
“Spence? Sophia’s here to see you.”
“Yeah, tell her to come in!” She heard him call back from the darkness.
The room was pitch black. Sophie assumed he was watching a movie or listening to music, but it was just dark and quiet. She paused on the threshold, trying to bring the room up by memory. Behind her, Jackie padded further down the hall to the last door. She heard the door click softly closed, leaving her alone in the hallway.
“Spencer?”
“Yeah?”
She inched into the room. “Why’s it so dark?”
She heard the soft rustle of fabric and mattress springs as weight shifted on them. “Sorry.” A soft, pale light flared to life on the nightstand. “I didn’t realize … ”
Sophie chuckled. “You forgot what dark looked like?”
He looked awful and she wondered if that was the residual effect of no sleep or something else. His face was deathly and his hair lay flat on his head. Even his eyes looked washed out. He sat cross legged on the bed in black sweats and a gray t-shirt with a bone and crossbow on the front. He raised a hand and ruffled his hair, but it all fell back limply across his brow.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, stopping at the edge of the bed. “Are you sick? Is something wrong? You look horrible.”
“You’ve been telling me that since this morning,” he said with dry humor.
“Well, it stands true even now.” She sat with one leg folded beneath her, the other dangling to the floor. “So? Are you going to tell me?”
If anything, her prodding only seemed to make him look even queasier. He rubbed his middle in a way that made Sophie panic and search for a trash bin.
“I’m fine!” he croaked.
“Dude, your definition of fine and mine are apparently two different things. Where is your garbage … ah!” She found it across the room and hurriedly grabbed it.
He took it from her and set it down on the other side of the bed. “I’m fine! I just … ” He cleared his throat, not meeting her gaze. “I have a sensitive nervous system. When I get stressed, my stomach doesn’t like it.”
Sophie felt her heart go out to him. “I understand.” And she did. It had been nothing but stressful for almost two weeks.
He shook his head. “No, you don’t. This has nothing to do with what’s been happening.”
A frown drew her brows. “What is it then?”
“It’s about right now and what happened before.”
Confusion propelled her to the bed. She sat once more and waited for him to continue. He didn’t, not for a long while. He sat and stared at his sheets like the answers were all there, waiting to be snatched up. When he finally opened his mouth and words spilled free, they were hoarse and uneven.
“I know Mom told you about me and Aimee.” He raised his head and peered at her as if waiting for confirmation.
Caught in the plea in his eyes, Sophie couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Yes, but only that you’d been friends forever and she left you.”
He nodded slowly, his attention going back to the sheets. “She was my best friend,” he murmured. “I loved her since before I even knew the meaning of it, but she … ” He scrubbed his palms on his sweats. “I wanted her so badly to love me back that I didn’t even stop to consider I might push her too far. I’m the reason she did what she did—”
“That’s ridiculous! You can’t push someone to cheat!”
Gray eyes lifted and met hers. “She didn’t love me like that. She told me so, repeatedly, but I didn’t want to hear that. I thought if I could change her mind, she would love me back. I did everything I possibly could to make her stay. I think at some point, I killed the friendship we had by forcing her to be in a relationship she didn’t want. I fought for so long to be everything she wanted that I have no idea who I’m supposed to be anymore. When I caught her with Jamie, I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen for weeks how they looked at each other. I saw the way she’d make excuses to come by the house when I wasn’t around just to be alone with him. I changed everything about myself to be the kind of man she wanted and in the end, I lost anyway. I was pathetic.”
“No—!”
He put up a hand, silencing her objection. “What she said to me on the lawn the other day, she was right. I was a doormat. I was so in love with the idea of love that it blinded me, made me weak, made me stupid. When I caught her with Jamie, I swore that I would never let another girl do that to me, make me fall so hard for them that I lost myself. I would never put myself in a position where a girl would matter to me like that. I don’t want that again.” He picked idly at a bit of lint on his sheets. “Then there was Janice and my dad—”
“Who’s Janice?”
He blinked. “Mom didn’t tell you?”
Sophie shook her head.
“Janice was my babysitter. She used to watch Jamie and then me and finally Suzy. She’s been around us forever, kind of like an older sister until … Mom came home early one day and caught my dad with her.”
Sophie winced, remembering the pretty brunette in the picture Jackie didn’t want to talk about. “Spencer … ”
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell you this so you could feel sorry for me. I told you because I really, really want to try with you. I tried to fight it, fight you. I tried to keep away, but I … ” He reached across as if to take her hand, but seemed to think better of it and began to draw away. Sophie grabbed his fingers before he could retreat too far. Something like relief washed over his face. His entire body seemed to deflate with it. “Sophie, I don’t … I don’t know how to do this. I don’t want to smother you like I did Aimee. I don’t want to push you. These last two years … first Aimee and then Janice … I can’t go through that again. After Janice, I literally felt cursed. Every girl I have ever cared about was cheating all around me and I was completely powerless to stop it. I can’t … I promised myself when we moved that I would keep all girls at arm’s length. That I was finished with them and one hour in this house and I get sucker punched by you. I still can’t figure out if it was fate or some sick cosmic joke that the very day I swear off women, I meet you.” He brushed her knuckles with his thumb. “I really don’t know what to do.”
The vulnerability in his eyes had her crawling over to him and taking his face between her hands. She peered into his face, offering him a small smile. “You’re doing just fine.” She kissed him lightly on the lips and then drew back, still cradling his face between her hands. “You want to know the few key differences between me and Aimee?” At his curious nod, she smiled. “For one, you know I’ll tell you off if you try and tell me what to do, so pushing me around is going to be a hard one.”
Spencer chuckled, which made her smile even brighter.
“For another, unlike her, I like you back. I want you. I want to be with you. You can’t force someone who is already willing to be yours.”
The smile on his face vanished and a look of scared longing passed over his eyes. His hands rested lightly on her waist. She could feel the tremor in them.
“Sophie … ”
“Lastly,” she continued. “I don’t cheat. I don’t believe in hurting someone like that.” She glanced down. “I can’t promise that everything will be perfect, or that we won’t have our share of fights, but I will never intentionally hurt you.”
Without a word, he dragged her forward until she sat in his lap, straddling his waist with her legs. Her arms went around his shoulders and she smiled into his eyes.
“Why did you fight so hard for me in the first place?” he asked. “I was a complete ass to you.”
She sighed dramatically. “No argument there.” At his sheepish wince, she laughed. “Because you were always there for me when I needed you most. You saved me from getting turned into a pancake. You kept those guys from taking me at Roy’s party.” His fingers on her waist tightened almost painfully and his eyes darkened. “You were there for me every time something bad happened. You kept me together.”
He skimmed a finger over her cheek. “I wanted to kill them. I tried so hard all night to keep an eye on you, to keep you from getting into trouble, but I turned my back for two seconds and you were gone. I went searching for you and then you came running into the kitchen, screaming and I just about lost my mind.” A tiny smile turned up his lips. “You have this way of crawling under my skin, making me want things I shouldn’t want again. I don’t want to lose you the way I lost Aimee. I don’t want to feel that again and I knew from the moment I saw you, that it would be worse, because as much as I loved Aimee, I never … burned for her!” The way he growled the word burn, caused Sophie shivered. She could almost feel the heat from that single word. “I never wanted her so utterly and completely the way I want you and that scares me. I don’t like the idea of falling for a girl with that much power over me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Spencer,” she whispered. “I’m not her. That’s what I’ve been trying all this time to tell you. I’m not Aimee!”
No hesitation, no doubt, he looked into her eyes and murmured, “I know.”
She searched his face with surprise. “You do?”
He nodded. “I’m an idiot for not believing my heart sooner, but I’m usually pretty good at learning from my mistakes.”
Sophie swallowed hard. “What are you saying, Spencer?”
He dampened his lips. “Go to the Valentine’s Day dance with me?”
Her jaw slackened. “Really?”
He moved a curl off her face. “Unless you have other plans?”
She shook her head. “No! I mean, I was going to Brian’s cabin, but … ”
“We can still go if you like.”
<
br /> She nodded, still a bit dazed. “Yeah. I’d like that!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sophie woke up the next morning with an unusual amount of vigor. She leapt out of bed as though the mattress springs had catapulted her to her feet. The almost euphoric sensation stayed with her all through her shower and even when she dressed. It was a little more work trying to keep her features schooled when she walked into the kitchen to find her father scowling over a mug of coffee. He looked up from the single slice of toast sitting in front of him and glowered at her.
“You didn’t tell us you were leaving last night!”
“I left a note,” she said, moving to take the bowl and spoon her mother passed her over the island.
“That isn’t how we communicate in this house,” he retorted. “We don’t leave notes. If you wanted to go out, you tell us.”
Sophie dared a sideway glance in her mother’s direction, saw no help there and faced her father once more. “I’ve done it before. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Well it—”
“Ben!” Her mother sighed, turning while she stirred a cup of tea. “Just tell her why you’re really upset!”
Twin flags of pink rode high on his cheeks as he glowered at his wife before turning his attention back on Sophie. “I had a talk with Spencer the other night—”
“Dad!”
He ignored her humiliated protest. “He’s a good, solid kid with potential. Hear me out!” he snapped when she opened her mouth again. “But that doesn’t mean I like him molesting my daughter on my sofa!”
“What … he … !” Mortification strangled her tongue, sending her words tripping over each other. “He wasn’t molesting me! It was a kiss!”
A single eyebrow rose to contradict her. “Sophie,” he said exasperated. “I know the difference between a kiss and a kiss!”
“So you’re saying we can’t kiss on your sofa?”
“I’m saying I’d rather you didn’t kiss at all. In fact, I would die happy if you maintained a ten foot distance at all times. But … ” He glanced at her mother and glanced back at Sophie. “I know that’s unfair to ask.”
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