Making a mental note to give him more attention, I smiled over the rim of my mug at him.
He smiled back.
Crap. What now?
Say something…say something…
Eliot cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.
Okay, Gwen, now you’ve crossed over into creepy territory.
“Tea,” I blurted.
Eliot blinked like an owl at me.
“Tea,” I said again. “I’m, uh, drinking tea. Want some tea? I mean, it’s your house, obviously you can get yourself tea. Or whatever you want. Do you even like tea?”
Okay, now I’d said the word tea so many times it had lost all meaning. Perhaps the silent staring was a good choice after all.
“Tea sounds great,” Eliot asked, sauntering over to the counter. He had different glasses on—big black frames that slanted up at the corners. With his curls and dorky, open smile, he looked eerily like Buddy Holly.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” I tried, wanting to make conversation but feeling ridiculous now that I’d been a complete idiot.
“Sure,” he said, taking down a mug. “Or maybe I heard someone come down, and I was hoping it was you.”
My face warmed, but I lowered it over my tea so he wouldn’t notice. Despite his geeky exterior, he didn’t seem to have any trouble talking to human beings. Maybe he recognized another socially inept soul. Or maybe he just wanted to make me feel better.
“Why would you hope that?” I mumbled as he poured hot water over a tea bag and sat down beside me.
“My brothers all had a chance to hang out with you,” he said. “I hoped I’d get to know you a little before you started school. I’m sure you’ll have more interest from guys than you can handle by the end of tomorrow.”
I snorted, choking on my tea in the process. I was smooth like that.
Eliot patted my back until I’d recovered from choking. “It’s a small school,” he said. “A new girl is bound to draw attention. And you’re not bad to look at, either.”
My face grew even warmer, from both his words and his touch. I could feel my skin glowing with warmth where he’d touched the center of my back. I clenched my hands around my cup to keep them from doing something stupid. They were itching to touch him back, to see how it felt. But it would probably be weird to ask.
Hey, stepbro, mind if I touch you? Not in a weird way, but just to try it out. See, I’ve never really touched boys before, and I just wanted to see if you feel different from my mom. No? Okay, cool. No worries.
“How are you feeling?” Eliot asked.
It took me a second to come back from my thoughts and realize he was talking about earlier in the day. “Good,” I said.
A totally normal response. Score one, Gwen.
“That was pretty crazy, right?” His voice was casual, but his eyes were studying me as if watching for some kind of sign.
Instinctually, I found myself choosing my words with caution. I may have felt like I’d always known these people, but I didn’t trust my own judgment of them. Sure, they felt kind and trustworthy, but what did I know about judging people?
“Was it?” I asked. “I’m not familiar with the wave patterns here.”
Eliot laughed and stood, and I knew the test was over. I just didn’t know if I’d passed or failed it. “How about that library visit I promised you?” he asked, holding out a hand.
“Now?”
“What better time?”
I hesitated, then slipped my fingers into his palm. Warmth spread up my arm as he pulled me to my feet, but I didn’t want to let go. In fact, I wanted to tuck his hand against myself and roll up in him like a blanket cocoon. But that would definitely be weird. I was pretty sure, anyway.
He led me up the first flight of stairs along the second-story hallway, and I realized that with everything going on, I still hadn’t seen most of the house. I knew the third floor pretty well because it was mostly bedrooms, but I hadn’t explored the other floors.
“After you,” Eliot said, twisting a knob and pushing open a door. I stepped into the darkness, the comforting smell of books greeting me. Eliot hit a switch, and soft, amber light filled the enormous room. An imposing wooden desk sat near two tall windows, but most of the furniture in the room was plush brown leather couches and chairs. Ottomans and a few other pieces were scattered about the cavernous room, and a thick, patterned rug covered most of the hardwood floor.
“Wow,” I breathed, scanning the walls and walls of books. It was like something out of a fairytale, if fairytales were written for book nerds.
Eliot shot me a quick smile. “What do you like?” he asked, stepping inside and turning to face me. “Or would you like a tour of the whole library?”
“Yes, please,” I said, forgetting all about my awkwardness. I couldn’t hold back my smile. The place was too incredible.
Eliot cleared his throat and adopted a tour-guide voice, gesturing to the wall on our left. Shelves reached to the ceiling, each one lined with leather-bound tomes. I thought my eyes would orgasm from taking in such luxurious splendor.
“You really shouldn’t have shown me this first,” I said. “I may never leave.”
Eliot laughed, his whole face lighting up. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed more alive in this room, as if a weight had been lifted when he stepped into its magic. “You and me both,” he said. “I’ve spent so much time in here. I mean, this is basically the internet, before there was internet.”
“I’ve lived my whole life without internet,” I said. “But I couldn’t live without books.”
“And you shouldn’t,” Eliot said.
My statement wasn’t strictly true. I could technically live without books, but I’d be a hell of a lot weirder. Books had been my friends and my teachers. Sure, real people were more complicated, and they didn’t always say what they would’ve said if they existed in a fictional world. But without books, I wouldn’t even know what they were supposed to say.
“Want me to show you the rest of the house?” Eliot asked. “I promise you can come back here at the end. And any other time you want.”
I gazed longingly at all the shelves I hadn’t even begun to examine, then turned away. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to learn my way around,” I said. “This place has a lot to remember.”
As we stepped out of the library, my palm itched almost uncontrollably to join with his again. My fingers twitched to reach out and touch him, to feel the broad planes of his back as he led me along the hallway. I curled my hands into fists and tucked them under my arms so I wouldn’t accidentally reach out and stroke my stepbrother. That might be frowned upon by, you know, regular humans. I didn’t know how girls who went to school dealt with this feeling all day long. How was I going to cope tomorrow, when I was around hundreds of guys?
Eliot showed me the other rooms one by one. First up was a small game room, which had two TVs, a wet bar, a pool table, foosball, and a couple other games. Then there was a “small” personal movie theater, where he said they showed movies once a week when they could get everyone together. There was a locked door, which Finn used for a studio when he worked on his art.
“You never have to leave the house,” I said as we headed downstairs to the first floor. “You could just bring a girl here for a date and have a whole movie theater to yourself.”
“It has come in handy,” Eliot said.
“You’ve been on a date?”
Way to go, Gwen. That didn’t sound incredulous at all.
“Well…yeah,” Eliot said “Haven’t you?”
“No.”
I realized that no one in this family really knew what my life had been like. I’d told Finn, but he’d obviously kept it to himself. A swell of warmth rose in my chest. I’d known I could trust him. Now that we were family, I should probably tell the others, too, but I wanted them to see me as normal for as long as I could, even if it didn’t last. I’d told Peyton we moved around a lot, but I hadn’t told her why and h
ow.
Without comment, Eliot showed me the workout room. It had a barre and two walls made entirely of mirrors, since apparently Peyton had been into dance for a while. Half the floor was made of a tough rubber mat, the other half, hardwood. A bunch of weight machines, a treadmill, and some contraptions I couldn’t even identify stood at one side of the room. The room after that was a soundproof music studio.
“Do people know about this?” I asked, gaping at the equipment.
“About what?” Eliot asked.
“About your house.”
“It’s not a secret,” Eliot said. “Wellfleet is so small that all the locals know each other.”
“You could totally impress the ladies with this,” I said, backing out of the music studio. I wasn’t great with electronics, having never gotten to use anything more than the car CD player and a few computers at public libraries. Everything here looked expensive and complicated.
“Are you saying you’re impressed?” Eliot asked with a smile that was just a little smug.
“Uh, yeah,” I said before I could think about playing it cool. How could one family have so much?
Eliot laughed and touched my elbow. “We’re almost done.”
Finally, he led me into a room at the end of the house that was almost entirely glass. Set into the floor was a long, clear blue pool, lit up from below. I could see our reflections in the glass windows all around the room. Even the ceiling was glass. I wanted to exclaim how insane this whole thing was again, but he didn’t seem to notice. Of course he didn’t—he lived here.
“And that door leads out to the deck,” he said, pointing across the room. He circled around the pool and pushed the door open, and a blast of cold air made steam billow up from the pool. “There’s a hot tub out here, if you didn’t notice,” he said. “And the fireplace, of course. If you wanted to get in…the hot tub, I mean, not the fireplace...”
I smiled, shaking my head. He’d already seen way too much of me—he didn’t need to see my whole body. And suddenly, my exhaustion hit me all at once. I swayed on my feet, barely able to stand under the weight of it. “I think I’m finally tired,” I said, stifling a yawn.
“Then my job here is done,” he said. “Either that, or I’ve bored you to sleep.”
“It’s been a long day,” I reminded him with an apologetic smile.
“You’re telling me near-death experiences aren’t the norm for you?” he asked, his eyes widening in mock surprise. “What kind of life have you been living?”
I laughed, but I wasn’t about to actually answer that question.
Eliot strode back around the pool and smiled down at me. “I’ll take a rain check on the hot tub,” he said, his voice low and a bit husky.
Suddenly, it was hard to swallow, and I had to tear my gaze from his. “Okay,” I whispered.
He chuckled and moved a half step closer, until we were almost in each other’s arms. He smelled clean, like soap and freshly washed clothes. And for someone who didn’t always make it to a laundromat until far past time, that was the smell of being okay again, getting off the road, having a few simple pleasures.
I closed my eyes and breathed it in, the safe smell of him, the reassurance of it. His fingertips grazed my elbow, and a sparkler ignited inside me, the sparks dancing across my skin. I sucked in a breath, ready to melt into his arms, to revel in his strength and comfort. Everything about him said that he was good and trustworthy. So much so that it scared me more than Xander, with his undue resentment.
I was used to people treating me like something pathetic and nasty, less than human. Xander’s scorn, contempt, and loathing were familiar. True, when most people gave me that attitude, I didn’t inexplicably find them mouthwateringly sexy, but still. I’d endured all that before. Xander might be dangerous, but he wasn’t unexpected.
Eliot, however, terrified me. Not because of anything he did, or said, or even anything he was. I had a feeling he was just a nerd like me. But the fact that he could so easily and effortlessly melt my defenses, step through them as if they weren’t even there…that’s what scared me. My reaction to him scared me. I didn’t care if he was my stepbrother. I knew better than to trust someone I’d just met.
And yet, I did trust him. More than that, I wanted to be near him. I wanted to get in the hot tub with him, wanted to sit so close our bodies pressed together under the water. I wanted to lean in and press my nose to the spot where his neck met his shoulder and inhale his scent, see if he smelled different up close. I wanted to move forward just another half-step, to close the distance between us and see if those sparks opened like sunbursts inside me.
My eyes opened, and I found myself gazing directly into his warm brown eyes. His eyes searched mine, then dropped to my lips. My heart lurched.
“I…I’d better get to bed,” I said, stepping back and shaking my head to clear my strange thoughts. “Tomorrow’s another big day.”
“How about we skip the near-death experiences tomorrow?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “But from what I’ve heard about high school, I think it qualifies.”
Chapter Seventeen
Gwen
Monday dawned cold and damp, with clouds low in the sky. I stumbled out of my room to see Peyton dashing past me, a backpack slung over one shoulder, her pink hair bobbing in its high ponytail.
“We’re late,” she called down the stairs, skidding to a stop at the top. She turned back to me, her eyes wide. “You’re just getting up?”
I squinted one eye open and mumbled, “Unghunga,” which loosely translated to, “My body just woke up, but my brain hasn’t caught up yet.”
“It’s your first day!” she squealed, looking way too excited for this ungodly hour. “I knocked on your door an hour ago. I thought you were getting ready.”
“Mmnghhhk.” I rubbed at my eye, my brain beginning to rouse. I’d finally fallen asleep around dawn, and I definitely wasn’t ready to get up.
“Are you ready?” Zeke asked, stopping in my doorway, spinning a set of keys around one finger.
“We gotta go,” Peyton said, dragging me back into my room. “Just throw on some clothes and let’s go.”
“I probably should shower,” I managed.
Peyton looked me over, wrinkling her nose. “Yeah, you should. But hurry.”
“What’s going on?” Neil asked, stopping in the hall outside my room.
My head was starting to throb. Was it always so noisy here in the mornings? Mom wasn’t really a morning person, and I must have inherited that trait. We liked our quiet mornings, with the wheels whirring by under us.
“New girl’s not ready,” Xander said, looking over his father’s shoulder.
“You can take her,” Neil said. “The rest of you, get going or you’re going to be late.”
“What? No,” I said, my eyes flying to my nemesis. I was awake now.
Xander met my gaze with a cool smirk. He looked like he knew exactly how much he scared me.
Shit. I’d tried so hard to be tough with him.
“Gwen?” Mom mumbled from the bed behind me. “Gwen, where are you?”
I had a sudden urge to tell her to shut up, with some choice words sprinkled in there. Despite what I’d said to Eliot the night before, I was so excited to start school that I’d stayed up until it was nearly light out, replaying every TV show and movie about high school I’d ever seen. For the first time in my life, I was getting a chance to do something normal. And like usual, Mom was fucking it all up.
“Go ahead and get ready,” Neil said to me. “You’ll have a ride.”
I shot a last fearful look at my new family, sure they’d leave me with Xander if I didn’t stick around to fight it. But Mom was calling me again. My shoulders slumped, and I closed the door and hurried to the bed. It wasn’t her fault that her mind didn’t work right.
“What now?” I asked, crumpling to the bed with a sigh.
“I dreamed I got married,” she said, her eyes faraway. “An
d a big wave almost killed you.”
“Hate to break it to you, Mom, but it wasn’t a dream.”
“It’s always a dream first,” she mumbled. “Then comes reality.”
“Well, this time reality came first,” I said. “You’re married.” I held up her hand, showing her the fat diamond Neil had put on her finger right before the ocean decided to defy gravity.
Suddenly, her limp hand clenched around mine, yanking me toward her with inhuman strength. “The bridge is crumbling,” she rasped. “You have to stop it.”
My heart twisted in my chest, my blood turning to ice water. I’d known this was coming. And yet…for a few days, I’d let myself hope. I’d started to believe it could last, and I’d wanted it to.
But these words, delivered in the voice of a dying old man, were all too familiar. Next she’d start talking about Ragnarok, and Fenrir, and the end of the world. And the sick thing was, a part of me was relieved.
Yes, for a few days, I’d dreamed I could have a real family. A whole family. But my dream suddenly seemed as far from reality as hers—probably further. I smiled sadly down at my mother. Despite the pleasantness of this dream, in truth, I’d been waiting for this. I knew this. It was familiar and therefore predictable. As ironic as it was to find more comfort in moving every few days, or weeks, or months, than a huge house overlooking the ocean, with fancy food and plush beds, that was my reality.
“Gwen, you about ready?” Neil asked from outside the door. “It’s okay if you’re a little late. I’m sure the office has a helper to show you around.”
I pulled open the door and tried to smile. “I’m not going.”
“What do you mean?” A frown of concern creased Neil’s brow.
“Mom’s…I mean, I think she wants to leave.”
“You just get ready for school,” he said, stepping past me. “I’m working from home today, so I’ll be here with your mom. Don’t worry about a thing.”
Dear god, I wished it were that simple.
“Go,” Neil said, a smile on his face but his voice firm and commanding.
Emerge: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Page 11