“Make you do what?” I asked, my voice calm but wary. If my crappy life had taught me anything, it was how to talk to unreasonable people.
“You know what,” Xander growled, closing the distance between us with one stride. He slid right up against me, staring down at me with undisguised hatred.
My own anger rose to meet his, along with some instinct to fight back, to defend myself. “Are you talking about making out with that girl or treating her like shit afterwards?” I asked. “Because I’m sure you can come up with a better excuse than saying I made you do it.”
“Stop fucking with my head,” Xander yelled, grabbing his head with both hands like he was about to rip out handfuls of that gorgeous chestnut hair.
I had a ridiculous urge to stop him, but I caught myself. Instead, I did the more sensible thing, taking the opportunity to climb off the far side of the bike, just in case he decided to drag me off, too.
“I’m not in your head any more than you’re in mine,” I hissed. “It’s not my fault we’re tied together. Do you think I’d pick you to be part of a god with me?”
“What if I don’t want to be part of your stupid god?” His voice was low but deadly, his eyes still blazing. “Why’d you come here and fuck up our lives? We were fine before you came.”
“Really?” I asked. “Were you? Because I kind of got the feeling that wasn’t the first time you’d treated a girl that way.”
His gaze turned icy cold. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying, it didn’t look hard for you.”
“You don’t know fuck-all about my life.”
“Don’t I?” I asked. “Let me guess. I just don’t understand how hard your life is. You grew up in a freaking mansion on the beach, with everything you could ever dream of handed to you on a silver platter. That must be so hard for you, Xander. Sure, your pillows are made of money, you hit the genetic jackpot in the looks department, and every girl in school wants to take a tumble between your sheets. But go ahead. Cry to me because Daddy didn’t buy you a yacht.”
Xander’s hand shot out, grabbing my jacket and hauling me forward until I was leaning over his bike, my toes barely scraping the ground. I braced my hands on the seat, trying to push away from him, but he was too strong. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if inhaling my scent, before dragging his nose across mine. His eyes opened into slits, as black as the deadliest storm. “You don’t know shit, little girl,” he whispered, so close I could feel the heat of his breath against my lips.
“I know that maybe there’s a reason the god chose us,” I said. “Maybe there’s something we’re supposed to learn from each other.”
“I’m supposed to learn from you?” he purred, his smirking lips caressing mine as he spoke. “You’re a joke. You think you can be part of me or my family? You’ll never be anything to us except our father’s latest toy. I don’t even know your name. You’re not a god. You’re nothing.”
“Stop,” I said, my voice shaking. My legs threatened to give way, and tears ached behind my eyes. Gripping his wrist, I tried to twist away, desperate to get free before he saw me cry. He held on another second, pulling me so close that I was dangling from his hold. Then he pushed me back and let go, as if he were disposing of something he was glad to be rid of. Without a backwards glance, he threw his leg over his bike, twisted the throttle, and roared away, leaving me standing alone in the empty street.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gwen
For a minute, I stood in the small cloud of dust from Xander’s bike, letting the tears sting my eyes and run down my cheeks. I had no idea where I was, but I sure as hell didn’t want to go home and face him right now, if ever. Was this the betrayal Heimdall had warned me about? Could Xander actually refuse to take part in this?
He was supposed to drop me off at the library, but when I looked around, all I saw were small buildings and houses. I sighed and picked up his shades. They’d probably cost as much as my mother’s car, and he’d left them lying in the street.
“Lovers’ quarrel?”
I spun toward the voice, only to find Joaquin standing against the side of a small building with the same grey shingles and white trim as most of the houses in the area. He had a skateboard propped up against the wall beside him and his backpack slung over one shoulder.
I quickly turned away to wipe my eyes, though he must have been standing there for a while if he’d seen my fight with Xander. A dart of panic went through me at the thought. Had he heard us talking about our god?
Then I remembered that until a few days ago, I thought my own mother was delusional. Even if he’d heard us, he wouldn’t believe it.
“Come on, let’s ditch this place,” Joaquin said, skating to join me in the middle of the empty street.
“I’m supposed to be meeting my tutor,” I said. “Do you know where the library is?”
Joaquin cruised along on his board, and without thought, I started walking beside him so we could talk. “Library,” he said, pointing to the building on the corner where he’d been standing. Then he poked a finger to his chest. “Tutor.”
“You’re not my tutor,” I said, stopping in the middle of the street.
He held up both hands. “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe a dude as smokin’ hot as me is also a brainiac.” He swiveled his board around so he was skating backwards in front of me. “I’m the whole package, baby.”
He leaned to one side, making a ridiculous gesture up and down his body that I guessed was supposed to demonstrate that he was, indeed, the whole package. Then he lost his balance and lurched off his board, which shot off down the street.
I couldn’t help but smile as he chased it down, even though I still felt a little sick and shaky from my fight with Xander. His words still echoed in my head like an endless feedback loop.
Little girl
You’re a joke
I don’t even know your name
You’re nothing
I had overstepped, too, lost my own temper. I’d said nasty things to him, too. And the truth was, I didn’t know shit about his life. Had my words hurt him as much as his hurt me?
If I was nothing to him, they couldn’t have. But he was something to me. Despite my every effort to be as cold and cruel as him, I wasn’t. I had never learned to close off my heart. His words cut me to the bone, wormed their way into my deepest insecurities.
My mother and I had always had each other and only each other. How many nights had I lain awake with the nightmare anxiety eating away at me, wondering what would happen if I couldn’t save her? I would be alone in the world, without even proof of my name.
Why should Xander remember my name, when I couldn’t even prove it was real?
Only my mother knew the truth. It had never made me sad before, but now that Xander had pointed it out, I felt empty and worthless. I had never mattered to anyone but my own mother. For all the world was concerned, I didn’t exist. I was nothing.
“You’re not going to cry again, are you?” Joaquin said, cruising back to me on his board.
“No.”
“You’ve got that look on your face,” he said. “The one you had just before you busted out crying.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, hooking my fingers into my backpack straps.
“Didn’t look like nothing to me,” Joaquin said. “Tell you what. First you can tell me what happened, and then we’ll study. Besides the big brains and the smokin’ hot bod, I’m also a good listener.”
I swallowed hard, remembering the last time we’d been alone together, when I’d walked in and seen him showering.
“Why would you want to listen to that?” I asked finally.
“I told you, I’m a good listener. Besides, you can’t focus when your mind is on your bad-boy brother.”
“It’s not.”
“Dude, don’t lie,” he said. “I’m being nice here, and not even trying to get in your pants.”
“Th
at’s a first.”
“I know,” he crowed like he was super proud of himself.
“Do you need a gold star?”
Joaquin grinned and circled me on his board. “Hey, my house is literally right there,” he said, gesturing to a row of apartments with some small houses beyond them. “We can put our stuff down, and you can tell me what Xander did this time, and I can tell you why, and then we’ll study.”
“Why what?”
“Dude, I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said. “I know all the Keens. Everyone here knows everyone else. You’re not the first girl I’ve seen crying over Xander.”
With that, he started gliding down the street.
Reluctantly, I followed. “Again…why are you being nice to me?”
“I’m nice to everyone,” he said. “Have you ever seen me being a dick? Come on, not everyone here is as messed up as your brother. I get it that you’re new here and everyone wants a piece of you, but I’m just after the tutoring paycheck. Besides, maybe you could use a friend who isn’t, you know, living in the same house as you.”
He was right. I’d never seen the guy stop smiling. He was more goofy than creepy. Now that we were alone, he was less hyper and ridiculous, too. Maybe without the pressure of living up to whatever image he had at school, he’d be less of a cartoon. After all the weirdness at home, I appreciated his straightforwardness. I really could use a friend who was just a normal kid, who wasn’t at risk of bursting into flame if I accidentally touched him.
I didn’t know anyone here except my stepsiblings and their various partners, and somehow, I didn’t think their evil girlfriends would go out of their way to make my life easier. Besides all that, Joaquin was volunteering information about Xander that no one else had. Maybe if I knew the real reason he didn’t want me around, I’d be on a more level playing field. I could talk to him about it, come to an understanding even if I couldn’t change his mind.
“This is me,” Joaquin said, hopping the curb and zipping along a short walkway to the row of tiny, ugly apartments.
My thoughts were quickly overtaken by the stark contrast between this shabby one-story building, hidden away a block behind the library, and the mansion thrusting out over the bay, obscene in its opulence.
No wonder Joaquin liked to go shower over there. I didn’t blame him. His apartment building was depressing and run-down, reminiscent of some of the storage lockers I’d lived in. He pushed open the door, and the stuffy smell of mildewed carpet greeted us as we stepped inside. Joaquin flipped on the light, which didn’t do much to dispel the gloom. It was a studio apartment, with a futon bed against one wall, a TV against another, and a kitchen that wasn’t much more than a stove, refrigerator, and microwave.
I’d lived in places like this a few times. Some part of me wanted Joaquin to know that I understood, so he wouldn’t feel ashamed of his humble family. Not everyone lived like kings. Stepping into such a familiar scene again after living with the Keens made me both horrified by the conditions I’d lived in and ashamed of the gross extravagance of my new wealth.
At the same time, he didn’t know anything about that girl. He knew Rich Gwen. I decided to keep it that way a little longer.
“Tell me about your fight,” Joaquin said, propping his skateboard up next to the door. I spotted a surfboard against the wall in a closet-sized bathroom, a wetsuit hanging in the shower.
“Your parents are at work?” I asked.
“No parents,” Joaquin said, opening a cabinet over the stove.
“You live alone?” Telling him a sob story about my fight suddenly seemed self-indulgent and hypocritical. I was living in that mansion over the sea, too, not just Xander. I had been given a lottery ticket. Not everyone was that lucky.
Joaquin chose from the collection of plastic cups with gas station logos crowded together with a stack of bowls in the cabinet. “Yeah, my parents died,” he said. “I got emancipated so I can live alone. Sweet, huh?”
“I guess?”
Joaquin opened the refrigerator and poured Grape Drink from a gallon jug into the two cups he’d chosen. “Don’t be shy, you can sit down,” he said. “Though let me just make the bed first. You probably don’t want to touch what’s on those sheets.”
“I’m okay, really,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything special for me.”
I was so not sitting on his bed after that comment.
After handing the drinks to me, Joaquin pulled a faded comforter up over a grungy sheet, then plopped down on the bed and patted the spot beside him. “Sorry I don’t have a table or anything,” he said, looking around like he’d just noticed that. “I really don’t spend any time here. I’m usually at the beach when I’m not at school.”
“I can tell.”
Joaquin leaned back and hooked his hands behind his head, grinning at me. “So you’ve been thinking about me?” he asked. “Wondering what I do after school?”
“No, I just—” I motioned at my hair. “You have that beach bum look.”
“How’s your drink?”
“Good,” I said, then realized I was still holding his cup. I handed it to him, almost fumbling it during the handoff.
“Total surf rat,” Joaquin agreed, hopping up to open a tiny door that revealed a hot water heater. He pulled out a folding chair from beside it and set it in the middle of the floor for me. “Don’t worry, I won’t be showering at your house again. Not after they locked me out butt-ass naked. Let me just add that it was really cold that day. In case you saw anything that wasn’t impressive. Shrinkage is real, man.”
I snort-laughed Grape Drink up my nose.
“It’s all good,” he said, setting his cup on the floor and lying back on his bed again. “We can still be friends.”
“I really don’t care if you shower there,” I said. “Just…wear your swim trunks, or give me some warning next time.”
“Cool. I totally won’t make you show me yours,” he said with a grin. Then he wiggled his eyebrows and stuck out that freakishly long tongue again. “Unless you want to.”
I winced. “I think I’ll pass.”
“Maybe next time.” He bounced up off his creaking futon to pace around the room, restlessly opening and closing doors at random. One of the kitchen drawers looked like it was entirely full of packets of Taco Bell sauce.
He paused to lock the door. “Sketchy neighborhood,” he explained when he caught my frown.
But a weird feeling was starting in my stomach.
“My pad isn’t the best babe magnet,” Joaquin said. “Usually, I just take the chicks down to the beach, tell ‘em I got the motion of the ocean, baby.” He raised his arms and swiveled his hips.
If it weren’t for the locked door, I would have laughed. He was so utterly impossible to take seriously. But I had a hard time believing there were any bad neighborhoods in this tiny beach town. Looking around his room, I couldn’t even see a window big enough to squeeze out. Throughout my life, I’d absorbed some of my mother’s paranoia subconsciously. I didn’t like stairs, closed spaces, or my back against walls with nowhere to run. I didn’t like locked doors unless I was the one locking them.
“I’m a little claustrophobic,” I said, standing. “Maybe we can go back to the library.”
“Aw, but we just got here,” he said. “We’re just getting started. Let’s talk the talk, get to know each other. You can tell me anything. We’re friends, right?”
I suddenly had the feeling if I answered his question wrong, my face would end up on a poster inside the grocery store. I swallowed hard, eyeing the door. Why had I come here with him? He’d seemed so harmless and silly. Inappropriate and crude, yes, but in a nonthreatening way.
Because you’re such an expert judge of character?
“I think I’m just going to go,” I said, reaching for my bag.
“I think you’re not.” Joaquin’s voice was hard now, all the teasing gone. Like a clown that had removed its mask.
I dove for the do
or, not bothering with my bag. Slamming back the deadbolt, I grabbed the knob and twisted. Locked. Dammit.
Joaquin body-slammed me against the door. My temple bounced off the metal surface, throbbing painfully. Before I could recover, he twisted my arm behind my back. “Now that’s not being a very good guest, is it?” he asked, wrenching my arm up until I yelped in pain. “Maybe your mom didn’t teach you manners when you were homeless, so let me just help you out with that.”
I tried to push away from the door with my other hand, but he grabbed that one, too. While he was distracted by getting that one under control, I yanked my other hand from his grip and grabbed for the little lock mechanism in the center of the cheap gold knob.
Joaquin slammed the heel of his hand against the back of mine, crushing it against the knob. The lock I’d been groping for bit into my palm, and I heard something crunch in my hand. A loud, shuddering gasp came from my lips as he jerked both my hands behind my back. Turning me around, he marched me over to the chair.
“First rule of being a good guest,” he said, slightly out of breath from our scuffle. “When your host tells you we’re going to sit and chat, you oblige him.”
He tried to force me down into the chair. I kicked it over.
It fell sideways, the metal thudding against the cheaply carpeted floor. Joaquin’s hand pinned my wrists like cuffs, but he grabbed the back of my neck with his other hand, squeezing as he marched me forward. “I guess that means you want to do this on the bed.”
“No,” I cried, a fresh wave of adrenaline barreling through me. I spun toward Joaquin, ripping my hands free. My brain seemed to drain of everything but pure, instinctual terror. I slashed at him with my fingernails, my fists.
I’d caught him off guard, though he tried to grasp my flailing arms. The door behind him was like that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I had to get there.
Emerge: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Page 22