“She’ll like me, I promise.”
Stevie bubbles out a laugh, and a group of seagulls take off near the shore.
“See this?” Her finger lands on the dedication. “To Stevie and the infinite memory of Claire, my wonder twins. I will always cherish you both.” Her voice grows cold as if it were the cruelest sentence she had ever read.
“That’s incredible. I can’t believe I have Theresa Eaton’s daughter hostage with me at the beach house.” I bury my lips in her neck. I was already smitten to hell by Stevie, but this just elevates her to superstar status. Just when I didn’t think we could get any higher, she buoys us even closer to the sun. And here I thought I hated surprises. Stevie has me spinning so fast I can’t tell what’s up or down. I’ll take Stevie and her surprises any day. And, hopefully sometime next week, she’ll let me surprise her, too. I want to ask her to move in with me. I’m about twenty minutes from Rigby, ten with no traffic. Hell, I’ll fly her to class if she wants me to.
“Please don’t be impressed by my mother. They call her Scary Terri for a reason.” Her fingers pull back the pages, one by one, like the flashes of a supernova jagging by in dark, starry blinks. She glosses over an entire section that gives homage to her mother’s life-size sculptures and statues—all of them slightly disturbing in their own right. “The reason she said she’d cherish us both is because I was already dead to her at this point. We don’t speak much. A text every now and again and even then it feels like she’s stalking me.” She plucks her phone off the edge of the bench and pulls up a text for me to see. “This is the poetry she writes just for me. Her latest text reads, Beautiful day! Don’t you just thank God you didn’t die in the bed of your youth?”
My mood plummets. That’s pretty insane.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say.
“Are you?” She looks up. Her eyes cut through the fog of grief that settled over her once she opened that book. “What’s your favorite poem?” She tosses the phone aside as her eyes fall over the glossy images once again.
“Burning Through Gravity.” I flip right to it.
We study the words together in silence.
Burning through gravity like a falling star, barreling toward earth through the icy realm. Love is a rush that tears right through you, ripping through darkness, hurdling through space, crashing all around—alone and out of place. Your ego is the first to succumb before slowly everything is stripped, leaving you bare—alone in the cold cruel air. Love is a star falling from grace, burning through gravity with its disgrace. Love is a rock ready to crush. Who will be there to pick up the pieces when you’re broken and alone, Lana? Clay and wire, molding you to my heart’s desire. Love is like gravity, everywhere all at once, alarmingly simple—impossible to grasp. Love is like falling upward, burning through gravity as you catapult into the white-hot sun.
“Charming.” It comes out ironic as she closes the book like she’s terminating their relationship. She blinks up at me with those impossibly long lashes.
“I thought so. Who’s Lana?”
“Probably me.” She shakes her head. “I have no clue. Personally, I think it reads disjointed, but if you know my mother that’s actually pretty linear for her. She was a physicist until my sister died. Then the lights turned out in our lives. She went dark. Her brooding made her a millionaire in the process. Some people have all the dumb luck. Too bad it didn’t rub off on her children.”
Stevie’s eyes cloud over, and there’s nothing more I want in this moment than to pull her out of her grief.
“You’ve got dumb luck.” I take a bite out of her bottom lip. “You met me didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” She gives my cheek a playful bite. “It doesn’t get much dumber than you.”
“Hey, watch it.” I sink my fingers under her arms and tickle her, teaching her a lesson until she’s crying for me to stop. “You know how to make me stop.”
Her lips crush to mine, and we settle back over the bench, melting into one another, getting lost in those sweet moans once again, if only for a little while. I hate that we have to get back to reality when this one is so much better—so much damn sweeter than all those bitter days on the other side of these walls.
Stevie pulls back, her lips still swollen and red from our kisses. Her fingers scratch lightly at the two weeks’ worth of scruff on my face.
“You should take this down to nothing. My thighs are beginning to chafe.”
“Done.” A sad smile comes and goes on my face because I’m already missing the hell out of her.
“I think it’s time for you to take me home, Ford.”
I shake my head, but it doesn’t stop the sun from setting, the tide from coming in and washing away the last of our sand castles.
We head to the bedroom, and Stevie slinks back into the same clothes I found her in that night at the party.
“You look overdressed.” I sink a kiss onto her lips and try to savor the shit out of it. “Let me help you with that.” I pull her T-shirt right off, and she acquiesces with a grin.
“I think you’re looking a little overdressed yourself.” She gives my shorts a quick tug, and they voluntarily fall to the floor.
“I’m not a big fan of these jeans,” I say, working like hell to peel them off her body.
“I’m not a big fan of anything that stands between us.” Stevie jumps up on my hips, and I press her against the wall.
Come tomorrow the entire world will stand between us. But, for now, you can’t squeeze a dime between her body and mine.
I take her right there, hammering into her until every damn window in the place threatens to shatter. Her panting rivals my own as we fill the beach house with the sounds of our love making one last time. Our bodies thump hard against the drywall, beating against it in a long, strangulating rhythm. The neighbors probably think a series of gunshots are going off.
It sounds more like a heartbeat to me.
Through the Stratosphere
Stevie
Summer cracks over our backs like a whip, tearing open our flesh and pouring in the white-hot sting of the sun.
Kinsley and I spent the afternoon shopping for overpriced clothes, half of them I already want to donate. I let her pick out her version of power suits for my internship at our father’s social network division, Merlin. Normally I just wear jeans and T-shirts to class—my Ugg boots in the balmy California winters and my flip-flops every other season, but Kinsley insisted I elevate my wardrobe standards, this, my final year at Rigby. The only reason I went along with it was because the head of the business program, Dr. Bennett, made it clear that we were to dress the part when representing our “prestigious university.” It was all I could do not to gag. But that was last semester, and, now, I feel like I’m ready to slip into the world of shapely cut blazers and four-inch stilettos.
Stilettos. That’s what I had on that magical night I met him.
Ford wafts over me like my own private heat wave, and a dull smile rides on my lips. His taste still lingers over my tongue. If I close my eyes, I can still feel his passion-fueled kisses. The memory of them rips through me like a current.
“Would you stop?” Kinsley flops back on my bed.
My roommate graduated last year, and the new one is yet to move in. As much as we didn’t get along, I hate the thought of being alone.
She clicks her tongue. “Do you really think he’s spending all his free time thinking of you and grinning like an idiot?”
“Yes, I do.” I hope he can’t stop thinking of me—that he’s slowly losing his mind, that his fingers tremble to dig into my bare hips once again—that he’s experiencing a borderline unhealthy obsession. At least that way we could call it even. I flop down on the bed next to her. “In fact, I know he is because we’ve been sexting nonstop for the last three days. We’ve been having all kinds of lewd alphabet sex. The things those verbs do to me.” I let out a moan, and she smacks me on the leg. “I’m going to meet him for dinner tomorrow night.”
Her mouth gapes. “That’s a school night.”
“So what, Mom.” I knock my knee into hers. “I’ll be sure we’re both in bed by eight—together.” A giggle ricochets in my chest at the thought. I never giggle. I’m pleasantly repulsed by this new version of myself—the giggling fool—the grinning idiot. I wonder what Claire would think? For so long I stayed away from people—practically hid from the opposite sex. There were sweet boys who were interested, troubled boys, and everything in between, but something in me couldn’t pull the trigger. I tried—God I tried. I even gave my vagina away on a couple of occasions as if proving a point, but even then it felt like a charade. It simply felt empty.
“I think you’ve had enough time in bed together.” She rolls onto her elbow with her blonde curls spilling every which way, her pale glossy eyes, stoned as shit. “Ten bucks says he’s married.”
“Would you stop?” Kinsley has been a broken record ever since I made the mistake of telling her how I spent the last two weeks. She’s convinced he’s told some poor unsuspecting house-frau that he was away on business. Kinsley is a lot of things—right is usually not one of them. “Why don’t you sign up for school, and you can have that bed right over there?” I nod across the way. It’s time to steer this conversation far away from Ford. She’s been berating him for the last four hours.
She smirks at my offer. “I’m a graduate of the Hollywood School of Hard Knocks. I’m not about to give up now.” A smile threatens to slit across her face. “Besides, I have a callback on that audition I told you about.”
“Which one?” I can’t keep them straight. Kinsley goes out on an audition every other day. I’m afraid Hollywood U has yet to teach her the most useful lesson of all—the casting couch.
Her brows rise in tandem. “The Fortune of Tomorrow.”
“No shit? That’s my grandma’s favorite soap. It’s still on the air, right?”
“Shut up.” She pushes her elbow into me. “Yes, it’s still on the air. And—it’s the number one soap in the 25-45 year-old demographic.”
“Wow, was that the first line they made you memorize?”
“No—the first line they made me memorize is Dillon Collette is freaking hot. So hot that I’m going to bake cookies off his chest the first day I meet him.” She melts into the pillow.
“Sounds perfectly disgusting.” Ford’s chest comes to mind, and I imagine doing just that, baking cookies and eating them right off his perfect body. I moan into the idea.
“Trust me”—she elbows me again, pulling me out of my Ford-inspired stupor—“Dillon Collette is anything but disgusting. He’s been my Hollywood crush for as long as I can remember. And, if I get the part, I’ll get to play opposite him. It’s like an honor I’m too blown away to comprehend. Too bad he’s married with five kids, or I’d volunteer as his off-screen sex slave the second the cameras stop rolling.”
“I wouldn’t fret too much about the wife and kids. I’ve seen a few episodes. I’m sure they’ll have your characters sucking face in no time. It’s primetime porn at its finest.”
“I’ll be playing his sister—if I get the role.”
“Sorry.” I wince. “On the bright side, you probably won’t get this role either.” I give her a quick wink before flipping open my laptop and checking my emails. There’s about ten new messages—one from Dr. Bennett. Group assignments.
I open it and give it a quick glance, ignoring my sister as she breezes through her lines for her callback.
“Holy shit.” I stare in disbelief. “It looks like I’ve been moved from Merlin to Jinx.” Jinx is only the hottest social network this side of Silicon Valley. It’s one of my father’s competitors—his only competitor, and the last place on the planet I want to be.
“Call Daddy. I’m sure there’s room for one more.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to make sure he answers.” It’s true. He’ll pick up for Kinsley every single time. My calls are usually met with the enthusiasm of a telemarketer.
She tosses it over, and I put in the call.
“Hans Lionheart.” He always answers that way. It makes no difference if he knows who the incoming call is from. My father is a master at head games. He didn’t garner his billions by coddling anybody’s feelings—certainly not mine. My mother made sure to keep both my sister and me far away from his money. The only thing he was allowed to provide was our education, and, even then, I went to public school up until my sister died. That’s when I all but ran away from my mother. I let my father lock me up in an ivory tower boarding school, along with the core, and pretended I didn’t care about the ever-increasing chasm I was building between both of my parents.
He clears his throat, his impatience already at a palpable level.
“It’s me, Claire.” I take a sharp breath. Kinsley shoots me a look. God, did I just say that? “It’s Stevie.” I squeeze my eyes shut a moment. I get so nervous around my father. I doubt he even remembers Claire, let alone cares if she’s calling from the great beyond. “Look, I didn’t get the internship at Merlin. For whatever reason, I was moved to Jinx.” I’ve already discussed in detail with my father that a part of the class was headed into enemy territory. We regarded it as a joke—openly laughed that they’d need to be reeducated if they survived the trauma. Jinx is notorious for nurturing dropouts and making them one of their own. We toasted with our mimosas that I would be learning the ropes at Merlin where I belonged. “Can you call Dr. Bennett or send her a quick email and get me back to Merlin?”
“Absolutely not.” There’s a slight lilt in his voice leftover from his boyhood days in Norway. My father still swallows every r that tries to roll from his lips. “I want you to seize the opportunity—scope out the landscape. Once you graduate, you’ll have a place at Merlin. For now, dig into the trenches with the enemy, report back to me.” He pauses. “I don’t want you to repeat what I’m about to say, but I think Jinx would be a good companion for Merlin.”
A beat of silence ticks by. My father just threatened to eat Jinx like an afternoon snack—foie gras on organic wheat toast with the edges trimmed off. Something enlivens in me at the thought of playing secret agent. For a moment, I picture myself pulling out files and making copies at midnight—hacking into their financial docs and emailing all the sensitive information to my father. Something like this has the ability to change our relationship for the better. I could move from the cold-hearted outdoor of his heart—stop floating on that glacier all by my lonesome while Kinsley and Lincoln cozy up to the fire of his affection—and, if I play my company-stealing cards right, move right into his coveted inner circle. I’d earn my way into the core. Of course, I’ll have to commit corporate treason to do it, but something deep inside me has always wanted to get into my father’s good graces. I pinch my lips at the thought. Only two weeks ago I was suicidal and ready to tear my father a new one, and, now, with Ford by my proverbial side, I feel stronger than ever. The truth is I never really wanted to rip my father apart. I wanted to draw in close and beg him to hold me. Helping him tear the rug out from under Jinx is probably as close as I’ll get.
“What do you say?” He growls into the phone with tight restraint.
“Yes. Of course, I’ll do it. I’ll always be loyal to you, Daddy.” I swallow my pride as we hang up then smile at my sister.
A thought comes to me, blanketing my brief moment of happiness with a shroud of darkness—the dark is always hungry for any sign of joy I might have. If I were to be accepted into the core, that would leave Aspen as the only other Lionheart bastard still out in the cold.
“You called him Daddy.” Kinsley’s eyes widen with jealousy. That’s her moniker for him. I, more or less, refrain from addressing him at all. What the hell is happening to me? Goofy grins? Shouting out Daddy like I mean it? I used to call myself Iron Heart as a play on my last name—cold as steel, tough as iron. I can never be broken. Those are my mantras, not I hope my bo
yfriend likes me in this dress and let me kiss my father’s feet. Holy hell, how the mighty have fallen.
I cut a quick glance out the window as the heat melts the sidewalks to puddles, and here my own heart is experiencing a gentle thaw.
“I was kidding.” I toss the phone over at her. And I was. I’d never leave Aspen out in the cold. She and I both know the core is locked and sealed with blood and holy matrimony, and neither of us could ax our way in if we tried.
An image of me handing Jinx to my father on a silver platter flits through my mind.
A part of me feels as if I already have a foot in the chamber of my father’s dark heart.
But I still ache for Aspen.
The internship is funneled through my Real World Socioeconomics class and offers three units for fall and spring respectively. The internship is crucial to meeting the stringent graduation requirements set by Rigby University, which means my schedule will be psychotic this year with my internship on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a full load on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A part of me realizes I should be moaning about how tough this year is going to be, but, with half the week spent off campus, I already feel the freedom that graduation will bring. I’m still mulling over the idea of grad school. I thought I had Merlin wrapped around my finger, and, now, here I am at some flea-riddled oversized litter box where they worship felines and continue to pummel my father’s company into the ground. I wouldn’t dare tell “Daddy” that Jinx has already kicked Merlin’s technological ass. Merlin has become a stomping ground for grandparents and forty-somethings who show off nonstop pictures of their spinach smoothies and toothless children. Jinx is far more intricate to navigate, and has become a mecca for the under twenty-five sect, myself included. If my father ever found out my secret love for the enemy, I’d simply call it research.
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