No. He’s not flirting. This is just Sy being Sy. Teasing me like he used to do. Don’t get your hopes up.
But then she glanced at him, and before he pulled out of her driveway, he grinned at her. Amy’s heart quivered at his smile. She had always lived for the moments when Sy smiled for her. That hadn’t changed.
So much for not hoping. Every last hope grew wings and flew up into the atmosphere with that smile.
He always had that effect on her. Back in high school, Sy was one of the few people who didn’t ever look at Amy with pity. He didn’t make her feel like some kind of circus act or an invalid. He saw her, even in the years where it felt like no one could look past her sickness.
But he also had seen her like a little sister. A kid. She really had been much younger and more naive than other girls her age. Because of the treatments, she had stopped going to school, spending most of her time at home or the hospital, doing online school where she could. Her body, right in the middle of puberty, hit pause, likely due to the stress on her body and the chemicals they pumped into it. She only caught up to her peers when she turned eighteen and had spent a year being cancer- and treatment-free. The two years between her and Sy back then had been a much wider gap.
That gap was gone. Sy might still see her as a buddy, but he couldn’t see her as a child.
How does he see me now?
Not like he sees Delia.
Ouch. The truth hurt, but she desperately wanted to force herself to remember it. Sy may have seen her, but he never looked at her the way he looked at Delia: adoring, and more than a little lovesick. His feelings for Delia had always been totally transparent.
Even Delia knew, which always ticked Amy off. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying to make him jealous when she brought guys back to the house, knowing Sy would probably be there with Amy. When Sy got that wounded look on his face, it hurt Amy twice. She ached for his pain as well as her own.
But Amy didn’t think that Delia would reject Sy this time. She fully expected her sister to latch on to him the moment they walked through the door. And once again, Amy would be invisible.
Sy pulled into the parking lot of H-E-B, and Amy pointed to the front entrance.
“You can just drop me at the curb,” Amy said. “I only need a few things. I’ll get in and get out.”
“I don’t mind. I’ll come in with you.”
Grocery shopping with Sy shouldn’t have been something that made her heart hurt. But it was the kind of thing you did with a guy you were serious with. A longtime boyfriend. Or fiancé. Or husband.
“Nah. We can’t have the famous football player walking around H-E-B like a commoner.”
Sy snorted. “Right.”
A woman with several small children hanging out of her grocery cart stepped into the crosswalk. As soon as Sy stopped for them, Amy took her chance and jumped out.
“Be right back!” she called over her shoulder, not looking back, even when she heard Sy shout her name.
Amy zoomed through the store, grabbing a few bagged salads for dinner, plus bacon, eggs, and a few more things to stock the kitchen for the bed-and-breakfast. She really should have done it that afternoon, but after Sy left to go shopping for a few things, she had taken a stress nap. Too bad it didn’t help with her stress.
There weren’t really words for the pain of watching the guy you like chase after your sister. In the checkout aisle, she grabbed a handful of those gold-wrapped hazelnut chocolate balls for later. Chocolate wouldn’t dull the pain. But it would be a nice reward for making it through this dinner.
She found Sy’s Range Rover idling just outside. When he saw her coming, he ran around the car and opened her door.
“Oh—you don’t need to—” she started to say. But Sy just gave her a dark look, plucked the groceries from her hand, and with his free arm, grasped her around the hips and practically threw her into the passenger seat.
Amy couldn’t hold back a squeal. “Sy! Stop tossing me around like I’m some kind of toy you can play with!”
A wicked grin slid over his face. The kind that she felt in every strand of hair on her head and all the way down through each of her toes. “You don’t want to play with me, Ames?”
The silence in her brain was like the kind of eerie calm after a storm has knocked the power out. “I … uh …”
Sy set the grocery bag in her lap and then leaned even closer. For a shocking moment, Amy froze, watching as his face neared hers. Was he moving in slow motion? Was this happening?
Will this be my first kiss, with Sy in the H-E-B parking lot?
When he was just inches away, she squeezed her eyes shut. The thud of her heart was like someone banging at a locked door, demanding to be set free. Instead of a kiss, Amy felt Sy’s lips brush her cheek, moving back toward her ear. His breath ghosted over her skin, and a thousand goose bumps stood up and cheered.
“Too bad,” he said.
What were we talking about?
While her brain scrambled to figure out what he meant, she heard the sound of the seatbelt pulling out, and felt Sy’s hand near her hip. She only opened her eyes when she heard the click of the buckle. Sy was already backing away from her, the teasing grin on his face making her want to smack him. Or maybe grab him by the collar and drag him back.
He slammed the door before she could do anything at all, leaving her short of breath. But in the few seconds it took for him to get back around to the driver’s seat, Amy reminded herself of the truth.
He’s not yours. He never was.
She had to remember this now. Because in a few minutes, when Delia struck her claim and Sy melted in her presence like he always had, Amy might be tempted to go all cage-match on her sister. While that might feel cathartic, it would also be humiliating. Especially when Sy didn’t choose her.
When Sy climbed into the car, Amy forced herself to close off. He seemed to sense the icy shift, because his eyebrows drew down over his eyes.
“Everything okay?”
“Yep.”
He made a humming sound of disbelief but didn’t push her. Amy clutched the paper sack of groceries like a shield. The rest of the drive, the only words she spoke were directions to her mom’s new house.
“It’s the last one on the left with the palm trees all lit up.”
Amy had done it herself a few weeks back. It took a week for the scrapes on her forearms to heal from wrapping the trees. They did look really festive.
“It’s weird to think of you in a different house,” Sy said, peering at the modest brick ranch.
The house was a good deal smaller and the neighborhood not as nice as the one where she and Sy grew up. Amy had helped her mom pack up everything after her dad died. Delia couldn’t stay to help. Busy filming schedule, she’d said. She took a red-eye back to Texas for the funeral, stayed twenty-four hours, and flew on back to California, like it was a drive-thru funeral or something. Amy wished she had a busy anything to give her an excuse not to have been the one to go through her dad’s dresser drawers and closet.
“Ames? I know you said you’re fine. At the risk of being annoying, are you sure?”
Amy had totally gotten lost in her thoughts. But, hey—at least for one minute, they hadn’t been about Sy. That minute was up. Staring into his honey-colored eyes, she lost herself again.
“Short Stuff?”
Minutes ago, she hadn’t really minded the nickname, but now, Amy felt like Sy just put her back in the box where she belonged.
Pulling the grocery sack to her chest, Amy gave him a tight smile. “I’m good.”
Before Sy could try to help her out of the car, she threw open the door and half wiggled, half slid out, landing on the driveway so hard that she stumbled a little. Sy had reached her, steadying her with one hand.
Amy wrenched her arm away. Better to rip this bandage right off. “I’ve got it.”
Sy chuckled and planted a hand on her head. “Okay.”
She loved his touch, craved it actually, but the
way he had his hand on her head felt so … platonic. Definitely like a little sister. Or even like the way you pet a dog. She ducked out from under his palm, moving more quickly up the front sidewalk.
As they walked together to the front door, Sy looked as nervous as Amy felt. He put his hands in his pockets, then took them out and wiped them on his jeans. She hated seeing him nervous, because it meant that he cared a lot about this moment.
He cared about seeing Delia.
Oh, I’m the worst sister ever. No, the worst person. Amy thought that she’d outgrown the envious way she watched Delia’s life, that she had shed her resentment for her sister like a too-small skin.
Nope. It was coming right back up, choking her with its chalky, bitter taste.
Normally, Amy would walk right in, but she hadn’t told her mother or Delia that she was bringing Sy and wanted to go for the full dramatic effect. She shifted the grocery bag on her hip so she could free a hand up to knock, but Sy put up his hand.
“Wait.” His eyes flicked from the door back to her, and he chewed on his lip. Amy tried not to follow the movement. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets again.
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?”
Amy spoke carefully. “I think it would be hard for anyone to stay mad at you.”
He nodded, looking relieved. “You know, Ames, I never told you that I’m sorry.”
His words were like a caress. She shifted back on her heels.
No. No, no, no. He couldn’t do this right now. She was already teetering on a delicate edge of nerves and emotional overload. To go back to that night and hash things out? Nope.
The door swung open, but Amy didn’t know if she was being saved, or being tossed off a cliff. Delia’s gaze was on her phone at first, so she didn’t see Sy.
“Why are you just standing there, dummy? Don’t you have a k—”
Delia’s perfect mouth froze in the middle of her greeting as her eyes lifted from the screen and landed on Sy.
Amy tried to stuff down her jealousy, watching as Delia’s blonde hair settled around her shoulders like some kind of shampoo commercial. Her blue eyes didn’t have as much makeup as they normally would, but Delia didn’t need it to be impossibly beautiful.
Amy couldn’t make herself look at Sy. She didn’t want to see the lovestruck expression she had grown so used to when they were younger. Swallowing the knot of emotion in her throat, she forced words out of her mouth.
“Surprise!” Amy grinned, feeling more like one of those exaggerated caricatures than a real person. She watched the way Delia’s hands smoothed down her hair and straightened the hem of her blouse. Her eyes seemed to darken a shade to something warm and bright. Her full lips parted just slightly, lifting at the corners into something sultry and inviting.
“Delia.” Sy’s voice was strained, as though it were drenched in years of longing.
And, that’s my cue.
Amy stepped into the house and practically shoved her sister out onto the porch. She locked the deadbolt behind her. Leaning against it, she called, “You two have a lot to catch up on.”
“Amy! Open this door!” Delia shouted, pounding.
Taking a breath, Amy ignored her and walked back to the kitchen, where she gave her mother a kiss on the cheek.
“Is someone at the door?” her mom asked.
“Actually, yes. Delia’s out there. With Sy LaMarque.”
My impossible, life-long, painful crush who still likes Delia better. No biggie.
Her mother’s eyes lit up. “Really? He’s here? I need to go put on my Mustangs jersey.” And with that, she set down her pot holders and practically ran to her bedroom.
Amy shouldn’t have been surprised. Her mom had always loved Sy. She’d been disappointed after prom, but never really held a grudge. More than once, Amy remembered her mom making remarks about Sy’s parents not being there enough for him. She’d probably be thrilled that Delia and Sy were finally getting together.
The thought made her stomach twist. Sighing, Amy started slicing tomatoes for the salad, trying her very best not to imagine what was happening on the front porch between her hopeless crush and her big sister.
Chapter Six
Sy
This was it. Delia stood a foot or so away, looking every bit as good as she had when Sy scrolled through her Instagram. Better, even. Because this version of Delia wasn’t posed or made up. To top it off, she looked up at him with wide blue eyes that were already soft, and a half smile, like she was simply waiting for a chance to say yes to whatever he asked.
While teenaged Sy would have been kicking him to walk through the open door Delia was clearly offering, he wasn’t that guy anymore. And the only door he wanted to walk through was the locked front door so he could find Amy.
“It’s good to see you,” Delia said, breaking the silence.
Sy cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
Smooth. Totally smooth.
A slow smile spread over Delia’s face. She bit her bottom lip. It confused Sy for a moment until he realized that she probably thought he was just falling back into his old pattern of being speechless and awkward in her presence.
He rocked back on his heels. “How are you?”
She giggled, and half rolled her eyes. “Good. How are you? You look good.” She bit her lip suggestively, and Sy felt a sudden urge to run.
“Uh, thanks. I’m fine.” He shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans. “So, how’s L.A.?”
Delia blinked at him for a moment. “Six years and that’s what you start with?” Her tone was level, but Sy could practically feel the anger gathering beneath it.
Sy gave Delia his most practiced charming smile, the one he usually saved for interviews. It wasn’t a real smile, but only a few people got to see that one. Amy was one. Delia seemed fooled by this one, though, and her expression softened. She ran a hand through her long hair.
“That was not my best start. Maybe I could try that again?”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms, waiting.
Sy studied Delia. She looked refreshingly natural without a lot of makeup on, and he could suddenly see the resemblance between her and Amy. But some slight physical characteristics were all they shared.
Delia was still beautiful. Her golden hair fell past her shoulders and she had the same blue eyes she shared with her sister. Except … something was different. The color might be the same, but Amy’s were lit from within by a spark that Delia lacked.
He thought of Amy’s laughter, her bright eyes, the way she teased him, and her wildflower scent. Being around her felt like being bathed in light. And right now, with that light inside the house, Sy was trapped with Delia, whose growing irritation sucked up all the energy on the porch.
He gestured to the porch swing. “Could we sit?”
Delia sighed and sat down in the swing with a pinched expression on her face. She looked like she was trying but failing to stuff down her frustration.
Sy took the other side, keeping a good bit of space between them. The creak of the wood and the chains the swing hung from were so familiar. Many times, he had sat out on the swing at their old house with Amy. The memory brought a smile to his face and made him again wish to be inside.
He shook his head, trying to clear Amy out for at least a few minutes so he could apologize to Delia. That had been his original goal, and he still wanted to do it. The sooner he got it done, the sooner he could join Amy inside.
Taking a deep breath, Sy turned a little in his seat to face her. “Delia, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about prom.”
She nodded. “You’re forgiven. I do want to know this: why did you and Derek get into a fight anyway? I know he was a little punk, but he wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. I just figured he was jealous I said yes to you, not him.”
Sy’s mouth fell open. “Derek asked you to prom?”
“A few people did. But I was holding out for you, so once you asked, I told them all no.” She
gave him a wide smile.
Sy tried to process this. So, other guys asked Delia to prom first, and once Sy asked, she told them no. Did that mean she told them maybe and strung them along until she got a better offer?
In high school, Sy would have felt important hearing this, like Delia waited just for him. Now it felt … selfish.
“So, you wanted to go with me?”
“Of course I did. You had grown up so much and had that scholarship to play for UT. Things had really come together for you, and it seemed like the timing was finally right for us too.”
Delia smiled again and put her hand on his arm. It took everything in him not to jerk away. Instead, Sy did his best to shift farther away on the swing.
“I forgave you a long time ago. I mean, sure, I was mad you got arrested, but it didn’t ruin my prom or anything.” She giggled. “It was kind of flattering that you were fighting Derek over me.”
Sy’s jaw tightened, and he managed to extricate his arm from her grasp. “We weren’t fighting over you. He said something bad about Amy.”
“You fought him over my sister?” Delia looked stunned. Her lip curled a little when she said my sister.
Elton had been right. So right. Sy really hadn’t ever truly seen Delia. But he did now. His view of Delia had always been clouded by his attraction. Now that it had dimmed, he saw her more clearly. Delia had always been a little bossy, a little controlling, a little bit harsh. She wasn’t a terrible person, but Delia was like the sun in the center of the Delia-verse, with everyone else orbiting around her.
Except that Sy had moved out of her gravitational pull. And he wasn’t about to be pulled back in. The only place he wanted to be was inside, with Amy.
Delia laughed. “You know, Amy always had a crush on you.”
Her words weren’t mean, exactly, but they didn’t exactly sound kind either. She was doing that girl thing where they put someone down in a way that wasn’t an outright insult. Sy always hated that.
Then her words sank in, and his heart picked up its pace. “She did?”
Delia rolled her eyes. “Like you didn’t know. Remember how she always hung around when you were here? It was pretty embarrassing. I tried telling her not to bother you, but you were just so sweet to put up with her.”
Stealing the Bad Boy Page 6