Shoving up to my feet, I notice a shadow standing on the other side of the fence.
It’s Parrish.
“I’ve been watching you the whole time,” he says, which should be creepy but comes across in a different way somehow. Observant, really, like he expected less out of me, and I surprised him.
I move toward the gate, and he waits until I’m on the other side before pressing the button to slide it closed. As I follow him up the curving driveway toward the front door, I hear something over my shoulder and turn to look.
It sounded like there were footsteps there in the dark, but now that I’m looking, the moon is full and the darkness has been driven back to the shadows of foliage and the looming rectangles of houses. There’s nothing there, and the sound is gone.
I’m sure I imagined it.
When I squat down in front of my bedroom door, Parrish does the same. He's picking his lock, same as I am.
“Do you need a spare bobby pin perchance?” I whisper back, trying not to notice the nearness of his body. I should rightfully want to kill him for locking me out, but then, he did come back so I suppose that helps. He pauses briefly, his voice softer and quieter than I’ve ever heard it. And not just because we’re both whispering to avoid detection. More than that. Something else.
“No, thank you. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this.”
That’s when I realize it.
The reason we're having such problems, me and my new stepbrother.
I bite my lower lip and try to shove that knowledge back in the dark box of my mind where it belongs, right into the same place I’m keeping my natural attraction to my sister’s boyfriend, and the pain I feel every day I wake up here and not back home with the Banks.
The thing about doing that, about stuffing emotions away where you can’t see them, is that they fester and rot and morph into something so much worse. Monsters, that’s what they become. Fucking monsters.
I pause and exhale, knowing that I’m starting to run out of space in that box.
“Parrish,” I start, reaching up to put the bobby pin in the lock. But my door is no longer locked or … it never was? It swings open slightly, revealing the dark bedroom beyond it.
Huh.
“Yeah?” he asks, his voice strangely receptive. He’s probably still drunk. But still, it’s too good an opportunity to pass up. I decide that I must not have closed the door all the way and push the worry aside.
“Do we have a thing, maybe?” I ask, because I can’t forget the way he looked at me at the party, like something he shouldn’t want but did anyway. Of course, I could’ve just imagined it. It’s also possible that he was simply looking at Lumen. “Is that one of the reasons we hate each other so much?”
He says nothing, but I can hear his clothes rustling as he stands up behind me. I stand up, too, and turn. Almost too quickly, my green and black hair flying out and smacking him across the face. Oddly enough, he doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, his brown eyes are locked on me with an unnerving amount of focus and attention.
My breath quickens, my heart pounds, strange things happen in my lower belly.
I shift uneasily on my feet.
He doesn’t have to answer me: I can feel it.
The same sort of natural attraction I felt toward Maxx, I feel it toward Parrish. I feel it, and he feels it, and we’re as impossible as me and Maxx. More so, really. Because I know that, more than anything, Parrish loves Tess. She’s as much his real mother as she isn’t mine. And yet, she considers us both her children.
Also, I hate him. There’s that, too. Natural chemistry doesn’t make up for the fact that Parrish is an insufferable tool who’s chosen to make my life hell for no other reason than that he feels like it.
“There is nothing between us,” he says, but the way he’s looking at me says he’s a skilled and consummate liar. His eyes rake my body, from my mussy hair to my mismatched shoes, and he sucks in a sharp intake of breath. “I told you, Gamer Girl: I don’t do incest.”
“That kiss might prove otherwise,” I retort, but he pretends not to hear me.
Parrish turns on his heel and disappears into his room. At first, it feels like he might very well slam his door and give us both away. But at the last minute, he slows it and then very carefully pushes it shut. I hear the lock click into place, standing alone in the hallway and panting like I’ve just run a marathon.
My hand comes up to my chest as I struggle to catch my breath.
Is my type just ‘emotionally unavailable and impossible’? No. That isn’t me. I’m not into guys who behave like jerks. I don’t … I’m not finding myself attracted to Parrish just because he’s hot, or because he’s a bastard. No, it’s in spite of those things. It’s the way he watches out for Tess, how he cares so much that it’s hurting him.
I recognize that because I do it, too, put other people first at the expense of myself.
As Maxx Wright is the opposite of me, an ideal of confidence and self-care that I ascribe to be, Parrish is just the same as I am.
The question is: do opposites really attract? Or can we fall for ourselves in somebody else?
With a huff, I turn on my heel and shove open my bedroom door, neglecting to turn on the light as I flop onto my bed in the corner. Outside the wall of windows, Lake Washington sparkles under the moonlight, white crested waves beating a steady and comfortable rhythm against the curvature of the shore.
Standing up, I pad over to the windows and find that none of them open. None of them. Not a one. Here we are with this beautiful view—this privileged view—of the water and yet I can’t crack a window?
Suddenly desperate for the steady heartbeat of mother earth, I turn and head into the bathroom, finding that at the very least the window above the bathtub opens. I push it as wide as I can, manipulating the screen until I can pull it into the bathroom and toss it aside. Crossing my arms on the windowsill, I lean out and close my eyes, letting moonlight and the distant taste of sea salt from the Puget Sound wash over my face.
Even with Parrish’s brush off, I feel better somehow, like I at least understand where he’s coming from.
I'm going to be okay, I tell myself, because in that moment, with the sound of the water, and the wild thumping of my heart, it truly feels like I will be.
That is, until I wake up the following morning.
I come to at the sound of knocking on my door, a small groan slipping from between my lips as I turn over and find my freshly charged phone. It’s not quite ten in the morning, but it’s also Sunday. Do the people in this house never sleep in? I’m tired from the party, but there’s also no way to admit to that without admitting to sneaking out.
With yet another grumble of disapproval, I stand up and pad over to my bedroom door, opening it to find Tess waiting with a handful of balloons. They say Happy Birthday on them. I blink a few times in surprise and then try to force a smile.
“Whose birthday is it?” I ask, wondering if it’s Ben’s or perhaps the twins’. Hopefully it isn’t Kimber’s. Tess laughs, like I’ve just told the most wonderful joke. Apparently, I’m the butt of one. Or … I’m about to be.
“I don’t know how you usually celebrate,” she starts as I look past her shoulder and notice Parrish relaxing in the doorway to his bedroom, leaning shirtless against the doorjamb with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s watching me carefully, frowning as usual. It feels like things should be different between us this morning, considering we were partners in crime last night, but apparently I’m the only person who feels that way.