She laughed, the only source of heat in this damn rain. Even under this starless night, she reminded me of the sun. So fucking warm all the time. Inside and outside. And I legit had no clue where this girl came from.
How she bulldozed her way into my life time and time again. How did it make sense for her to show up everywhere? Fill up every crevice of the universe?
“Look!” She jerked her hand above her. “It’s a beautiful night. No stars. Aren’t you at least gonna look at it?”
“No.”
I watched her instead, taking in her arms swinging back as she whirled in circles. Reaching into the center console, I stuck a confiscated joint in the corner of my mouth, wishing I could light it and replace one addicting substance with another.
Fuck this rain.
My eyes dropped to her nipples.
On the other hand, I didn’t hate the rain.
I toyed with the joint and observed Emery. As far as mental breakdowns went, this one was cute. Her smile never left, which was a miracle, considering she possessed absolutely no grace when it came to dancing.
Her limbs were too long for it. They got in her way as she twirled and swayed, two-mile-high legs peeking out beneath her shirt. Fucking perfect as she was, she didn't even look like a fantasy, because no mind on this earth could conjure her up.
Emery caught me staring. “Thinking about me?”
“In case you haven’t realized, I’m always thinking about you, and I like it as much as I’d like waking up to Rosco licking my face, but here we are.”
“Do you think it’s lust?” Keen eyes studied me, waiting for an answer to the question we always skirted.
“Tell you what… Ask me when you’re sober, and I’ll answer.”
Zero chance she’d remember any of this tomorrow.
Emery didn’t reply. She continued to dance, gracing me with a smile that suggested she knew something I didn’t. Cocky, yet somehow sweet. A drug too addictive to be on the market.
I sat in my drenched, six-hundred-and-forty-eight-thousand-dollar car, picking apart the ruined joint. Her lips muttered so many of her words, I couldn’t keep up, and even if I could, I was sure most of them didn’t exist in any dictionary alive except the walking dictionary baltering in the pouring rain.
“Fuck!” Emery dove suddenly for the passenger seat, toppling over the door until her legs stuck up in the air and her head landed somewhere on the floor of the car.
I set the joint down. “If this is part of baltering, I’m out.”
“Shut up. I’m saving it.”
“Saving what?”
“Pop your trunk and help me up.”
“Tell me what you’re saving.”
“Please, Nash… Just do it?”
“You’re a shit show,” I muttered, but I popped my trunk, opened my door, trampled through the mud, wrapped an arm around her middle, and hauled her against my body until nothing but soaking wet clothes separated us.
She cradled the box she’d taken from her room to her chest. It was a tin box, waterproof by nature, which she would have realized if she wasn’t hammered out of her mind.
Curiosity plagued my thoughts. I was tempted to ask her why she’d kept the notes, but I carried her to the trunk and set her down.
I wanted to crack open her mind like a book and read it, but I was fucked if it became my favorite book to read.
I obsessed.
When I loved a book, I didn’t read it once. I read it over and over again—until the pages fell off, until I could anticipate the words before I read them, until they sunk into me and melted inside my bones in a way that never happened with books I’d only read once.
I couldn’t dip into her mind.
She reeked of my downfall.
Emery used one of my gym shirts to wipe the rainwater off the lid before shoving the entire box in the corner with a bunch of my shirts covering it for good measure. When she lowered my hood, she sat on it.
“What’s your barrier?” She swiped at the wet hair plastered to her cheeks. “What’s stopping you from giving in? I’m not talking about just sex. I know if I told you I’m thinking of you bare and inside me”—fuck—“you'd give it to me. But what if I like who you are and want more than that?”
“You don't know who I am.”
“I do,” she argued. “More than you think I do, and it's driving me crazy.” Her ankle hooked around my leg. “Is it the age difference? Reed? The fact that I'm a Winthrop? Because I think it’s stupid when two people like each other but aren’t together.”
I grabbed her calf and stepped into her body. She hooked both legs around me.
“What if I don't like you?”
“I'd say you're a liar. Is it the taboo element that’s stopping you? What if I told you, as long as I don’t touch you, this isn’t wrong,” she whispered, getting closer. “You aren’t ten years older than me.” Lie. “You aren’t my best friend’s brother.” Lie. “You don’t hate me.” Finally, a truth. “Is that what you want to hear?”
Actually, what I wanted was absolute confirmation she had nothing to do with my dad’s death.
Legit the only thing I wanted.
Fuck revenge.
Fuck my brother.
Fuck the company.
Fuck the fucking age gap.
I just needed to know, with absolute certainty, she did not have anything to do with my parent’s losing their savings, with Dad losing his spot in the medical trial, with Hank Prescott dying.
For that to happen, I needed Gideon’s location.
I cupped her cheek, leaning in to inhale the petrichor on her skin. “Tell me where your dad is living, Little Tiger, and I will give you everything you want and more.”
“Enough with the subject changes.” One of the smartest people I knew, and she still didn’t get it. She leaned against my palm and closed her eyes. “For god’s sake, take a leap, Nash. You will always be older than me. I will always be younger than you. Maybe we’ll always ‘hate’ each other, too. But will we always feel like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like our fingertips can shoot lightning, but the only target they can hit is each other.”
“Talk to me when you’re sober.”
“I’m not wasted. I’m happy. And I’m finally realizing that two souls don’t just find each other by accident.” She leaned forward and bit my lip, harder than any sane woman would. “You taste like sin, Nash. So delicious. So wrong. So right.”
It wasn’t a kiss, but it could be. If I gave in, gripped her neck, and closed the distance, it could be. Was the last time a fluke, or did she really taste and feel as delicious as she looked and acted?
I stepped back from her. “Sober up, Tiger. It’s damn near freezing, and we’ll get sick if we stay long. You have twenty minutes before I’m taking us to the nearest hotel.”
She didn’t budge. “Is it about Hank?” Finally, she got it right, and I wanted her to think it was about our ages again. “You know he’d want you happy, right? Life is fucked up. It’s a roller coaster ride without an exit, and you’re smushed into the same tiny cart with eight billion other people. You can either push everyone off, throw up until you’re miserable, or enjoy the ride. Let’s enjoy the fucking ride, Nash.”