I bypass Knox’s house like a reflex and park in Rush’s driveway instead. The driveway in front of Knox’s house is currently clogged with Harper’s wheels. And instead of hopping the two-foot picket fence between them, I head straight to Rush’s door and give a gentle knock.
The door opens, and there he is, Rush Knight dripping wet with a towel around his waist, those luscious beads of holy water gliding over the ridges of his abs.
His chest bucks. “I thought you said you had a hot date with another man tonight?” That sloppy grin glides up his cheek.
“I did, but I decided to stand him up for you.” I dig a finger into his rock-hard chest as I make my way inside and shut the door behind me. Rush moans as he takes me in from head to toe. His arms race up and down my back as his crotch rubs against my thigh.
“Wow, Knight. Is that a telescope you’re hiding under there, or are you just really, really glad I came over in time to help you alleviate that horny protrusion?”
“It’s a rocket that NASA implanted in my body.” He pumps a wry smile. “And they demand I find a nice dark, wet home for it. You know of any place we can keep this government secret safe for the night?”
“Hmm.” I tap my chin. “If it’s for the security of this country, I’ve always been a fan of the space program. Deep—deep space.”
“Ooh.” He winces, and those heavy lids of his drop down a notch.
And just like that, I drop to the floor.
“What are you doing?” There’s a dark hint of mischief in his voice as he asks. It’s more of a rhetorical question at this point.
I snatch the towel away quick and sharp as if I were a magician unveiling my next act. And shockingly I am. There he is, hung like a horse, like a real live Clyde the donkey, and the boys in the back don’t exactly look like a pair of homely backup singers. Nope. This band has three main acts, and I plan on juggling them all at once. Mind you I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m a quick learner. They didn’t exactly let me in with the best and the brightest for slacking off.
“I decided I needed another lesson.” I blink up innocently at him, and Rush springs to life, just shy of grazing my lips with his pointy presence. “And it suddenly looks as if you’re up for giving it to me.”
He lets out a ragged breath as if this entire event were already pushing him over the edge. His fingers rake through my hair, and it feels like the most decadent massage.
“Trixie,” he expires my name like the hiss of a tire. “You have no idea how insane you make me.”
“Insanity is a good thing as long as you’re on the right side of the psychosis.” I lean in and grab the length of him in my hand, the boys with the other, and my mouth opens ever so slightly as I try my best to learn as I go. And I can’t help but wonder if that old adage, fake it till you make it, applies to something like this.
Just as my lips make contact with something so wide that the girth of which will never fit into my mouth—and he can forget about the length—the door swings open, and I glance over to find my brother standing there, mouth and eyes wide-opened—a look of intense horror written on his face that I have never witnessed before.
The three of us freeze—a panicked paralysis hits us as the breeze whistles in harsh and biting.
“I’m going to kill you.” He lunges for Rush so fast I duck and roll just to escape the onslaught.
Knox roars like a lion on fire as he knocks Rush against the wall so hard a plume of dust goes flying as the drywall splits.
“Oh my God, STOP!” I scream at the top of my lungs, but Knox launches Rush around the room like a naked pinball. The muscles in Rush’s arms and legs bulge like bricks as he struggles to tear my brother off him, but Knox is driven by a ripe madness that can only be brought on after witnessing such an unholy sight. And who could blame him? I was holding Rush’s manhood like a microphone, my mouth opened as if I were about to sing an aria.
A shrill scream escapes me as I struggle to process what’s happening. Knox pins Rush against the kitchen cabinet and connects his fist to Rush’s face over and over again until blood begins to squirt onto the white counter.
Harper runs in screaming and strangles the shit out of Knox until he relents and stumbles backward. He’s panting, all of his hatred still pouring over Rush.
It takes a moment for me to pick up the towel and throw it over to Rush, but he wipes the blood off his face with it instead of concerning himself with modesty. I never said he was shy.
My brother stomps on over to me, and I’m afraid for my own face. “Is this what you want, Trix?” Knox riots just inches from my nose. “What the fuck are you thinking?” His voice reverberates right through my bones. “This dude is with a different chick every day of the week! Are you going to let him use you like this? I thought you were smarter than that!” he thunders so loud the windows hum as they rattle.
“This is what I want!” I riot right back at him. “Rush and I are together! We’ve been together all semester. We’re in love.” Those last words come out softer, like something that should remain unspoken.
“Love?” Knox bounces back on his feet—the way he does on the field as he’s psyching up for a big play. “Trixie, this guy doesn’t understand the meaning of the word. He’s a sociopath that prefers his victims in the bedroom. Who the hell told you he loved you?” He takes an aggressive step toward Rush. “Did you fucking lie and tell her you love her?”
“No.” Rush closes his eyes a moment.
And then it hits me like a lead ball to the stomach.
Rush has never said those words to me.
He looks over at me longingly as if begging me to forgive him.
“You love me, right?” There’s an edge to my voice. “I said it to you.” Tears break through as my heart falls right out of my chest and explodes into a big bloody mess at my feet.
Harper pulls me to the door. “Come on. I’ll get you home.”
“No.” I shake her off, my gaze still locked over Rush. “We were real, right? Tell Knox we were the real thing. Say you love me.” I knife that last sentence out like the command it is.
Rush takes a breath and not a single word evicts from his throat. His eyes gloss over as our eyes lock, but his jaw remains locked with no intention of moving.
Knox lets out an awful grunt. “You can’t say you love her, can you?”
A horrible silence clots up the room, a silence so deafening I will hear it, feel its coldness forever in my nightmares. Rush just stands there, naked, gorgeous as all hell, with the inability to speak a single word.
An intense searing pain works its way through my body, a bone-shattering ache that I have not felt since the time my mother was taken away in court. A hiccup of a cry bucks through me, and I snatch my keys off the floor and get the hell out of there.
Rush is just like my mother—a damn liar who never loved me to begin with.
“Trixie, wait!” But it’s not Rush running after me. It’s Knox. He tackles me as I’m about to duck into my car, wraps his arms around me tight, and pulls me close, his mouth next to my ear. “I love you, Trix. I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you. I love you so much it hurts.”
I guess you’d have to have a twin to understand the impact of those words. Knox knew I needed to hear them from someone—anyone really.
“I know.” I offer a quick kiss to his cheek before ducking into my car and hightailing it the hell out of there.
Rush
Life is hell.
Sometimes I think it would have been better if I had been with my mother in the car that day. For whatever reason, Nolan and Sunday seemed to come out of the tragedy unscathed, and yet it was me who lumbered through these hazy days without my mother just as injured as if I were a passenger. Yes, it was me she was coming to pick up from practice. Yes, it was an accident, but the two facts put together have pressed down on both my shoulders and my soul ever since I got the news.
I haven’t been the same since. I watched Nolan drift in and
out of relationships until the big one hit with Misty. He fell in love, head over heels like some textbook sap who couldn’t control the grin on his face. Sunday had puppy love peppered in here and there, no one serious. No necks to break—yet. And me, I fell into bed with one girl after the next, and each and every time it amounted to nothing more than a bodily function. That is, until I met Trixie. That first kiss was pure magic—so was every one after that. Something about those eyes of hers intoxicated me long before she ever landed us in that bathroom. Something new awoke in me, and I wondered if it could be that slippery snake that had wrapped itself around my brother’s heart, love. But I loved my mother with every ounce of my being, and I cursed her with it, too. Or at least it felt that way. I love Sunday, and she’s still walking around, giving me hell when she can. Thank God for that. I don’t know. There’s just something powerful about the way Trixie makes me feel, and it’s a far cry from anything I feel for my sister.
I haven’t called Trixie since that night she begged me to tell her that I loved her—the night that will go down in infamy as the day I officially became a coward. It’s safe to say both Knox and Lawson are morbidly pissed at me. Knox won’t even give me the finger, and Lawson wouldn’t look at me during practice. Grant assured me that Lawson plans on kicking my balls when the time is right. I have no doubt the only reason he’s holding back is because he doesn’t want to get benched.
And Rex? The dude smiled and nodded at me when I accidentally ran into him on campus. It’s clear he’s not in the loop, and for that I’m thankful. Hell, I wish I wasn’t in the loop.
A week goes by and then another. Trixie shows up to the Media Club meetings as if nothing happened. She doesn’t make eye contact with me, though. She’s buddying up to Seth as if he’s her new best friend. A part of me wants to think she’s trying to light a fire in me, throw me in some jealous rage. But the more I watch them, and I do watch them openly, there’s something genuine in the way they react, the way Seth Fucking Baker makes her laugh. Yeah, he’s under my skin. I’ll probably have to kill him long before my brother marries his sister. Sorry, Misty. You’ll be short your only sibling come your wedding day. But it’s just something I have to do. And during those Media Club meetings, when Miranda Smirnoff comes sniffing my neck, telling me how much she misses my cologne on her sheets, I don’t exactly stop her. Maybe this is how it should be. Trixie paired to someone with a beating heart like Seth and me paired with Randy Mandy, someone I can have something quick and dirty with and not have to worry about killing her unintentionally with my love.
Love. God, I hate that word. I wish Trixie had never said it to me. I don’t deserve it. Just like I didn’t deserve her.
But on this Saturday night, Grant and Eli Gates drag me down to the Black Bear for dinner. We had a game earlier against Dunton, a school from up north. The Mustang basketball team hadn’t won a game against Dunton since 1946. So, tonight’s victory was sort of a big deal. Not for me, though. It seemed the whole world came out to cheer us, and, yet, I didn’t see the only face in the crowd I cared about. But I guess in the end it played in our favor. I channeled my rage, all of the pain of not having Trixie in my life, the outrage that she might actually be interested in Seth, as stupid as that sounds, and I ran that ball down the court, shooting and scoring our way to victory as if I were playing against five-year-olds.
“Dude, you’re a hero.” Seth slaps me over the back as we settle into our table. I’m guessing Trixie never fessed up to him about our relationship. I know for a fact she hasn’t told Sunday a thing.
Lawson catches my eye from across the way, and I look right past him at the beautiful girl seated at the end of his table. That organ I wish I didn’t have stops beating altogether. Lawson for one is apprised of this shitty situation. He and Lucky just so happened to be seated with Sunday and Trixie. There she is, looking stunning as ever, stopping hearts all over Hollow Brook with those bewitching eyes, starting with mine.
Hell, I can’t do this. I can’t be in another club meeting with her. I can’t be in a bar or anywhere on The Row with her, that’s for damn sure. Then, in a serendipitous moment, or one ensconced in a nightmare—take your pick—Trixie looks over at me, and our gaze locks strong as steel. A single tear rolls down her face, heavy and weighted as lead—a dying star taking all of my dreams down with it. And even that heartbreaking action only seems to amplify her beauty. Yes, Trixie is a beautiful girl, but it’s who she is on the inside that made me fall for her like a house of playing cards, each and every one of them a queen.
Seth swats me. “Dude, what the hell’s happening?”
Eli and Grant lean in and try to garner my attention. They were the only ones I told, and now I regret it. I regret every last detail of my life with the exception of anything that happened between Trixie and me.
Eli butts his shoulder to mine. “Maybe we should go?”
But I’m not looking at Eli. I can’t seem to tear my gaze from Trix.
Lawson charges at me, pulling me out of my seat, knotting up my shirt in his hands, and sends us both stumbling backward into a group of girls who let out a choir of screams.
“You don’t get to look at her!” he thunders into my face, and my eyes close with the reverberation. He gives me another hard shove, but this time I maintain my stance. “You don’t get to be in the same room with her.” Lawson looks at me with that sober expression that lets me know he’s just as sorry that we’ve devolved to this as I am. “You had one job, man—stay away.”
Sunday jumps up, her mouth agape, that look of abject horror on her face lets me know she’s put the pieces together.
“Is this because of you?” She points hard to the booth where Trixie’s face is slicked with tears. But her affect tells a different story. Trixie might be grieving what we had, but she is stone-cold pissed. “Are you the reason my best friend has been up all night for weeks crying herself to sleep?” Her voice breaks, and I can’t take it. “Oh my God, you deserve all of the misery I hope you’re embroiled in. You were always good at accruing the stupid tax—the price you pay for a stupid move.”
The crowd around us hushes. Even the band seems to play a little softer in honor of the chaos. An entire circle of people surrounds us, and there’s no escaping it. There’s no point in dicking around anymore. I need to own this. We both do.
Trixie comes over and wraps an arm around my sister. “I’m over it. Let’s get out of here.”
“No.” Sunday shakes her loose and takes a step in toward me. Her face is red as a pomegranate, her eyes bulging with a rage I’ve never seen in her before as tears of her own begin to make their debut. “You did this. You knew she was my roommate. You had to have known this would end badly because she’s not your run-of-the-mill whore you bed on a nightly basis!” she screams the words so loud the waitresses come out in force, one of them being Serena. The hurt on my sweet cousin’s face says it all. I’ve gone too far. I didn’t just ruin things with Trixie. I ruined things with everybody.
“You’re right.” It takes everything I have to meet up with Trixie’s gaze once again, and when I do, she blinks back as if I struck her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I should have known better. I’ll do my best to stay away from you.” I look to Sunday, to Lawson, to Serena. “I’ll lay low from here on out.”
I make a beeline for the exit, and not a soul comes after me. Not that anyone should. I hightail it all the way back to my place, but I don’t head inside. Instead, I jump into my truck and start the long, winding drive to nowhere.
* * *
The overlook at the top of the mountain has always been a tourist’s draw. It’s always been the place where couples hang out, where just about anyone in the tri-city area comes to sit and process their thoughts for a while, and that last one is exactly what brings me here. It might be a cold November night, but there’s enough life up here you’d think it was afternoon in the middle of a balmy summer. I used to come up here with Nolan all the time.
&nb
sp; I find a flat rock near the fence line just this side of the cliff and stare out at the city below. In the distance, you can see Jepson shimmering like a jewel in the night. To the right, far to the west, you can see Hollow Brook Hills, the place we still call home. After my mother died, we didn’t move. We simply moved on. Or at least my father did. He started dating about nine months after she passed away. It wasn’t even a year.
My arms stretch out behind me as I look up to the sky blooming with stars, so dense and so thick, it looks as if they were layered on top of one another in giant creamy swaths. I used to sit outside at night a lot after the accident and look up at the sky, wondering if my mother had turned into a star, if she could see me, if she was angry with me for costing her life. Of course, she was. I had instantaneously become her one regret. Or maybe I hadn’t.
A full breath expires from me.
Who the hell knows.
“You saving a spot for someone, or can two sit on this rock?” a dude’s voice comes from behind, and I’m about ready to deck him and bolt, but I’m shocked to see I recognize him.
“Nolan?” I sit up straight.
“Sunday said you took off. She went to your place and said your truck was gone. I figured I’d take a risk and see if you were here. Spotted your truck in the lot.” He scratches at the back of his neck before taking a seat next to me. “I heard what happened. Trixie Toberman, huh? Sunday’s roommate. Cute, funny, biting humor, though. I warned Sunday about her the day I helped move her in.” He knocks his shoulder to mine as if emphasizing the fact he’s teasing, even though we both know he’s not. “She’s a knockout. I’m not faulting you for anything. So what happened? I thought you knew how to handle the masses. It sounds like this one may have tripped you up. It happens to the best of us.”
“She didn’t trip me up.” I press my palm into my forehead so hard you’d think I was trying to cave my skull in. “I fell over my own twisted shit.” I tell him about that first kiss, how she caught me off guard, how I thought for certain it would never happen again. How it just kept happening. “It kept getting better, dude.” I thump my fist over his leg. “And then things got serious. She said she—you know, loved me. I didn’t say it back.” I tip my head to the stars again and wish I had the power to turn back time like I’ve been prone to wish, and, oddly, on this occasion, it would be right back to that night Trixie said she loved me. My heart wrenches at the thought I’ve hurt her. Would I stop her from saying it? Or could I bring myself to join her? Something deep in my bones shakes as if my body were trying desperately to give me the answer.