Carly Sevens
He was gone when I woke up, which was just fine. It saved any serious embarrassment on my part and awkwardness for him. Besides telling me how amazing I was last night, the next most used phrase that came from his lips was, ‘this can’t happen again.’ Jack Griggs, his twin Jake, and my mom had grown up together. He was ten years older than me and what we’d done could have serious repercussions. For fuck’s sake, I’d grown up calling him Uncle—well that wouldn’t happen again. Way too creepy after what we’d done.
I refrained from answering his ‘we can’t do this again,’ after the first couple of times. If he didn’t believe me after I agreed with him then that was his problem. I was in my last year of college for heaven’s sake. I had the rest of my life ahead of me. I wasn’t exactly expecting him to wake up and propose to me.
The things he’d done to me were everything I’d imagined he was capable of doing to a woman. Growing up, I’d heard my mom talking about Jake and Jack’s reputations, and now I knew the things I’d caught her gossiping about weren’t exaggerations. The only thing she seemed to underestimate was his capacity to give and take. Mom always said that they took from the women they slept with, but she was wrong about that. Jack wasn’t a selfish lover, and like the alpha males in the books I read at night, he got off on making me lose myself in him.
Wearing only a towel after my shower, I heard someone whistle behind me down the hallway. “Holy moly, Carly, what the hell happened to you? I thought we were the ones who’d stayed out to party. You never mentioned you were leaving for a private party.”
Sascha was in her PJ’s, carrying her breakfast back to her room. She was the quiet one in our group. She joined in when we went out but had to work hard at keeping her grades up. This meant she poured over study books every chance she got, like now, when she should have been relaxing with her breakfast.
I looked over my shoulder to see what she was referring to and felt my face pink up when I spotted the obvious hickeys all over my neck and shoulders. Damn it, when the hell did he do those? Clearly, I was so involved in my night of passion that I hadn’t noticed or felt him sucking the hell out of my skin. “Did you meet up with Xavier?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m leaving shortly to go home. I’ll be back next week.”
Sascha smiled at me and entered her room, study time beckoning her.
Xavier Burrows had been asking me on a date for almost six months. We’d met up at parties and shared the odd beer or slow dance with a kiss, but I was never really convinced he was my type. Like me, he was a business major, but whereas I was studying to become a successful business owner, he was studying to take over his dad’s insurance empire and I didn’t say empire lightly. It was the largest insurance broker on this side of the country. We shared a couple of classes, which was how we’d got to know each other. His business focus was on accountancy management whereas mine was small venture management. We didn’t have loads of classes together but enough for him to notice me and strike up a friendship. I don’t say that because I was top of the class, but because I had russet colored hair like no one else in my classes. I stuck out like the carrot top I was.
The first party we were at together was enough for him to introduce himself. We had a natural connection because of those classes, and his friends on the basketball team know some of the girls I lived with. It was college after all.
The first time he asked me out, I politely declined and made some excuse about needing to concentrate on my studies. Stupid me, though, blew that excuse apart when he saw me acing the two classes we did have together with ease. In order to keep the peace, I agreed to a dinner date and it wasn’t horrible… It just wasn’t exactly sparkling either.
Xavier was a great looking guy. He was super tall, obviously, because he played basketball, and he was very clean cut, in that he was well groomed and always smelled of expensive cologne. His clothes were more boutique than Bloomingdales, and if I was honest, the difference in our backgrounds scared me silly. He was clearly super rich and I was just average Carly, daughter of Tommy Sevens—local taxi company owner. I wasn’t scared that he’d shun me because of that. It was just that my life before finding my dad was not a place I wanted to revisit. I’d worked hard to become the person I was, but sometimes my head found itself back in the past, back to the time when I was hiding in the trailer from Gloria and my mom. Sometimes, I struggled to get over that. I was still sometimes the lost little trailer trash girl who only came alive when I went to live with my dad at the age of twelve.
I was an idiot. I should have put Sascha right before. Letting her assume I spent the night with Xavier would come back to bite me. She was bound to mention it to the others, who would gossip about it to Xavier’s teammates, and then I’d be in for a whole world of hurt.
My case was already packed, and as I checked my backpack for my laptop power pack and final assignments, a revision list hit the floor. “Perfect.”
That list was the excuse I needed to head Xavier off at the pass. Before I could change my mind, I pulled out my cell and dialed his number.
“Well if it isn’t the racy redhead in my life.” He always said the same thing.
“Hey, Xav, I’m heading home for the week. I just found our revision list. If you cover the top half, I’ll do the bottom half. We could swap notes when I get back?”
There was a muffled sound in the background and I knew I’d caught him with a girl when I heard, “Who is it? Come back to bed, baby,” in a southern drawl.
“One minute, Carls,” Xavier told me, and I recognized the sound of his hand muffling the mouthpiece. By the time he came back on the line, the echo in the background told me he’d moved location and was now in the bathroom. “Sorry about that. Bit nuts here after last night’s win. Sure thing on the revision. I was going to call and suggest it.”
“I heard about your win. Congratulations, you sound like you’ve had a long night celebrating.”
Xavier went quiet on the other end. “Just having some fun until you’re ready to be my girl.” He laughed, but I often wondered if he was completely serious.
“Talking of not having fun, I ducked out early on the girls last night. I needed to rest up for travelling home, and I let them think I was meeting you… Is that, uh, okay?”
Again, he went quiet. “You used me as an excuse? Sure, as long as we’re not talking murder alibi.”
“Definitely not. This is me we’re talking about.”
“No problem, Carls, but you owe me,” he replied, seizing a long awaited opportunity.
“What are we talking? Like extra revision sessions, a home baked cake or more?”
“Oh, definitely more.”
“Whatevs, Xav, see you next week.”
“Laters, Carls, and don’t think I won’t collect,” he said seductively before hanging up to go back and join his ‘fun’.
When I turned my car onto the street where our family home was, I was filled with the same feelings I had the very first time I’d arrived in Hawkstown. It was a desperate need for family love and the desire to find a normal parent. Ever since Tommy had laid eyes on me, he’d treated me like I was the most precious possession he didn’t know he had. That hadn’t changed one bit. His heart and capacity to love had only grown more, especially since he and Lacey, my stepmom, had welcomed my little sister Sophie and my brother Isaac into our lives.
Isaac was a crazy little bag of energy waiting patiently for me behind a makeshift fort in the front garden. As I pulled into the drive, I could see a toy gun poking through a slot in the wooden death trap and a cowboy hat sticking up above it. He and Sophie were keeping my dad young. There was a ten year age gap between my dad and Lacey, and keeping up with her was doing more than enough to keep him acting all spritely.
“Hands up!” I heard as I opened my car door. “You give me the password or I will end you,” the little voice shouted, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face.
“That’s no way for my favorite little guy to speak. Where’s my hug?”
“Cowboy Isaac ain’t no huggin’ guy,” he shouted like a mini John Wayne. “Password!”
I spun around and started to stalk towards the fort. “Is it horses?”
“No! Two more attempts or you’ll be for hangin’.”
Lord above, what had he been watching? My little brother, and Sophie when she was his age, had always been about dressing up. It was like their own lives weren’t enough and they needed to be in constant character mode.
“Is it rodeo?” I said, getting closer. I could see a little face now, through the slot, squinting down the barrel of a gun with effort.
“Is it… I’m coming to get you?” I roared and belted round the side of his fort.
“Intruder! Intruder!” he shouted and proceeded to fire water out of the end of his gun at me. Had I known it was a water gun, I would never have gotten so close. Water was dripping off my nose and the seriousness in his little face made me laugh harder. When I finally managed to get hold of him, I wrestled the gun from his clinging paws and started to tickle him so hard that he was squealing and wriggling round like a stuck pig.
“Someone! Help! Call the garrison. We’re under attack.”
No one came to Isaac’s immediate rescue so I carried on my tickling frenzy, shouting, “Tell me the password! Surrender!”
“I will never give it up,” he laughed back, and the next thing I knew we were both dripping in water. The shock from the cold brought us both up short, gasping for air.
“What the hell? Dad, what gives?” I shouted when I saw him stood to the side holding a bucket from the back yard.
“Well you were both brawling like drunken cowboys, so I thought I’d do what they used to do in the old days at the saloon—chuck water on them.”
Isaac grabbed his gun and discarded cowboy hat before running inside, muttering about seeking revenge for his dowsing. I rolled over on to my knees and pushed myself up from the soggy front lawn to be met with a serious scowl from my dad. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
The look on his face worried me something chronic at first, until I spotted how angry he looked.
“What the hell are those marks on your neck?”