I WAS WALKING IN THE dark streets with Adam, but I wasn’t seeing a gosh darn thing, because my hand was in his now like it belonged there, for heaven’s sake. It was big and warm and I thought my heart might burst right open. And he’d kissed me. I’d been kissed. Not just some little, small kiss either. Sure, I’d taken the first step and laid one on him, but I’d felt like it was time and I was done waiting. But I hadn’t expected that. Not the slip of his tongue or the sting of his teeth. I didn’t expect a full-on mouth invasion. And I didn’t think that first kisses were supposed to be like the one Adam gave me. Because it wasn’t a fumbling, messy, awkward kiss. No, it was a kiss to end all kisses. A kiss that would put every future kisses I ever had to shame. And his taste. He had tasted like sweet smoke and mint and pure manly goodness. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Obsessing over it. And even though it had only been ten minutes, I knew I’d still be thinking about it in ten years, too. It was a kiss to remember. Yeah, the heart fever was back in full effect.
I was walking around in a kiss stupor when I realized we weren’t headed back to the field or the island. We were walking down a long road of old apartment buildings, the rain at a steady drizzle now. “Where are we going?”
I sounded like I was still in a daze and I touched my lips realizing they still felt swollen and hot. All I could think of was how I wanted more kisses from Adam. Right now. All the time. Anywhere. Everywhere.
“Home.”
I pulled my hand from his. “But my home isn’t this way.”
“Nope, but mine is.”
“Oh.” That was all I could say. He was taking me to his home. What in the hell was happening? I felt like I was dreaming. He was kissing me. And holding my hand and now he was taking me home. I wondered if I was going to get to meet his family. I was damn near giddy.
We walked through the bad part of town and eventually hit a dilapidated apartment building and while I knew Adam didn’t have much, it finally occurred to me exactly how poor he was.
My father and I had been lower middle class before he’d made it. And as we walked through the halls and up the stairs of the apartment building, I realized we had never been as poor as Adam and his family. No, this was definitely lower class. Our wet shoes squeaked against the floors and there was the faint scent of mold in the air.
A female voice called out behind us, “Where you going, baby?”
And I turned to find what looked like a strung-out girl not much older than me coming out of her apartment door.
Adam spared her a small glance before saying, “Go back to bed, Mona.”
Her glazed over eyes took me in and she smiled. “Who you got with you?”
“None of your business.”
I followed Adam up the stairs as we left Mona behind. I felt bad for her.
“That was sad,” I mumbled, following Adam up.
He shrugged his shoulders. “This whole damn place is sad, Liv. Why do you think I meet you in the field?”
He wasn’t hiding me? Or ghosting me? He was protecting me from this part of his life and that made me a whole new kind of sad. This time for Adam.
With the jingle of his keys, he opened the door to his apartment and we walked in to a brown, threadbare carpet and a not much better brown sofa, but the place looked and smelled clean. It was an open floor plan with a decent size living room attached to a small dining area off to the side and a small kitchen in the corner. On each end of the room were two doorways I assumed led to bedrooms.
And then it occurred to me. What if Adam lived here alone? I’d never asked his age. Oh my God, what if he just looked young and was like twenty-three? Holy shit, that was definitely not going to fly with the stepmonster. The tattoos and smoking would probably be enough to send her over the edge, anyway.
“How old are you?”
He smiled. “Now she asks.”
My chest tightened in panic because he looked way too smug. “Oh my God, you’re like thirty, aren’t you? Oh my God!” I started to pace the room.
Adam’s eyes rolled and his head shook back and forth slowly. “Chill out, crazy lady. I’m only nineteen.”
Whew. I almost had a freaking heart attack.
“Hold on one second,” he said, pulling off his wet T-shirt, and I thought my eyes were going to cross. Because damn, he looked good. I mean, he looked good clothed, but he looked even better not. “I need to check on my dad.”
Oh, so his dad was here.
“Hijo, is that you? Who’s there with you?”
Adam gave me an almost smile. “Yeah, Dad, it’s me. I have a friend with me.”
“A female friend, maybe? Do I hear a girl, hijo?”
A full-blown smile now covered Adam’s lips as he rolled his eyes at his father, but I barely noticed, because nipples and abs and dear Lord those pants were low. God, his skin was a light brown and his torso was long and sinewy. I wanted to stare. A lot. So it was only a little awkward when I stared and looked away and then stared and looked away again. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice, but if the heat in his eyes was anything to go by, he totally did. And his heat made me hot all over. Lord help me.
“I’m coming, Pops. Give me a second.”
Adam threw his shirt on the kitchen counter and turned toward a dark room off the main area.
“Bring your friend, too, Adam. I want to see her.”
Adam looked back at me clearly embarrassed before gesturing for me to follow him. I pulled on the bottom of my wet dress and smoothed my hair back. I would meet Adam’s dad looking like a drowned rat. Great.
He turned the light on as we entered a small bedroom with the same brown carpet. It was sparsely decorated. Only a photograph of the stars over a queen bed. A solitary dresser was pushed against the wall opposite. Nothing else occupied the room besides a small end table that sat next to the bed. And in the middle of the bed sat a big Hispanic man. A very good-looking middle-aged Hispanic man.
He had gauze on his forehead and a huge smile on his face at the sight of me.
Adam walked to the bed while I stood in the doorway, trying to be invisible. I was a nervous wreck. I’d never met the parents.
“How you doing, Pops? Any pain? Hungry?” Adam tried pulling his covers up around him and the big man sat up further and shooed Adam’s hands away.
“Move, son, move. I’m trying to meet your friend. Come closer, nena linda.” He waved me over and as Adam backed away with a grin, I moved forward.
He studied me as I studied him. His eyes were a deep chocolatey brown and even though his hair was too long and wrinkles bracketed the corners of his kind eyes, I imagined this man was beautiful in his youth because he definitely wasn’t bad to look at now. “My son has good taste, yes?” he said, his eyes dancing with humor and flirtation.
I couldn’t help but smile back at him even as I blushed down to my very bones.
“What’s your name, niña?”
“Livingston.”
He was too quick with an answer to not know it already. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl. I can see why my son hasn’t been home lately.” He shot Adam a knowing look before gazing back at me. “I’m José. It’s very nice to meet you, Livingston. Do you work? Go to school? Where do you live? How old are you?”
“Okay, okay, Pops! That’s enough of an interrogation tonight. You’re supposed to be resting and I need to get Liv a change of clothes. She’s soaking wet from the rain.”
“Fine, but you must bring her back when I’m feeling better. I’ll make Mom’s pastélon and she can tell me everything.”
Adam poured some water from a pitcher on the dresser into a cup and set it on a small table next to the bed and made sure the covers were straight around his dad. “I can hardly wait,” he mumbled.
Longing blasted through me. Seeing Adam with his obviously kind father made me miss my own.
Adam snapped off the light on his way out as his father said, “It was nice meeting you, Livingston.”
I smiled at José, already deciding he was pretty awesome. “Nice meeting you, too, Mr. Nova.”
He shook his head and laid his hand over his heart. “You wound me, niña! I am no old man. Mr. Nova is my father. You call me José, yes?”
I giggled. “Okay, José.”
“Perfecto.” His eyes moved to Adam. “Goodnight, hijo. Te amo.”
We headed out of the room as Adam said, “I love you, too, Pops.”
As I followed Adam across the living area I couldn’t help but think of how lucky he was to have such a loving father. He was a character for sure, but I was willing to bet they had a lot of fun together. I was willing to wager that the gauze on his father’s forehead was the reason I hadn’t seen him for days.
“You’ve been taking care of your dad.” I was stating the obvious. And as we entered Adam’s room he gave me an explanation that made me feel like absolute crap for thinking he was ghosting me.
“Yeah, he fell down the stairs a few days ago and hit his head. The damn elevators were broken. Stupid piece of shit building. He likes to go down there and play cards with his friends. He has a bad leg and has no damn business taking the stairs, but I was at school. Mona found him and called the ambulance. They kept him a few days and I couldn’t leave him.” His soft eyes told me he thought of me while he was taking care of his dad. That he wished he could have let me know what was going on.
“I’m sorry. I’m glad he’s home and okay.”
He inclined his head. “Yeah, me, too.”
“And I also think we should exchange phone numbers so that never happens again.” I laughed.
“What? You didn’t like meeting Raven and having our first argument in a dark alley while it’s pouring rain?”
The fact he said our first argument made me feel good. Like maybe there actually was an us and that we’d be around long enough to argue again. There wasn’t anyone else on earth I wanted to argue with besides Adam. Especially if all of the arguments ended with the kiss. The fever.
Adam’s room wasn’t much different than his dad’s. It was minimally decorated and as soon as we entered, Adam started stripping what was left of his clothes off. I turned around to give him some privacy and I heard him snicker. My face burned. I wanted to watch him take his wet pants off. I really did, but I thought I’d probably had all I could handle tonight with that kiss and those abs.
My heart pounded in my chest as I heard the rustling of clothes. Finally, Adam appeared in front of me in nothing but low-slung track pants, holding out a black T-shirt and a pair of black gym shorts. I stared because, oh my God, I’d fantasized a lot about this boy in the past couple of weeks. Hell, I’d fantasized about him before I even met him, but nothing compared to the real thing and it was pretty spectacular. Those dark brown nipples were calling my name. I wanted to touch them, taste them. And lordy, but those V-shaped muscles at the top of his pants were the best kind of distraction.
Adam cleared his throat and my eyes shot to his. “You gonna stand there all night staring?” He smirked before he ordered, “You should get out of those wet clothes before you get sick.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I bet you say that to all the girls.” But he was right. My teeth were practically chattering, but I’d happily freeze to death if I got the chance to look him over all night.
His face was serious. “Never. I’ve never brought a girl to my home besides Raven.”
“Seriously?” I was the only girl he’d ever brought here to meet his dad and see his room? Why? How?
“Yep, now get changed.”
He turned around to give me some privacy and I slipped out of my wet clothes and slid his on. They smelled like him and all of a sudden, I had the urge to roll around in a pile of his clothes. God, he even smelled sexy. I was in so much trouble.
He picked my dress up off the floor and hung it over the back of a chair that sat at a small desk adjacent to his bed. “Will you get in trouble for not being home? It’s getting late.”
“I don’t even think they know I’m gone.” I’d long since given up caring if they cared.
His face said it all. That he thought that sucked, but instead of giving me any shit about it, he turned off the light and grabbed my hand and led me to the bed. He lay down and patted the spot next to him and I was so excited to be in his room and about to lie in his bed that I almost missed it. I almost didn’t see all the glow in the dark stars and planets and constellations that covered his walls and ceiling.
“Ohh my goodness. It’s beautiful.” I spun around the room, arms out, feeling like I was floating in space. It was pitch-black and all I could see were the radiating stars and planets. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.
“Come on. It’s almost like the field,” he said, patting the bed beside him, and I thought he was crazy because it was a hell of a lot better.
I crawled over to him, my wet hair hanging around my face. He was lying in the middle of the bed and I wondered where the heck he wanted me to lie if he was taking up the whole dang thing.
“Here,” he said, patting his chest and I felt my face warm. I didn’t let my shyness keep me from practically climbing his body like a tree and settling my head into the crook of his neck, my face into the solidness of his chest. He wrapped his arms around me and bent a leg until my leg fell between his and I was practically straddling his thigh.
“Mmm,” I moaned because it felt good and not just in the arousing way. It had been a long time since someone had held me and it had never been someone who wasn’t my immediate family.
I felt his chin at the top of my head. It made me happy and I sank further into him, my body going limp like a noodle. All the fight and gusto from earlier was gone and in its place was peace. “I love your room.”
It was a little slice of beautiful heaven in that ugly building. On a scary side of town. It was totally Adam. His room was like a beacon of light in the dark. Just like him.
“Thanks. My mom helped me do it.”
I wanted to ask how she’d died. What had happened, but instead I asked an easier question for him to answer. “What was she like?”
His answer was quick. “She was amazing. Her name was Jennifer, but my dad always called her Jenny. She had long, curly, blond hair and blue eyes.”
That explained Adam’s gorgeous blue eyes.
“She was a vegetarian and loved doing yoga and being outdoors. Pops used to call her a hippy jokingly, but she didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She was quiet and awkward and prone to bouts of depressions, but she loved the stars and she loved to tell me about them.”
I wrapped my arms around his torso. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.” It was just a whisper, but I still heard it long and clear. I felt like that whisper was a plea. A plea to talk about what happened. I felt like he was begging for someone to know and understand.
“What happened?” I murmured into his chest.
I felt his neck and chest work with grief under my head. “She killed herself. Pills. I found her one day when I got home.”
My body locked tight at the news. No. I couldn’t fathom that Adam had lost someone in that way and my heart completely broke for him. I couldn’t imagine either of my parents leaving me willingly. I couldn’t even fathom him finding her. Tears sprang to my eyes and I was so very sorry I’d even asked.
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“Oh, God, Adam. I am so sorry,” I choked out and I thought I felt a kiss pressed to the top of my head.
“It’s okay. It’s been a long time. She’d always struggled with depression. She used to work on the island, ya know? Cleaning houses.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She didn’t have a degree or anything like that, but she liked taking care of others so it was a good gig for her. Until one of her employers assaulted her. That was the beginning of the end. She never got over it.”
My head shot up off his chest and I stared down into intense azure eyes. “What? Like sexually?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus. That’s awful.”
“Yeah. She wasn’t the same after that. She just never got over it. Never got any better. No matter how many therapist appointments she went to. No matter how many meds she took. No matter how my dad tried to protect her. She stopped leaving the house even to see the stars. She was just too soft, too tender-hearted. Too sensitive. It broke her.”
God, my chest felt like it had been split wide-open. I was shattered for Adam and his sweet dad. And for his mother who’d experienced something so horrific.
“And the person who did it? What happened?”
Adam looked away from me and stared at the wall adjacent from us, his face speaking volumes. “What usually happens when someone from the island hurts one of us. Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I sat up, feeling outrage, anger, hurt, too many damn feelings to count on this family’s behalf. “Nothing?” My voice was getting louder.
Violence and injustice colored his features. “Don’t you get it, Liv? Money gives people power. Control. We have no money over here, but over there you guys are swimming in it. You have all the power and meanwhile we suffer. We pay.”
I didn’t like how he lumped me in with them because I may have lived over there, but it wasn’t a choice. I was still a kid. I wasn’t one of them. I was just me. Livingston Rose Montgomery. Daniel Montgomery’s only daughter. Lover of the stars. Obsessed with Adam Nova. I didn’t care or know anything about the inner workings of that island and all of its money.
I pulled away, feeling guilty for some reason for something I had absolutely nothing to do with. But was I guilty by association? Would the bridge that separated Adam and me be the very thing that kept us apart?
“No. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” I questioned, as I sat up, looking down at him.
“Pull away from me. I wasn’t talking about you, Livvy. I was talking about them. You are not them.”
I softened, letting out a long breath and lying back down. I was being irrational. It was a helpless feeling. I was just a kid. I couldn’t change the world, much less that small island. I didn’t want to talk about that anymore. It made me selfish, but it made me feel different than Adam. It made me feel like we were a million miles apart instead of lying in his bed together, so I changed the subject.
“Tell me how they met.” I snuggled in. Pressing a kiss to the musky spot on his neck, I moaned a little.
“How who met?” he growled out like he was in pain, but I could tell by the flex of his stomach muscles under my hand that he was turned on by my kisses.
“Your mom and dad.” I settled in and gave the poor guy a break. My guess was I wasn’t his first anything and I wasn’t quite sure if I was ready to take the next step with him.
I tilted my chin and looked up at him in the dark. I saw the small curve of his lips and thought I was really enjoying seeing him smile lately. It didn’t seem like he’d done much of that before we met, but now he smiled a lot at me. It made me feel good.
“My dad loves to tell that story.” Adam gave a small chuckle I felt through my entire body. “He’s better at it, but I’ll give it a go.”
He got quiet, so I pinched his side. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense, Nova.”
“Okay!” he exclaimed, pulling my pinching hand away and placing it palm down on his chest, right over his heart. “My dad used to work on cars before he got hurt. My mom was broke down on the side of the road, not far from here, so my dad stopped. He likes to say she was bent over the hood of the car and that he already knew he was going to marry her because she had the best ass in South Carolina.”
He laughed and I giggled along. “He fixed her car and he asked for her number. She politely declined and so he wrote his name and number on a piece of paper and stuck it in the console of her car.
“Mom said she couldn’t not call a gorgeous man who’d rescued her. Especially one with the last name Nova. A star. And with her love of astronomy she said it had to be fate.”
I grinned like a fool into his chest. “That’s so sweet.”
“Mmmhmm. How did your parents meet?”
“It’s definitely not as romantic as yours.”
“So what? Tell me.”
And so I did. We talked about my parents. About his friends. About his school and work. We spent the entire night wrapped in each other’s arms until I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of a conversation about childhood animals.
It was one of the saddest and sweetest nights of my life. And definitely one I’d never forget.