I straightened, glancing back at Arsen and Gabe. The Wasp had moved closer, her hand going to stroke Nathaniel’s back.
My chest tightened.
“Are you okay, Nathan?” the Wasp cooed, touching his busted cheek.
I turned, unable to stay any longer to watch.
I pushed through the crowd that was excited about the news of a face-off between two rich bastards.
It was when I made it out of the house and reached the sand, Nathaniel gripped my arm.
“Where are you going?” he asked as he spun me to face him, his brow creased in confusion.
I shrugged out of his grip. “I’m going back to the country club. Enjoy your night.”
I tried to turn again, but he stepped around me and stepped in my path, blocking me. “What’s wrong? Did he hurt you?” He touched my bicep, glancing at it for any bruising.
“Just go back to the party, Nathaniel. Go back to your perfect date,” I said, anger consuming my words.
He scowled. “She’s not my date.”
I rolled my eyes. “You two were fucking each other with your eyes.”
He glared, stepping so close I shivered. “I wasn’t eye fucking her. There’s only one person I want to eye fuck—or fuck at all—and she’s standing right in front of me.”
His words struck me and I stared back at him, wanting to appear strong and angry.
But he shook me to my core. I felt exposed. Like I had just laid out all my emotions to him. That I cared probably more than he did. Like I had shown him my underbelly and he’d dig his claws and teeth in deep and destroy me.
I didn’t belong with these people. Nathaniel was meant to date someone like that girl. A girl I would never be. I’d always carry my past with me. I would never be prim and proper and blue-blooded.
Neither of us spoke and I dropped my gaze, tired and angry and sad and confused. “I’m leaving.”
“Then I’m walking you,” he stated.
I didn’t fight him and as we made our way onto the beach, I felt like I should have told the girls I was leaving.
“I didn’t think I’d see you or the other guys tonight,” I said, kicking at the sand.
He cocked a brow. “You do realize that’s James’s house, right?”
My eyes widened. “That was his house?”
He laughed.
“Won’t his dad be pissed? He’s destroying the house! And he’s fighting while intoxicated.”
“James is addicted to the thrill. His dad will be pissed, but he’ll redecorate it. It happens every time James is pissed at his father. He hosts parties and destroys the house,” Nathaniel explained.
“Huh,” I whispered. I couldn’t imagine living like that. Being so destructive, so wild and irresponsible. I eyed Nathaniel in the shadows. “I thought for a moment you would hit him.”
His blue eyes caught mine and he rubbed his jaw, looking ahead. “Life is ten percent what happens to you; ninety percent is how you react to it. I chose not to engage.”
I watched him, his face cemented in that expression he wore during our debates. To conceal himself. He fisted his hands once and then unclenched them, flexing his fingers out. Like he had wanted to strike back at Thatcher.
Him being calm and thinking before jumping into a fight made my heart pound. Somehow, he continued to become more attractive than before.
“Did you kick Thatcher out of your secret club?”
He gave me a look and after a beat, sighed. “Yes. I won’t tolerate someone like that.”
I swayed, tightening my sweater around my middle. “Are you like…the boss?”
He laughed. “No, I’m not, but I know the other members will back me on this decision. Especially Gabe, Arsen, and James.”
I fidgeted with my necklace, opening my mouth and shutting it.
“Out with it,” he challenged, a gleam in his eyes.
I glared and bowed my head, staring at my feet as we walked along the beach. “You didn’t have to step in.”
He touched my arm and I came to a stop beside him. “Is that your way of thanking me?”
I hesitated and slowly, nodded, but another thing ate at me. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be back until Monday.”
He let his head drop and stepped closer, his body touching mine. His eyes found my own. “I got back a few hours ago. When I went to find you, they said you were out at a party.”
“You went looking for me?”
He nodded and opened his mouth, but the sound of fireworks exploding overhead diverted our attention. I stared at the blues and reds painting the night sky.
When I turned to smile at Nathaniel, he was already watching me.
Watching me in a way that took my breath away.
In a way no person had ever looked at me.
“What?” I clasped my mouth shut as soon as the harsh word escaped me. I know how it sounded; defensive and I didn’t want him to think I needed to defend myself against him.
He smiled softly at that. Popping open his jacket button, he lowered himself onto the beach, his hands melting into the white sand.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing at the spot beside him.
I rolled my lip between my teeth and glanced back at the house party, so bright, so loud and far away. And then looked back down at him. Almost glowing in the darkness, his smile faint and deadly, his eyes dark spheres of power and intelligence.
I sat and eyed the waves rolling onto the beach a few feet away, crashing and retreating. Like me. I would crash and retreat. I learned people left from a young age. The people most important to me always vanished and I was better to leave before they disappeared.
“What were you doing in the city?” I asked after a moment of comfortable silence.
He leaned back and shifted his intense gaze to me. “I was visiting my father. Both my parents are disagreeing on my future.”
I straightened. “On your future?”
He exhaled slowly, his chest expanding so the fabric of his shirt stretched tight to his athletic form. “Yes. My mother wants me to take over her family’s hotel business. My father wants me to follow in his footsteps and become the mayor of Boston.”
I hummed, shifting my weight onto my palms behind me.
His brows lowered. “What did that hum mean?”
I swung my hair over my shoulder and smiled. “The Nathaniel Radcliffe I know wouldn’t let anyone decide his future in his place.”
He stroked the pad of his thumb over his lower lip, studying me with a gaze that gleamed with intelligence. “And what about your past, Juliette?”
I tensed, looking down at my shoes covered in grains of sand. I wiped them off, but I could still feel the rub of the grain on the soles of my feet.
“What about it?” I asked, voice low.
He hummed back, straightening up beside me. “What if I said I knew your past?”
My head snapped fast in his direction, mouth falling open. “What?”
Instead of a smug smile, his expression was steel and sober. “You’re living on government scholarships. You have no family, bound to foster care until you were eighteen.”
Embarrassment wrapped around my throat and pinched my lungs. I stood, wiping the sand from my calves. “Goodnight, Nathaniel.”
He stood, matching my pace with no effort. Of course.
He stepped into my path. “Your past doesn’t define you. You’ve earned your education at Yale, that’s admirable. Most of us didn’t. Most of us get our parents to pay our way in.”
“Not you,” I bit back. Because of course, he’d always have that above me. That he was wealthy and intelligent and damn good looking.
“Look,” he snapped—for the first time, his voice didn’t sound so composed and I froze. “Like I said, your secret’s safe with me. No one will know. Everyone will think you went off to south of France.”
“But your friends—”
His eyes narrowed. “Won’t say a word. They’re loyal to me as I’m loyal to them.”
His words pounded in my head. Loyalty between four men capable of destroying anyone in their path. Without a lift of their hand or a muscle moving in their jaw, they ruled the campus. And soon Boston, too.
“I grew up moving from foster home to foster home. My mom died. My dad was never in the picture. No one wanted me. No one. And I learned that. I learned that when foster parents would spend money on drugs or nice clothes instead of feeding me. I was just another paycheck to them. And when they grew tired of me? They shipped me to the next one to ignore me, to use me, to beat me. I went through ten different foster homes. I don’t ever want to feel like that. I won’t ever be that girl again,” I snapped, tears burning the back of my eyes.
Nathaniel shook his head, his eyes full of power and hope and strength. Bloodshot. As if my words had moved him.
“Your past doesn’t need to define you, Juliette,” he said, his voice soft and hard all at once. Leaving no room for me to argue. Because I knew the bastard was right. Because he saw something I had trouble seeing. “Ad astra.” I shivered at his voice, at his words.
To see the stars.
“You could do anything,” he said, stepping closer, the dark sky blending with his dark hair.
I glared. “You of all people know that’s not true. You know the people with power have wealth and old names and connections.”
He shrugged, lifting his arms as if to challenge anyone—the universe. “Then I’d make Congress bow.”
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t need your help.”
“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “You could get whatever you want without anyone’s help. You’re capable and strong, and intelligent. And you deserve all of the success I know you’ll have. More than I ever will, more than any bastards whose parents paid their way into Yale.” A new anger raged in his eyes. The calmness was erased and he stepped closer and closer until his breath fanned my nose.
I swallowed thickly, my throat tight and hot. Unable to speak. “No one…”
His eyes burned into me and I felt on fire.
“No one has ever cared what happened to me,” I whispered.
He didn’t say a word, his jaw flexing under his tight clench of his teeth, but I felt his stare like hands, like a powerful word uttered from his sacred mouth.
A boom filled the air, causing us both to jerk and reds and blues and whites filled the dark sky over the water.
Fireworks erupted over and over again, flashing across his sculpted features.
With one look from me, he stepped closer and took my face in his powerful hands. His ocean eyes, dark and hard—held the universe in them. A universe he was offering to me.
Then he stole my mouth, my body, and my mind all at once under the Fourth of July fireworks.