Rival

She let her hair down out of her ponytail, and all of a sudden my hands felt too empty.

A splash of water hit me in the back, and I winced.

“You little . . . ” But I caught myself and just splashed Lucas in return.

“You looked like you could use some cooling off.” He laughed, throwing his arm back and swimming away.

Cooling off? Did he even know what he was talking about? TV. That’s where kids got this shit.

Fallon still stood on the beach, hands on her h*ps and pacing the water’s edge, dipping her toes in every once in a while. She looked half ready to either throw herself into the water or turn around and run for the parking lot.

I jerked my chin up, shouting, “Stop giving the kid a lesson in female anatomy and get in the water already.”

Her gaze flashed to mine for a second, but I could feel the heat of her anger even in the chilly water. After teetering for another minute—just to piss me off—she stepped into the lake and waded out until she could dive in.

About an hour passed as we played and swam in the water. Lucas had fun, even if it took Fallon time to get over herself. At first she stayed back, floating on a raft, treading water, and keeping her distance. But when I got the raft and Lucas tipped her off of it, she’d finally loosened up.

They raced each other. She didn’t let him win.

He and I dunked each other. She started smiling more.

Jared and Tate came back with two smiles they sucked at hiding.

And Fallon stayed as far away from me as she could get.

Which was fine. There was nothing I wanted from her right now anyway.

Oh, who was I kidding? I was ready to bang my head against a buoy for bringing Lucas out here when all I kept thinking about was ripping those fragile white strings loose.

“Lucas!” I growled. “Go sit on the blanket with Jared and Tate. Hydrate and eat your snack.”

“Oh, man,” he whined.

And I smiled, seeing him swim off as I headed over to Fallon. She sat in the purple recliner raft with her arms resting on the inflated sides. One of her feet dangled off the edge, dipping into the smooth surface of the water.

“So.” I squinted up at her, resting my hand on the raft for support. “Why are you home, Fallon?”

The corner of her mouth curled, looking like there was a secret trying to escape. “This isn’t my home.”

I’d been so dumbstruck by the fact that she was home that I hadn’t really thought about why until last night. Her mother was abroad. Italy or Spain or something. Spending my father’s money on Gucci and gigolos. And Fallon had no friends here that she kept in touch with that I knew of. She barely had a relationship with my father, who wasn’t at home, either, so the question begged to be asked. “Then why are you at the home of your estranged mother’s husband where you don’t want to be?”

Her tease of a smile curled more. “And where I’m not wanted?”

I leaned my head back into the water, closing my eyes as images of last night raced through my brain. “Oh, you’re wanted,” I taunted.

She snickered. “That’s not how you made it sound when you came into my room the other night.”

I snapped my mouth closed.

Yeah, that shut me up. I was kind of a dick the other night.

Okay, a huge dick.

I slicked back my hair and bounded up onto the end of the raft, peering over at her as she steadied herself from the jolt.

“Well, in all fairness, I did think you had lied about me. I had a right to be pissed, Fallon. You never called or came home again. What was I supposed to think?”

She didn’t answer. Just sat there, hiding behind her sunglasses. Her eyes had always looked dark and lost to me, like she was searching for something but wouldn’t know it if she found it.

I repeated my question. “So why are you home?”

She inhaled a heavy breath and finally looked at me straight. “Closure,” she said. “I left without really saying good-bye to this place. I needed that before I started my new life in Chicago.”

Closure. Is that what I needed, too?

“They found you in the theater room, didn’t they?” I asked her.

She gave a half-hearted smile. “Wearing your T-shirt, and you’d left your jeans on the floor,” she finished, raising her eyes at me expectantly.

“You were asleep,” I explained. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

Her eyes were still waiting for more.

“I covered you up?” I offered, drowning like a rat.

I’d figured out that much. After our first time together, we’d found ourselves going at it every couple of days and then very quickly it became every single night for about a week. Fallon never wanted to leave her room when we were together. On her turf, in the dark, and we didn’t talk about it outside of those boundaries. Those were the nonverbal rules I’d ascertained after our first couple times together.

But I had my ways. I was finally able to coerce her out of her bedroom and downstairs to the theater room. We’d watched a movie but ended up all over each other like I knew we would. She’d put on my T-shirt and then fallen asleep.

Looking back now, we were stupid to think we wouldn’t get caught. If they hadn’t found her, then Addie or someone would’ve noticed sooner or later that we were always tired. Since we were spending half our nights together, we got very little sleep.

Fallon’s low voice seemed almost sad and too forgiving. “It’s over. In the past, Madoc.”

Eyes hooded, I looked over at her. “It’s not over, and you know it.”

“Last night was a fluke. We were angry.”

Darting out my hand before she could move, I grabbed her ankle and pulled her down into the water with me.

“Madoc!” she yelped before submerging completely in the water. She flailed her arms and shot back up through the water’s surface, sputtering. “Such an ass**le,” she coughed.

I pulled the raft in front of us, shielding us from view of the beach.

“A fluke, huh?” I leaned into her, whispering.

She held onto the raft, and flecks of gold danced on her face and in her hair from the sun on the water. I waited for her to look at me. Or move away. Or just breathe.

But she didn’t. She stared at my chest, waiting. For what, I didn’t know.

Reaching out, I ran the back of my hand across her stomach and then grabbed her waist, pulling her in closer to me.

But she pushed away, sucking in a sudden breath.

“Your . . . little brother is over there.”

“And if he weren’t?” I cocked my head to the side and breathed into her.

She finally looked up, her eyes turning to steel. I leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Lock your door tonight, Fallon.”

And I swam off toward the shore, diving deep into the chilly water not warmed by the sun.

No reason to give a seven-year-old a lesson on the male anatomy, either.

CHAPTER 12

FALLON

Enough was enough. I couldn’t let him continue to affect me so much. True, Madoc had grown up. No buts about it. He was smart, fun, and more good-looking than ever. He seemed to care about his friends, and someday, he might even make a good husband and father.

I just wasn’t the right girl for him, and he certainly wasn’t for me. He’d had me once and forgotten me. Now, I wanted to leave this house of my own free will with my head held high. I wouldn’t be a rat in a cage, dressed to my mother’s approval or a toy for Madoc to play with when he felt like it. I would never want to be like her and end up with her life. Jason Caruthers cheated on his wife—constantly. Although my mother also cheated. I’d found that out—not that I had doubted it anyway—through my preparations.

Their marriage was empty and superficial, and Madoc had grown up with an innate entitlement. He knew he could do what he wanted, when he wanted, and if a girl didn’t like it, another one would come along to replace her.

I wouldn’t be one of the numbers.

I trudged out of the water, shivering as the air hit my wet skin. Tate leaned back on her hands, legs bent and her bikini slightly more modest than mine. I would’ve worn a one-piece if I’d known a kid was going to be here. Jared lay on his back next to her with a hand on her thigh and his eyes closed. Lucas was eating an apple and peanut butter sandwich crackers.

“So what’s up now?” Madoc asked Jared and Tate as he grabbed a towel and threw it at me. I reached up just in time to stop it from hitting me in the face.

Jared sighed as in “Here we go.” “I asked her to move in with me,” he admitted, and my eyebrows shot up.

Madoc snorted. “And she threw shoes at you? Sounds like a marriage to me.”

“In Chicago,” Tate clarified with a sharp, scolding tone. “He asked me to move in with him in Chicago. I told him that I want to be around for my dad more, so I’m going to Northwestern instead of Columbia. He then tells me that he didn’t want to go to New York anyway and wanted to stay in the area to be close to Jax.”

Madoc busied himself taking out waters from the cooler. “So that’s good. It’s a win-win. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” I chimed in for Tate and turned toward Madoc, “that he wasn’t communicating with her. He already had his own plans that he wasn’t involving her in.”

“So did she,” he argued back.

“But he sounds like he never wanted to go to New York.” My voice got louder, and I could feel Tate’s and Jared’s eyes on me. “Now she feels like she pressured him or was making him do something he didn’t want to do.”

Madoc rolled his eyes. “Cover your ears, Lucas.”

Lucas obeyed, and Madoc looked around the circle, meeting everyone’s eyes.

“Look, I’m sorry, Tate, but you’ve been living in f**king rainbow-sprinkle-cupcake land if you actually thought that Jared Trent was going to move to New York City. People don’t drive there. How’s he supposed to stretch his legs? Do you even know how much it would cost to park a car there?”

Jared’s eyes were still closed, but his chest shook with silent laughter that he was smart enough to keep to himself.

Tate’s jaw hung open, and not in a wow-that-really-made-sense kind of way. It was more of a what-an-asshole-I’m-going-to-dropkick-him kind of way. I couldn’t tell for sure, but Madoc probably felt the heat of her fire behind her sunglasses.

I held up my hand. “So you’re saying that his car is more important than her?” I yelled at Madoc.

He blew out a sigh and walked behind me, standing at my back and covering my mouth with his hand.

I could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke to Jared and Tate. “So you’ll both be in Chicago. I’ll only be an hour and a half away at Notre Dame. Win-win.”

• • •

Around four o’clock, Jared and Tate left to go break the news to her father about her change in college plans, and Madoc and I took Lucas home in time for dinner.

Madoc drove the twists and turns of the quiet roads leading to our—his—house, and neither of us broke the silence. The tension was thicker than wet clay, and I didn’t know what was on his mind. He was usually such a chatterbox. Now, he looked almost stoic as he zoned out on the road and sped over the black highway. Trees loomed on both sides, making me feel like we were in a cave.

“Fallon,” he started, and I looked to him. “We’re not sixteeen anymore.”

I stared at him, not sure what that meant.

“I know.”

He yanked down on the stick shift, sending us into sixth gear. Between looking out the window and the front windshield and not meeting my eyes, he looked uncomfortable as hell. “I think we can get along better if we grow up. You can stay the summer if you want.”

What? Was he serious? When the punch line didn’t come, I just averted my gaze out the window.