Past
“WAIT UP, LIV!” I HEARD from behind me, but I pretended I didn’t. I was on a mission and that mission was to get as far away from this school as I could get in the smallest amount of time.
“Liv! I know you hear me.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, but he wasn’t giving up. I rolled my eyes. Braden was dumb, but he wasn’t that dumb, apparently. Who would have thought?
I plastered a contrived smile onto my face and pivoted on a heel. Sticking my thumbs inside the bookbag straps that sat on my shoulders, I asked, “What’s up?”
I didn’t give a diddly what was up, really. I just wanted to get him off my back and get to where I was going. After a full day of playing pretend with my pretentious schoolmates and an hour more of piano lessons I only endured for my stepmother’s sake, I just wanted out of there. I wanted to get home, wolf down my dinner as fast as I possibly could, and hide in my room. And then the stars.
I quirked an eyebrow at Braden that could only be described as get the hell on with it.
He danced back and forth on his feet nervously and ran a hand through his blond hair, but I knew better. His horse and pony show weren’t fooling me. However, his next words did shock me. “Are you going to homecoming?”
Was he asking me out? Oh, God, no. This was not happening. He had to be kidding me. I felt my brown eyes widen in panic as I looked around the courtyard for any noticeable signs of escape. I wasn’t going to the homecoming dance. I especially wasn’t going with Braden. Why the hell was he asking me? I stared down at my white Keds that fed into what we in the South liked to call the boniest legs ever and then up at my schoolgirl uniform complete with navy blue pleated skirt and white polo. Yes, I realized, I was a walking cliché. I even annoyed myself.
There were plenty of girls floating around who didn’t have bony legs. That weren’t too tall. All I had going for me in the boy department were my too big breasts, and well, they were too big. He could have had any girl at Saint Ashley Preparatory. Which meant he could pretty much have any fancy ass girl on the whole ridiculously posh island of Saint Ashley itself.
After all, Saint Ashley was so small we all knew each other. Too well, if you asked me. Everyone was always in somebody else’s business. The island dynamic was all too incestuous for my tastes. Saint Ashley sat right off the coast of Madison, South Carolina. I’d call the island more of a resort than an actual place to live. The natives were ridiculously wealthy, living in monstrosities they called mansions that dotted the east coast of the island and the children were disgustingly spoiled. We had one school, K through twelve. One grocery store. And God only knew how the modest Piggly Wiggly in the middle of town was still around, but there it stood, even if it had a fancy coffee shop inside. That grocery store was really the only thing normal about Saint Ashley and it truly wasn’t all that normal. Basically, what I’m getting at is that Livingston Montgomery belonged on this island about as much as a fish belonged on dry land.
I was a fish out of water or at least that was what it felt like most days. Don’t get me wrong. I was rich. Loaded if you asked my stepmother, but I came from humble beginnings. The people on this island, they were born rich. They’d die rich and they’d never know a day of struggle in their lives. They were what the South liked to call old money. Old money held respect. I was new money, or I’d be new money at the age of twenty-one when I inherited my father’s fortune, and no one around here thought new money was worth much at all. And me, I was tired and bored and restless wading through the masses of Louboutin, Versace, and Benzes. These people prided themselves on their belongings, not who they were. Which was exactly why I could never go out with Braden.
He was quarterback of our football team, which the whole island fawned over, but the truth was, they sucked. Bad.
Braden had somehow managed to fool the rest of the girls at this school with his demure act, but he didn’t fool me. He could fake it with the best of them. Even his wholesome good looks couldn’t snare me. Like now, the adorable shy way he bowed his head, his long blond locks covering his eyes, or how he rocked from foot to foot in a show of nervousness, but I knew there wasn’t a bashful bone in Braden’s body. He came off modest, almost shy. But I’d seen and heard the things he’d done. After all, he was my lovely stepbrother’s best friend.
Seeing no way out of the conversation, I turned around and started heading back in the direction I was going. “Not gonna happen, Braden.”
I wasn’t being mean, but there was no way in hell I was letting Braden take me anywhere. Besides, Sebastian would lose his damn mind. Not that I cared, but I didn’t need him breathing down my back anymore than he already did.
“Wait up, Liv.” A warm hand landed on my shoulder. I blew out a long, tired breath before turning and facing Braden. I was scrambling and looking for any excuse to say no. He was making me feel trapped and I didn’t do trapped.
“Sebastian won’t like it,” I threw out there like the winning pitch at a baseball game. I was playing dirty, but that was the name of the game in Saint Ashley.
Braden’s pretty boy looks fell and I almost felt bad until I remembered how I’d heard him and my stepbrother talk about girls. How they demeaned and disrespected every girl they dated. He brought his hand to run through his hair and gave a good show of flexing his big biceps. I felt like my eyes were going to roll out of my head and my guilt flew out the window right along with my patience.
“Can I go now?” My shoulder brushed his as I started a speedy twelve-minute walk home.
He stepped in beside me. “Seb won’t care.” His voice was gruff, determined, and I realized this was going to be harder than I thought. He really did want to take me out. It was comical. We’d known each other for years, and he’d never put the moves on me. What had changed?
A bitter laugh flew from my lips. “Sebastian will kill you dead, Braden, and you know it. Why do you want to go out with me, anyway? The bimbo brigade finally catch on to your ways?”
He had every girl in the school falling at his feet. Drooling for his boyish good looks and sweet ride.
Reaching up, he grabbed a thick strand of long brown hair between his fingers and rubbed. I pulled my head back and picked up speed.
“I’ve always liked you, Liv.”
I shook my head and felt my face get red in embarrassment. “No, you haven’t.”
He stopped on the sidewalk suddenly enough to make me stop, too, and our bodies brushed. I flinched at the contact.
“I don’t give a shit what Sebastian says anymore. I want you.”
The look in his eyes reminded me all too much of Sebastian’s and I felt my skin crawl, but I was no shrinking violet. I’d learned at the tender age of ten when my dad had married the she-devil and moved us to this godforsaken place that I would have to be tough. Be strong. Or this island and its people would pull me down and eventually I’d be too far underwater to make it to the surface. It was a good thing I was an incredible swimmer. My daddy had made sure of that before he left me.
“I’m not interested.” I pulled my bookbag higher on my shoulders and took off at a jog now, leaving Braden in the dust, his blond hair and good looks just a dot in the distance when I chanced a look back.
I walked the main strip, the sea at my side and a row of beautiful homes at the other. You’d think as a sixteen-year-old girl, I’d be living the dream. Instead, my life felt like some kind of nightmare I couldn’t wake up from as I walked the stretch of island feeling like a bowling ball sat in the bottom of my stomach. Going from that school to my home was trading one evil for another. I loathed them both, but I was sixteen. I could endure. I could make it to my twenty-first birthday. Until I inherited the money my dad left me. Until I could get the hell out of here. Until then, I had the stars and my field.
I paused outside of the huge pink stucco home in front of me. I’d been here six years, and still it didn’t feel like home and now that my daddy was gone, I knew it never would. After all, it wasn’t somewhere he would have picked to live anyway. No, this home, it was all Georgina. Down to the floral rugs and pink towels that hung in the bathroom. It was nauseatingly girlie with a huge side of gaudy. The huge fountain in the middle of our circular drive said it all. Stone mermaids and cupids and hearts and water. It was ridiculous.
My eyes darted to the left and my lip curled at the red convertible BMW in the driveway. Great, Sebastian was home already. Usually, he was at football practice or out gallivanting with his friends or better yet, taking some unsuspecting girl’s virginity and then dumping her the next day, which offered me some reprieve from his creepiness. Not today, though.
If it wasn’t for my golden retriever, Harry, I probably would have just turned around and headed to the beach or something. I couldn’t leave him to suffer alone.
My shoulders slumped as I walked up the front steps and let myself into the huge marble foyer. I shut the front door quietly, but footsteps echoed from the staircase and I knew I wouldn’t manage to get to my room unnoticed.
Sebastian. He might have been good-looking to some. In fact, I knew he was if all of the girls mooning over him at school were any indication. But not to me. All I saw was ugly. That ugly was big and dark and it had lived deep inside Sebastian since the very moment I’d met him years ago. It poured out of his ears and eyes like a heavy fog rolling off the ocean in the morning. Ugly. It was all I saw.
“Livingston.” The way he said my name made my mouth fill with saliva. He said it with reverence and filth. His voice was deep and dark with want and deceit. It made me shiver.
He leaned against the wall in the grand stairwell, all fake nonchalance, effectively blocking me from going to my room. Yes, I knew to some Sebastian was beautiful. But I’d seen first-hand what shadows lurked in the depths of this dark boy’s soul. His soft, long, brown curls and sparkling white smile didn’t deceive me. His playful brown eyes didn’t fool me. I knew what kind of games he wanted to play. The disturbing kind.
“Where’s Georgina?” I stupidly asked, like she was going to save me. Help me. It was laughable. That woman only thought of one person. Herself.
A bitter laugh passed his lips. “Who the hell knows.” He lifted a glass to his lips, taking a sip and finally stepping down the stairs toward me like he owned the place. And in a lot of ways he did. “Who cares.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t back down. I knew from experience the moment I showed weakness he’d be on me like white on rice. It was the fear. He loved it. The predator in him could smell it. He’d roll around in it, wallow in it, and come out the other end smiling like a maniac.
His fancy loafer tapped against the marble floor in front of me and I stood there still as a statue. He was only a year older than me, but it felt like he was miles taller, infinitely stronger.
He leaned in, his nose almost in the crook of my neck, and I smelled the expensive brandy Georgina liked to keep in the house on his breath. Bile rose in my throat.
He breathed deeply like a man starved for air. He was starved for something and it frightened me. It had since the very beginning. I’d always known.
“Mmmm,” he hummed near the skin of my neck and I froze as his nose made its way to my ear, careful to never touch me. No, Sebastian was as smart as he was creepy. He never touched me. He made sure to never do anything that could come back to bite him in the ass later on. He was sadistically patient. He was waiting on the right time to strike. And he’d been doing it for years, keeping me on my toes, always fearful, always dreading.
Panicked but trying to hide it as best as I could, I pushed past him, careful to touch him as little as possible, and darted up the stairs to the sanctuary of my room and the safety it still provided for now. He never came there. It was the only space in the house that was mine.
“You smell good, Livingston. Just how I like you.” His deep voice made me pause on the steps. It slid over me like a thousand dirty hands. I felt sick. He always called me Livingston. Him and the evil stepmonster.
I felt the right side of my lips curl up in a smile even as I kept my back to him. I straightened my spine and cleared my throat and prepared to hit him where I knew it would hurt. The sick bastard. I would win today.
“Braden asked me out today.” And I ran up the stairs like a bat out of hell, shooed Harry into my room, and slammed the door behind us as I heard a glass shatter downstairs.
Yes, my stepbrother, Sebastian Carter West, was good at playing sick games, but Livingston Rose Montgomery was getting better and better at it, too, and it frightened the hell out of me.