PRESENT DAY
“Shit!” I yell out, and I slam my hand down hard against the giant “H” in aggravation. It stings my palm, but I’m too panicked to care. I pull on the ends of my hair, completely frustrated. “How the hell do they always get out here so fast?”
“Don’t trip!” Tiffani calls out. Right now, it is everyone for themselves, and she slips her hand into mine and begins pulling me with her as she takes off. And, despite how steep Mount Lee actually is, it is so much quicker to just run through all of the shrubs and dirt rather than heading back to the trails. It’s dangerous, but right now, our safety is the least of my worries.
I can’t afford to get caught. I’ve been arrested and cited for trespassing before. With all of the shit I’m about to get myself involved in with Declan Portwood, I need to keep myself off the cops’ radar as best I can. They don’t need to be aware of me.
“Oh my God, my mom will kill me if I get a citation!” Tiffani panics, her breathing all over the place. We are still hand in hand as I lead the way down, testing out the ground first as quickly as I can while she follows. There are random dips, random holes. It’s so easy to roll over an ankle up here, and as much as Tiffani annoys me, I don’t want her to get hurt.
We are in a race against time to get back down to the ground before the cops have a cruiser there waiting for us. That’s why we don’t wait for the others. I can hear them all a few hundred feet behind us. I can hear Rachael and Meghan shrieking every few seconds, and I can hear them all calling out to one another, but I don’t turn around.
I’m totally relieved when Tiffani and I finally reach the ground again without any injuries and without any cruisers in sight. It still doesn’t mean we’re in the clear, though. Out of breath, we force ourselves to keep running back to the small parking lot where we left the cars, and I begin fumbling in my pockets for my keys. I can still hear that damn helicopter above us.
“Let’s just get out of here,” I murmur, unlocking my car. I hop inside and Tiffani slides into my passenger seat. The others will understand why we’ve left without them. I know I should probably wait for Eden to take her home, but I can’t risk it. I’m sure the others will give her a ride.
“Yeah,” Tiffani agrees, then places her hand on my thigh. “Let’s go back to my place.”
* * *
We do go back to Tiffani’s place, but only to drop her off. She slams my door and calls me an asshole again as she leaves, furious at the rejection, then storms into her house, all the while swinging her hips and flicking her hair as though to show me what I’m missing. But I’m seriously not in the mood. Today has been weird.
By the time I do get back home, it’s almost dark and Mom and Dave are watching TV together in the living room. I stand in the hall in silence for a few minutes, deliberating whether or not I’m going to even speak to them, and I decide that, after everything that has happened today, I should at least have the decency to let them know I’m home. It’s not like I want to infuriate them. I just sort of . . . do. So if I get the chance to actually be tolerable, then I’ll take it.
I knock on the glass panels of the living room door and gently push it open. Both Mom and Dave glance over at me, almost like they’re surprised I’m actually home before midnight for once, and then mute the TV.
“I’m home,” I say quietly. I even throw in a smile. I know Mom was disappointed earlier, so I want to make it up to her.
“Where were you?” she asks. She keeps her voice equally as soft, as though we’ve made an unspoken agreement to forget about what happened earlier.
“With Tiffani,” I say. It’s not a lie. More like an omission of the truth. As if I’m going to tell them we all almost just got arrested for trespassing our way to the Hollywood sign.
“Where’s Eden?” Dave joins in, and although his voice is still pretty abrupt, it’s not as gruff as it usually is. He also looks slightly concerned.
“She’s with Rachael,” I guess. Again, definitely not telling him that his daughter just ran from the cops. I’m pretty sure she’ll be home any second anyway. I notice the empty food containers on the coffee table and I raise an eyebrow. “You ordered Chinese food?”
“Your mom burned the steaks,” Dave says, and he wiggles his eyebrows at Mom, who blushes in embarrassment. Usually, she’s a pretty amazing cook.
“Great!” I drawl sarcastically. “So that cow died for nothing!”
Mom’s face falls. “Tyler . . .”
“I’m kidding!” I say, holding up my hands as I let out a laugh. God, I can’t even make one of my vegetarian jokes without them thinking I’m about to burst into a fit of rage. It’s kind of sad, actually. Have I really gotten to the point where people just expect me to be aggressive all the time?
“Tyler!” I hear Jamie say as he comes bounding down the stairs. He slides across the hall floor in his socks and bumps straight into me. He grins wide and looks up at me with his blue eyes that are identical to Mom’s. “You’re home. Good. I need you to come play Madden with me because Chase honestly sucks.”
“He’ll be trying his best, Jay,” Mom says.
“No, he’s not,” Jamie argues, groaning. “Even you could play better than him, Mom! Now c’mon, Tyler.” He grabs my arm and begins yanking me toward the staircase, but before I disappear out of sight completely, I flash Mom a smirk, rolling my eyes as Jamie continues to tug at me. She smiles, probably just glad to see me relatively at ease for once.
I follow Jamie upstairs and into his room at the end of the hall. Chase is sitting cross-legged on the floor in his pajamas, waiting patiently, and Madden NFL is paused on the TV.
“Move over,” Jamie orders, nudging him with his knee. “Tyler’s taking your place.”
“What? Why?” Chase asks, widening his eyes. All of the lights are off, so the glare from the TV screen is the only light source in the room and it reflects in his blue eyes. Both of my brothers got Mom’s blond hair and blue eyes. For some reason, I was the only one to inherit Dad’s Hispanic genes in my looks, so I always look a little out of place in this family now that Dad’s gone.
“Because you suck,” Jamie says.
“I don’t!” Chase huffs, but he throws the PlayStation controller down anyway and reluctantly shuffles over to make room for me.
It’s funny. The three of us are all so different. I’m the fucked-up one, the angry one. Jamie is the smart one, the perfectionist. Chase is the innocent one, the people-pleaser. They’re only fourteen and eleven, but I already know they’re going to be way better men than I’ll ever be.
I sit down next to Chase on the floor, leaning back against Jamie’s bed and stretching out my legs in front of me. I grab the controller. “Sorry, buddy, but the pro has arrived,” I tease. And, to make it more dramatic, I crack all of my fingers and then my neck. “Ready, Jay?”
“Ready,” he says from atop the bed. He takes the game off pause and it kicks into action, picking up mid-gameplay, and I stare at the screen while I try to figure out which team I’m playing for. Yeah, Chase really is trailing behind. He’s scored nothing. Nothing.
I haven’t played in years. When I was their age, I used to play Madden with Dean and Jake. All. The. Damn. Time. Not anymore. Now I spend my free time ruining my life. That’s why I suck at the game to begin with too until I get into the groove of it, and Jamie insults me the entire time while Chase fidgets next to me, glued to the screen. We do laugh a lot, though, and I wish I did this more often. Man, I love the pair of them, but I’ve usually got so much going on in my life that I don’t ever make the time to actually hang out with them. But they’re happy and carefree, and I could really use some of that positive energy that they radiate.
“Boooom!” Jamie says, tossing his controller to the floor and raising his arms into the air as he makes the final touchdown and the game ends. There was absolutely no way to salvage the damage that Chase had already done, so of course he was going to win. “You see that, Tyler? Huh? Now who’s the pro?”
“Not you,” Chase mumbles, folding his arms across his chest. He’s sulking, but I’m cracking up. It’s a damn game!
“What did you say?” Jamie growls playfully, and he launches himself off the bed at Chase, wrestling him. They roll around on the floor next to me for a minute or so, pushing each other around and laughing, both trying to get on top of the other. I watch them in amusement, laughing along with them and rolling my eyes.
If there is one thing that I am absolutely thankful for, it’s that Dad never, ever laid a hand on either of them. I would have taken triple the amount of abuse if it meant they would never get hurt the way I did. I don’t think I would have been able to bear that. They were so young. I look at Chase now, out of breath as he gives up in defeat and pushes Jamie off him. He’s so young, so childish and pure. There is no way anyone could ever hurt him. He’s only eleven.
But I was eleven too once . . . and the cuts and the bruises didn’t stop until I was twelve.
I was young too. I didn’t deserve it. I was just a kid. I was just like them.
How could Dad have looked at me, like I am looking at Jamie and Chase now, and even consider the thought of hurting me?
Chase doesn’t know about Dad. The truth would hurt him, and he doesn’t need to know that our father is a monster. Mom couldn’t protect me and she couldn’t protect Jamie, but she wants to protect Chase. He is so much better off believing that Dad is in prison for grand theft auto. That’s what most people think anyway. But Jamie knows the truth. Jamie discovered it. Jamie stopped me from nearly being killed five years ago. We never talk about it, though. I think it scares him.
“Can you guys promise me something?” I say, reaching for the remote and turning off the TV. The room goes silent. I stand up and turn on the lights, and then I sit down on Jamie’s bed and look down at them on the floor. I’m not laughing anymore. My expression is serious.
“What?” they both say in unison, staring back up at me with curious, wide eyes.
“Don’t do anything stupid when you’re my age. Okay?” I say. Unlike me, they actually have a shot at a decent life. A shot at a college, a good job, healthy relationships . . . a shot at being happy. I really don’t want them to mess that up. They have the head start that I didn’t. “I don’t want to see either of you getting into trouble.”
They stare at me blankly, and then Jamie gives me a goofy grin and asks, “So what stupid stuff is it that you do?”
I laugh and lean forward, ruffling his shaggy hair. “You think I’m gonna tell you?”
“I’m hoping you will, and then I can blackmail you into buying me Madden 12 in August,” he says, and his grin widens.
“How about,” I say, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet, “I just give you some cash toward it right now? Don’t tell Mom.” I’m feeling generous because they’ve put me in a good mood, so I grab thirty bucks and hand it to Jamie as his eyes light up in disbelief.
“Hey!” Chase says. “What about me?”
Damn. I pass him twenty, and luckily, he doesn’t notice that I’ve fleeced him. Fifty bucks is a small price to pay to see the pair of them grinning as though they’ve won the damn lottery. I shove my wallet back into my jeans and stand up, tell them goodnight, and then leave the room.
I’m crossing back over to my own room when, as I’m passing the stairs, I notice Eden running up them at full throttle. She just got home? She was only a few minutes behind Tiffani and I when we left the Sunset Ranch. She should have been home ages ago.
“Eden?” I stare down at her, wondering where she’s been, because she clearly didn’t come straight home. “Where the hell did you go?”
She freezes on the stairs for a split second and fires back, “Where the hell did you go?” She walks up the last few stairs and stops in front of me. She’s much smaller than I am, but she holds a mean stare-off. “You just ditched the rest of us. Nice teamwork.”
Shit, so she is mad at me. But for what? For the way I snapped at her in the car? For the way I squared up to Jake? I’ve done a lot of things that could have potentially pissed her off today, and I groan at the thought of them. “I don’t work well with cops, alright? I can’t get caught again.”
“Again,” Eden repeats, scoffing. Yet another con of mine to add to her list: gets arrested. “When did you get home?”
“Twenty minutes ago,” I say. “Mom finally stopped grilling me about the whole beach thing earlier.”
“Cool,” she says with absolutely zero emotion. As though I’ve disappeared into thin air, she strolls straight past me and walks into her room. I wasn’t done talking to her, so I aimlessly follow. She runs her eyes over me and deeply inhales. “What do you want?”
I don’t know. To figure out why she’s mad at me, I guess. “Nothing,” I say, and then look at the floor. God, what the hell is wrong with me? I should get out of her room. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to me. Feeling embarrassed, I quickly turn around and walk next door to my own room.
“What was your problem with Jake?” I hear Eden ask, and when I look over my shoulder, she has followed me this time. Her arms are folded across her chest and her stance is confident as she stares at me, an eyebrow raised as she awaits an answer. “I asked you a question,” she says.
“I’m not answering it,” I say. Is my room even tidy? I glance around. No, of course it’s fucking not. I didn’t make my bed this morning. There’s beer on my bedside table. There’s pairs of my boxers lying by my bathroom door. I need to distract her from noticing, so I grit my teeth and turn around to face her. “Wait, I will. That guy is the second-biggest asshole I’ve ever met. Don’t waste your time. He’ll screw you over.”
“Who’s the first? Yourself?” she quips, and I wish she wasn’t being sarcastic, because the first is Dad. My own blood.
“Close enough,” is all I say.
“Okay, well, Jake’s actually really nice. Unlike some people around here.” She steps back and I can see her gaze shifting around the room, checking everything out. “And you don’t really get a say in whether I want to hang out with him or not.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She is, isn’t she? She has to be. Jake is a stranger. She doesn’t know him like the rest of us do. She doesn’t know that he’s a player and he’s proud of it. She doesn’t know that he’s combative, argumentative. “Alright,” I say. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Why do you even care?” she asks.
“I don’t,” I say, my voice defensive. Or do I? If I don’t care, then why am I getting pissed off at the thought of Jake messing with her?
“You clearly do.”
I walk away from her, shoving my hands into my pockets as I think of how I’m going to change the subject. I have a pile of old DVDs by my TV, and I sound like a damn idiot when I blurt out, “What’s your, um, favorite movie?”
Eden stares at me. She’s probably thinking I’m an idiot too for changing the subject to movies, out of everything I could have possibly chosen. “Lady and the Tramp,” she eventually confesses.
“The Disney movie?” I almost laugh. There she is, surprising me again. If she were Tiffani or Rachael or Meghan, I would be teasing her to hell and back right now. But I think it’s sort of cute that she wasn’t too shy to give me an embarrassing answer. So I ask, “Why?”
“Because it’s the greatest love story of all time,” she explains. “Romeo and Juliet have got nothing on Lady and Tramp. They were so different, yet they made it work. Lady was totally normal and Tramp was totally reckless, yet they fell in love.” She smiles as she talks, not really looking at me, and I’ve never seen anyone look so happy over a damn Disney movie. “And plus, the spaghetti scene is totally iconic,” she adds.
“Totally,” I agree, laughing. I’ve never seen the movie, but I think I know how it goes. “And I’m pretty sure Lady wasn’t normal. She was boring and didn’t know how to have fun. Tramp’s my kinda guy.”
“What, because he roams the streets the same way you do when you’re stumbling home drunk at the weekends?” She tilts her head to one side, those hazel eyes of hers sparkling as she gives me a teasing smile. I laugh again, and she glances around my room once more. “You play football?” she asks.
“Huh?” I look over my shoulder to see what she’s talking about. Dean’s varsity football jacket is hanging over the edge of the top shelf in my closet. It’s been there for like a year, and it brings back bad memories. I took a bad trip once. Last summer. I don’t remember much, but I remember waking with Dean’s jacket on. Apparently I’d been shivering too hard and they wanted to keep me warm. I’m much more careful now. “No,” I say. “That’s Dean’s. I’m not really the football type.”
“Dean plays football?” she says slowly, as though she’s surprised. “And you don’t?”
“Yeah. So does Jake.” I walk over to my closet, subtly kicking my boxers to the side as I pass. “I used to play when I was younger, but I stopped back in middle school.”
“Why?”
“According to some people, football is a waste of time.” My throat tightens. I used to love football. I couldn’t wait for high school so that I could try out for the team, but Dad never let it become a priority. “Why waste your time on sport?” I recall. “Throwing footballs around isn’t going to get you into Ivy League. Stay inside and study instead so that you can actually be successful.”
Eden is watching me closely. “Who told you that?”
“Just someone.” Someone she is never, ever going to know about. “So that’s why I wasn’t allowed to play.”
“Allowed?” She raises an eyebrow.
Crap. I really need to censor what I say sometimes. “I mean, that’s why I stopped,” I say, reaching up to push Dean’s jacket further back onto the shelf. I run my eyes over my clothes and decide that I need a fresh shirt after all the shit that’s happened today. I feel gross, so with my back to Eden, I quickly pull off the shirt I’m currently wearing and then swap it out for a new one. “I really have to give Dean his jacket back. He’s been bugging me about it for ages,” I say over my shoulder.
A few moments of silence pass, and then I hear Eden quietly ask, “What does your tattoo mean?” I spin around to look at her, confused, and she adds, “I’m going to ignore the fact that you clearly got it illegally.”
“My tattoo?” I only have one. It’s on the back of my left shoulder, and she’s right: I did get it illegally last year in the basement of some guy Declan knows. “Uh, it says Guerrero,” I answer, feeling a little awkward. I scratch the back of my head, and before she can ask, I say, “It’s Spanish for fighter.” I still don’t know why I chose that. I guess at the time, it was sort of a fuck you to Dad. He used to always tell me to fight hard for success. So I decided, in that basement that stank of weed and stale beer, that I was going to do exactly as he asked of me. I was going to fight for my own version of success, which is to not let what he did ruin my life. Though I haven’t exactly done a great job of that so far.
Eden is still staring straight at me, and she’s genuinely curious, which is sort of nice, I guess. Tiffani once told me the tattoo is stupid, but she doesn’t know the meaning of it. “Why Spanish?”
“I’m fluent,” I admit. “Both my parents are. My dad taught me when I was a kid.” I don’t speak it much anymore. It only reminds me of him.
“I don’t know any Spanish,” Eden says. She bites her lip and then gives me a playful smile. “I speak French. Like the Canadians,” she jokes. “Bonjour.”
What the fuck? Did that husky voice just become foreign? I didn’t know French could sound so good. “Me frustras,” I reply in Spanish, running my hand back through my hair. She looks confused, but it’s entertaining. “Buenas noches. That means ‘Goodnight.’” I don’t translate the first part for her. I don’t tell her she frustrates me.
She seriously does, though. She questions me constantly, but she also pays attention to me. One minute she’s all shy and embarrassed, and the next she’s confident and challenging. She listens, but she also doesn’t put up with my bullshit. That’s sort of cool to me.
“Oh,” she says. The corner of her plump lips curves into a small, sweet smile and as she turns around and walks out of my room, I’m so glad to hear that mesmerizing voice of hers murmur, “Bonsoir.” Maybe it means goodnight in French? Whatever it is, it sounds amazing on her tongue.
My gaze remains glued to her until she disappears back into her own room. I’m smiling as I stand rooted to the spot, staring out into the empty hall. Something doesn’t quite feel right. I don’t know what it is, and I stand in silence for a few minutes, racking my brain and trying to figure out why I’m feeling so off. It’s not until I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror that it hits me.
My smile isn’t the same as it usually is. It’s not a smirk, it’s not challenging, it’s not cocky. My eyes aren’t as narrowed or as fierce. My heart sinks in my chest when I realize that for the past few minutes, I wasn’t acting. For the first time in a long time, I forgot to be Tyler Bruce.
I was just me, and that is the biggest mistake I could ever possibly make.