Hendrix
Elle was beautiful yesterday—perfection from a magazine—but today she’s my type of perfect. Cutoff jean shorts, a T-shirt that clings to her curves, blond hair piled upon her head in a messy bun and she wears black horn-rimmed glasses. Gotta admit, it’s the sexiest sight I’ve seen in over a year.
Those blue eyes go from big, round shock to narrowed and, once again, intimidating. “What are you doing here?”
I hook my thumbs into my belt loops and wonder the same thing. “My brother received a phone call from a guy named Sean Johnson an hour ago who said I needed to show.”
Her mouth moves to the side, and I follow the action more closely than I should. Elle has lips made for sin. The kind I would have worked my magic a year ago to spend an evening kissing. Me and sin, though, aren’t friends anymore, and I’m supposed to be avoiding temptation.
“That sounds like Sean. Super control freakish and bossy.” She widens the door and steps aside to create a path for me. “Come in, then, and I’ll track him down for you. Though it wouldn’t be hard for you to find him yourself. You just have to close your eyes and feel for the dark energy of the Force.”
Sean Johnson’s the guy Axle talked with the most after we signed on for the program, and Axle would agree with the dark Force association. My brother said that the guy wasn’t an ass, but was pushy. “A good friend of mine is a Star Wars fan.”
“I’ve seen it a few times. It’s good, but it’s not my thing, you know? My cousin loves it. I had my tonsils taken out when I was ten, and we watched every movie back to back.”
I walk into the house. “Was it torture for you?
She brightens like she’s listening to the best chorus of a song in her head. The type of chorus that touches your soul in a way you know you’ll never be the same again. “No. It was with Henry. Anything with Henry is worth doing.”
I get it. Anything with Axle is worth doing, too.
Elle closes the door, and I freeze. And I thought the outside of this sprawling house was a formidable fort of red brick. The inside of this place makes me feel like dirt on the bottom of someone’s shoe.
“I texted Sean.” Elle pockets her cell. “He said to give him a few minutes.”
“Okay.” Behind Elle is a massive staircase leading to the second floor with an open air hallway. Dark hardwood below me, walls with white crown molding, huge heavy solid oak closed door to my right, and to my left is a dining room with a long table and chandelier.
I finish the scan and find Elle watching me. Curiosity plain on her face. She’s studying me the same way I’m trying to figure out her.
“Did you know who I was?” she asks. “On the midway?”
“No.”
She watches me with a soft expression, and I will her to believe me. I liked being her hero, and I don’t want that to go away. After the longest silence of my life, she finally says, “So you’re the one?”
I nod because I guess I am.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“All the bad’s true.”
A ghost of a smile plays on her face. “Actually, I heard a lot of fantastic things.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all.” She leans her back against the corner completely unguarded. After spending a year with people who literally stabbed others in the chest with a knife, her openness is unnerving and leaves me in awe.
“My dad received tons of updates over the past year, so he’d know who to choose to help promote the program. You were in the running from the very start.”
“Because I pled guilty?”
“Because they said you were smart, caring and a leader.”
I don’t know what to do with any of that. “You seem to know a lot.”
Her expression turns serious. “Of course I do. Dad discusses everything about you over dinner.”
I blink, and Elle flashes a supernova smile. “Now, that I’m kidding about. At least on the Dad talking to me part. He hardly ever discusses business with me.”
“Then how do you know any of this?”
She cutely shrugs her shoulders like she should be embarrassed, but she’s not. “I was curious about the program, and I may have eavesdropped a few times.”
“May?”
“I’m going to plead the Fifth.”
I chuckle with that and she laughs with me.
“Don’t tell my dad, okay? He’s still mad over the midway debacle. Anyhow, they obviously never used names, and I only heard about twenty seconds’ worth of stuff because there’s only so many times I can walk past Sean and Dad in the kitchen without them noticing.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Clicking of heels and with her eyes attached to her cell, Cynthia rounds the corner from the hallway next to the stairs. “Thank you for coming, Hendrix. Sean would like to speak with you, but he’s in the middle of a meeting at the moment. Would you like anything in the meantime? Something to read? Drink? Lemonade, maybe?”
“We can have someone do your taxes while you wait,” Elle pipes in with that spark in her eyes that’s the equivalent of a gravitational pull. “Half of the people currently in this house are CPAs, including Cynthia.”
Cynthia frowns at Elle. “She’s joking, of course.”
“Am I?” Elle asks. “Really?”
Cynthia returns her attention to her phone with an irritated sigh, and Elle mouths, “I’m not joking.”
My lips tug up, Elle smiles and when Cynthia huffs at the exchange, I fake a cough to cover. That only causes Elle’s smile to widen.
“We do have lemonade,” Elle says, “and before you try to be all, ‘I don’t want to put anyone out,’ just let me get it. It’ll make life easier on everyone if they feel like you have something to do, and before you ask, they consider lemonade something to do.”
Cynthia has a just-accept-it expression, and I like the idea of anything that keeps me talking with Elle. “Okay.”
Cynthia returns in the direction she came. “I’ll come to get you when Sean’s ready.”
Then Elle and I are alone...again. Pieces of her blond hair fall out of her bun as she angles her head in the direction away from the foyer. “Shall we partake in some lemonade? It’s good. Made out of water, sugar and the secret ingredient of lemons.”
“You like telling me secrets.” This conversation is too easy, too comfortable and it feels very dangerous. The ingrained instinct is to step closer, and watch her reaction. If her eyes darken with hunger, then I’ll keep going forward, and I’ll keep talking so she’ll laugh and I’ll laugh and eventually let us both become intoxicated with each other’s company until...
I roll my neck to snap myself out of this. There is no until. Not with her. Not with anyone. Not anymore.
Why couldn’t it have been this easy at home? With Axle? With Dominic? I’ve been practically on my knees begging for at least one thing to be effortless since being home, and I’m screwed because it can’t be with her. “You think it’s okay to be alone with me?”
“Cynthia didn’t seem overly concerned, so I’ll take my chances.”
“I have a criminal record.”
“I’m sort of aware.”
“I was arrested. I served time in juvenile detention.”
“The criminal record implied that.”
“Do you talk to all ex-cons this way?”
“Considering I only know one, yes.”
That brings me up short. “Are you scared of anything?”
“Lots of things.” But damn if she doesn’t even blink as she stares me down as if she answered no. Despite her answer, this girl is fearless.
The intensity in her face fades and is replaced by some sort of awe that causes me to want to look down at myself to see what has changed her mood. She walks over, and shocking the hell out of me, Elle reaches out and takes my wrist into her hand. Her fingertips pressing against my skin.
My pulse pounds with her soft touch. Cool fingers against my hot skin. A brush of her long painted nails along the edge of my leather cuff and every cell in my body sizzles to life. Yeah, it’s been over a year since anyone has really touched me, since I’ve had any physical comfort, but even when I had been with another girl, I’ve never had a reaction like this. Never felt like my entire body was engulfed in flames by a single caress.
“This is seriously cool,” Elle says. “Where did you get it?”
The cuff. Elle is examining my cuff. Not offering an invitation to take her home for the night. “My brother Axle gave it to me a few years ago.”
I haven’t worn it since I was fifteen. After that I was too cool to wear a gift from my brother. But I found it last night before going to bed, and feeling out of place in the world, I needed the reminder I fit in anywhere.
Using the slightest pressure, Elle coaxes me to turn my arm so she can further investigate the worn brown leather that’s tied together by multiple black cords in a lace pattern. I’m pliant, moldable as she moves me one way, then the next. I briefly close my eyes as each brush of her skin against mine feeds this liquid warmth into my veins.
“Does the etched-in pattern mean something?”
It does. It means everything. It’s a symbol Axle drew to represent me, him and Holiday. A branded mark I should have paid more attention to when I was younger. “Yes.”
Elle studies my expression, and she earns respect when she drops the line of questioning. “Well, I think this piece is utter brilliance. It’s unique, and I have a thing for the unique.”
She flips my wrist over to look at the lacing again, and she slides a finger over the thick threads. “It’s all brilliance, but this... I can’t even begin to explain how much I love this.”
As her finger continues to slip up, her wrist comes in contact with my hand. The pads of my fingers lightly brushing her skin. My heart jumps out of my body, and Elle had to feel it as she jolts with the impact. Her entire body a joyous shiver, and both of us freeze.
Her chest moves faster than before, her breaths shallow, and when she returns her gaze to me, those eyes have melted into the deepest blue of the sea. Neither of us move. Just my pulse pounding, just her fingers pressed against my skin, just my thumb drifting of its own volition, enjoying the smoothest, softest being on the planet.
“Elle?” rings out a voice, and both of us leap away. I scrub a hand over my face as I turn my back to her. What the hell was that? I’ve been messing around with girls since I was fourteen, and no one ever made me feel as alive as that.
But Elle? She’s a risk, and I can’t afford to take risks anymore. I’ve changed, and it’s time to play it safe. It’s time to realize I can’t chase anything that makes me happy anymore.