Shatter

In a word, I felt like Demetri. I should have seen it coming. But that’s how life was. The calm before the storm. That was how it hit me. Everything was fine — perfect really. And then she came into my life and I was thrown into a hurricane of emotions I hadn’t experienced in years. By the time I realized what was happening, I was already head-over-heels in love with her. I didn’t have a choice. My heart had already spoken. I just didn’t know that by claiming her as my own, I’d be dooming her at the same time.

And insert depressing violin music. Maybe I should just ask Demetri to punch me in the face and get it over with. It’s not like he wouldn’t want to do that and more once he found out.

Even though I had deleted the pictures from my cell phone and tried to expel them from my memory — they still existed. And I was still tempted every damn minute that I took a breath, to just blurt out everything and then run headfirst into the ocean, praying the waves would do me the magnanimous favor of drowning me and my guilt.

I groaned into my hands. I seriously needed to stop being so depressing. I mean, I knew I had the tendency to be brooding enough without having all this baggage hanging around. Nat was probably two minutes away from strangling me, and I totally wouldn’t blame her. I needed a shot of something — preferably strong and alcoholic.

“Alec?” Nat stood a few feet in front of me, her arms crossed and lower lip jutting out. Damn, she had no idea how beautiful she was.

“Hmm?” I leisurely got up from the chair and walked over to her. I told myself to stop being so transparent, but damn if I didn’t want to just shred every ounce of clothing on her body and feel her skin against mine. Yes, that’s what I needed. Forget the shot of something strong. I just needed her — wanted to get lost in her and push away all the hell my mind kept re-living.

Long, golden-blonde hair blowing in the wind; she put her hands on her hips. Her brown eyes were narrowed as she watched me approach.

Her eyes widened a bit when I purposefully flexed my arm and then she looked down, a beautiful pink blush staining her cheeks. “Remember how I feel about your blushing?” I whispered, trying with every ounce of self-control I possessed, not to make a complete fool of myself and toss her over my shoulder cave-man style.

“Is it the same way you felt last night about—”

“—And we’re done.” My brother Demetri cleared his throat, appearing out of nowhere. “Can a person un-hear something? Anyone? Anyone?” He shook his head as if that would make everything go away and cursed. “Seriously, I’m almost embarrassed for the sand.”

“Why the hell would you be embarrassed for the sand?” I rolled my eyes and pulled Nat into my embrace, trailing my hands down her arms. I couldn’t get enough of her. Not by a long shot. Even touching her was enough to send my control out the window. Ha, she thought I had control. No. What I had was a lot of guilt that made me feel the need to control every damn situation until I thought I was going to shatter.

“Because you guys were all…” Demetri put his hands in the air and scowled. “Fornicating.”

“Fornicating?” I laughed, a bit thrown off that he not only knew a four-syllable word but the meaning behind it. “How the hell does one fornicate without—”

“—Okay, sorry to break this weird love triangle up…” Jaymeson stepped beside Nat and me. “But we’re supposed to go over to the bonfire and pretend to be bonding.” Jaymeson was an action star from the UK and one of our good friends. At least he was someone I could count on during all of the chaos that was our lives. I was actually relieved when they asked him to be part of the show. Against popular opinion, he was actually a really clean-cut guy. He never did drugs, never drank, and spent every Easter with his ninety-year-old grandma. Sometimes I hated that he made it look so easy. Fame wasn’t a big deal to him. Granted, he also slept with anything that looked cross-eyed at him, but whatever. He claimed it was because Americans were easy.

“Ah, reality TV at its finest,” I muttered back to him.

“Cheers.” Jaymeson winked at Nat and then slapped my ass. I lunged for him but Nat’s hand slipped to where Jaymeson’s hand had been, making me totally lose my train of thought. I sighed and kissed Nat gently across the lips. Her wet tongue licked my bottom lip and then slipped into my mouth. I wanted to throw her onto the ground.

“And we’ve come full circle.” Demetri cleared his throat. “Back to fornicating.”

I groaned against Nat’s mouth and cursed. “Do you really have nothing better to do than sit here and watch us fornicate? Really, Demetri? Is life that boring without drugs?”

Because of me, my brother had nearly killed himself last year and was finally out of rehab. I couldn’t take credit for pulling him out of his funk — nope, that honor went to Alyssa. She challenged him enough to grow a pair and put on his big boy pants.

Demetri’s wide smile did nothing for my mood. He pulled out a piece of taffy and winked. “Just getting you back for walking in on me and Alyssa.”

It’s possible I’d been ruining my brother’s mojo purposefully just to piss him off. I’d happily take that to my grave.

“Dude, you were moving slower than a snail.” I smirked and made a slow crawling gesture with my hands.

Laughter bubbled out of Nat. “So true.”

Demetri cursed. “If a snail is a kick-ass-ninja-track-athlete, then yeah. I was moving just like that.”