Brinley
October 5th, before
“Come on,” Liam says, stroking his hands down my arms. “I’ll be real sweet. I promise.”
I shrug out of his grasp and shake my head. Again. I’ve been politely declining the invitation to join him in his car for the past ten minutes, and yet we’ve somehow made it all the way from the dance floor in the middle of the gymnasium to the back door. “I said no. I’m not interested.”
“You know what you are, Brinley? A cocktease. You make promises with those pretty eyes and short skirts, and then shut down when it’s time to follow through.”
Promises with my eyes? What does that even mean? My cheeks burn, and I tug on my dress and glare. “I didn’t promise you anything, Liam.”
“Pretty soon that shit’s going to catch up with you,” he says. “Then you’ll be sorry you didn’t just give yourself to a nice guy like me.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond before turning around, pushing out the door, and heading toward the parking lot.
I nearly forget Liam when my gaze snags on the tall, dark-haired boy sitting on the hood of a beat-up Honda Civic and smoking a cigarette. He smirks when he catches me staring, and I blink at him as the door floats closed again.
I stand there and argue with myself. I could dance with my friends and tell them what an ass Liam was, but I’m afraid they’ll say he’s right and I should loosen up. Or maybe I should go home. I’d need to find a ride, since Liam’s the one who brought me here, but if I did, I could keep Brittany company. The doctor wouldn’t release her to come to the dance, so she and Mom are doing a movie night.
Neither option appeals to me. And maybe this makes me a bad friend or a bad sister, but what appeals to me is the guy sitting in the parking lot just beyond that door. Marston Rowe.
He’s a senior at OV High, so I don’t have any classes with him. But I’ve seen him in the halls since he started here last month, and he’s barely acknowledged my existence. I’d say he’s avoiding me, but that’s ridiculous. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not one of those popular girls who maintains her status by stomping on other people. I’m nice to everyone. But maybe . . . maybe he thinks I’m uptight too. Or maybe he hated kissing me?
I should stay away. If he wants to avoid me, that’s his business, not mine. It was just a kiss. It probably didn’t mean anything to him, and it shouldn’t mean anything to me. But . . .
When I take a deep breath and push outside, I’m relieved to see he hasn’t moved from his spot. He’s not in dress clothes like the other boys. Marston’s wearing torn-up jeans and a button-up shirt. He’s undone the top buttons and rolled the sleeves to the elbows, exposing thick forearms and a tattoo around his right wrist.
I stride to him, pretending we’re friends and he doesn’t intimidate the hell out of me. “I’m surprised you came.” I look over my shoulder toward the gymnasium doors. I didn’t see him in there earlier, and I’d bet money he didn’t set foot inside tonight. Since my attention goes to him anytime he’s anywhere close, I don’t think I would’ve missed him. “If you want some company, I could go inside with you and introduce you to some people.”
“Nah.” He takes a drag off his cigarette and turns his head to exhale a long stream of smoke. “I’m good.”
I bite my bottom lip, then take a chance and hoist myself onto the hood beside him. “Hasn’t anyone told you that’s a deadly habit?”
When Marston turns back to me, he arches a brow. “Do you need something?”
The day was sweltering, but the heat faded with the setting sun. The October breeze is a welcome, cool caress on my hot cheeks. I shrug. “I was bored in there, so I might as well keep you company out here.”
He stubs out his cigarette on the hood and tucks the butt into his pocket. “Are you always like this?”
My stomach pitches, and I tense in anticipation of some sort of criticism. My father is Abraham Knox. I was raised on criticism. “Like what?”
“The welcoming committee? The one who makes sure everyone has a friend?”
“Who said I do that?”
He props his hands behind him and leans back. “We go to the same school. I see you in action. Little Miss Perfect is nice to everyone.”
I slide off the hood and step away. “If you want me to go away, just say so.”
He shakes his head, and a shadow of a smile crosses his face. “It wasn’t an insult.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
He chuckles. “Fair enough.” His gaze sweeps over me again, stuttering for a beat where the hem of my polka dot dress meets my thighs. When he tears his gaze off me this time, it feels like maybe he doesn’t want to.
Is Liam right? Does my dress make me a tease? “Is it too short?” I ask quietly.
Marston’s eyes snap back to mine. “What?”
I swallow. “My dress?” I tug on it again. “I felt pretty in the store, but maybe it should be longer. Someone said it was too short, and . . . Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
He shakes his head. “It’s a dress, just like half the other girls are wearing. You shouldn’t have to dress differently just because you’re prettier than the rest of them.”
I bite my lip, but my smile breaks through anyway. “You gave me a compliment.”
He rolls his eyes. “You know you’re pretty.”
“But you called me the prettiest.”
He turns his head, looking around the parking lot, at his shoes and the sky and anywhere but me. “It’s true.”
The red flush creeps up his neck, making me smile bigger. “I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t peg you as the type who’d come to homecoming dances.”
“Aunt Lori wanted me to come. She feels like it’s an important part of high school, and I didn’t feel like arguing.”
“And does Aunt Lori know you’re spending the whole night sitting on your car and smoking?”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” He’s silent for a beat, and when he finally looks at me again, his jaw is tight, his eyes narrow. “Your date probably won’t like you sitting out here with me.”
“My date left when I refused to let him feel me up in the back of his car.”
He grunts. “Christ.”
“What?”
“You sure know how to pick ’em.”
I shrug. “Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s me.” He’s quiet, watching me as if he’s waiting for me to explain what I mean by this. “I’m sixteen, and the only boy I’m interested in kissing avoids me.”
“Happens to the best of us,” he mutters.
I lean over, knocking his shoulder with mine, and whisper, “It’s you, dummy.”
His head snaps around and his eyes are wide.
“Don’t look so shocked.” I smile. I don’t know why I feel more comfortable with this surly stranger than I do with any of the boys I’ve been going to school with for years, but . . . well, maybe that’s just it. I like that he doesn’t know me or my family. I feel like everyone else comes to me with a box they assume I should fit into, but Marston doesn’t have any expectations. It’s freeing and makes me feel bold in a way I’ve never experienced before.
“If you’re here with me because you want to horrify your parents, I’ll take you home and grope you in front of the security cameras. Save us both some time.”
“Wow. What an offer,” I deadpan.
“It would, you know.”
“Would what?”
“Horrify them. Maybe even push them to stop treating you like a child. I’m not judging you for wanting out from under their thumbs.”
He’s not wrong about the way my parents treat me, but he’s way off about why I’m sitting here. Is it so hard for him to believe I might be interested in him for reasons that have nothing to do with my parents or my need to be kind? I cling to that unfamiliar boldness. “I’d rather skip the security cameras and go somewhere no one is watching.”
He studies me for a long time, and there’s so much suspicion in his eyes that I expect him to tell me to get away. Instead, he wets his bottom lip and swallows hard before nodding. “Get in.”
I should be nervous about getting into Marston’s car, given how he could easily misinterpret what I just said. And I am nervous, but not for the logical reasons. I’m nervous because I want him to kiss me again. Because I like the way he looks at me and I want more of it.
The car has a beat-up leather interior, but it’s clean and doesn’t smell like smoke. I buckle in as Marston climbs into his side. He turns the key in the ignition, and the car slowly coughs to life. He shoots me a look like he’s waiting for me to comment. When I say nothing, he says, “This is Aunt Lori’s dead husband’s car. It’s been sitting in the driveway for two years, so I’m surprised it works at all.”
“I’m not judging.”
He smirks at this—because he finds that amusing or doesn’t believe me, I’m not sure—but he doesn’t mention it again as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main road. The windows are down, and the cool evening air whips through my hair, tugging strands free.
“You know much about the south dock at Lake Blackledge?” he asks.
“Other than that it’s there?”
“It’s a short walk from Lori’s, and it’s nice and quiet at night.” He takes his eyes off the road for a beat to look at me. “I thought we could go there if that sounds okay.”
My body is like a balloon slowly filling with helium. I might float. “Sure.”
“I’m not going to kiss you again,” he says.
And . . . pop. I fall. Hard. I’m not sure if it’s embarrassment or hurt that makes me want to jump out of this car and run home. “Fine. Whatever.”
He smirks at this but doesn’t talk to me again until we pull into a parking spot at the dock. He turns off the engine, but when he climbs out of the car, he leaves the radio playing and the windows down. I stay where I am for a minute, watching him wander toward the water with his hands tucked into his pockets.
His back is broad, and his jeans hang low on his hips. He’s tall but not lanky. He’s got some muscle to him and could easily pass for one of the guys on the OV High football team. I heard the girls joking that he’s so smart and ripped because he spent a year in juvie and all he could do to pass the time was work out and read. I don’t know if the thing about juvie is true. The rumor mill at OV High is more based on entertainment than truth.
I want to shake off the awkwardness he threw over us when he said he wouldn’t kiss me, but I can’t. Not when I want exactly what he’s said he won’t give me. I climb out of the car and follow him into the gravel beyond the parking lot. The night is clear and the lake seems to sparkle in the moonlight.
“You like the lake?” I ask as I move to stand beside him. I shouldn’t read too much into him bringing me here, but last weekend when I asked Liam to take me somewhere special, he took me to the football field and kissed me under the bleachers. Well . . . he probably wanted to do more than kiss, but I didn’t let that happen. Maybe I am uptight. A tease.
Marston nods without looking at me. “Nothing in Atlanta is this pretty. At least not where I lived.”
I have so many questions about his life before he came here, but I don’t want to pry or make him uncomfortable. For some reason, it seems important that I like him without demanding details about his past, so I give him a little piece of myself. “I’ve lived here all my life. Most of my friends can’t wait to leave, but . . .” I shrug. “I’ve traveled a lot, you know, and I like to go places to visit, but I love coming back. I can’t imagine anywhere else feeling like home.”
“You’re lucky. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a place that feels that way.” He turns around, finally, and a thrill washes over me as he devours me with that intense gaze. No one has ever looked at me like he does. And he doesn’t want to kiss me. It’s maddening.
“Where are your parents?”
His lips twist in a sneer. “Mom is probably strung out and mooching off her most recent boyfriend. And . . .” He hesitates as if he’s not sure he wants to share the rest, but then he shrugs. “I don’t know my dad.”
“You never met him?” The idea lights some traitorous fantasy inside me. My father works so hard for our family. He protects us and provides for us, but sometimes, his constant judgment and criticism make everything so much harder.
“My father is nothing more than a blank space on my birth certificate,” Marston says, snapping me from my horrible thoughts. “Mom doesn’t know which of her guys knocked her up and didn’t care enough to figure it out.”
“Oh.” My cheeks are so hot. I shouldn’t have asked. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m just guessing here, Brinley, but there’s a really good chance I’m better off without him.” He studies me, and the silence stretches between us, like a tightening string trying to pull us closer. “I can’t decide if you feel sorry for me or if I’m this train wreck you can’t look away from.”
I step forward. He’s so tall and so warm, and I really wish he would kiss me again. “I don’t think you’re a train wreck. And if I feel sorry for you . . . well, it’s no more than I feel sorry for myself.”
The DJ on the car stereo gives a rundown of the weather, and then James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” starts playing.
He shifts awkwardly as he turns to me. “You want to . . . dance or something?” There’s a nervous insecurity in his voice I haven’t heard before.
“You’d dance with me?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted to do tonight? Dance?” He turns up his palm for a beat then seems to think better of it and drops his hand to his side.
Before he can turn away, I rush forward and clasp my hands behind his neck. A soft, surprised laugh puffs from his lips, and his eyes are smiling as he settles his hands on my hips.
His dark hair has grown out since that first night we met. What would it feel like to slide my fingers through it? We barely move. The only dancing we’re doing is more about shifting our bodies fractionally closer and closer.
When I settle my cheek against his chest, he seems to relax. One hand shifts from my hip to the small of my back. “Why don’t you ask me about juvie or my probation? It’s all anyone else cares about, but you haven’t asked me a single question.”
I don’t look at him, sensing he wouldn’t want me to. “Do you want me to ask?”
“I don’t like it hanging between us. It makes me wonder if you’d run away if you knew the truth.”
For some inexplicable reason, those words make me want to cling to him. “How bad is the truth?”
“Could be worse, I guess. Could be better.” The song ends, and he pulls away. “I don’t want to kiss you again until you know who I am. What I am.”
“You’re Marston,” I say. Feeling bolder after a whole song in his arms, I skim my fingers over his cheek and trace the strong line of his jaw. “The boy who kissed me on my sixteenth birthday and who danced with me by Lake Blackledge in the moonlight.”
“I’m a delinquent and a thief. And I spent most of last summer homeless.” He drops his hands and backs away. My skin feels cold without his touch. “I’m not the kind of guy you should be looking to for dances or kisses or . . .” He turns away and drags a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”
I place a tentative hand against his broad back. “Are you okay?”
“Get in the car. We should go.”
A delinquent and a thief. I wonder if he really believes that’s all he is.