Page 47 of Fearless

“It’s true.”

“It is,” Ava said, rising. Without looking at her brother, she headed toward the clubhouse.

“Where are you going?” he asked after her. “What did I just say?”

“I’m going home, but I left my bag inside,” she called over her shoulder. Venomously: “Is it alright if I get it? Or should I leave my homework here for you to study off of?”

Tango chuckled into his hand.

Aidan flipped her the bird.

Ava slipped into the quiet, AC-cooled shade of the clubhouse without making a sound. Ares was asleep in the foyer, exhausted from a day of running across the property. His ears twitched as she tiptoed past him, but he didn’t stir. Past the gym and business parlor, she stepped into the common room –

And halted.

Impossible to miss, Mercy stood leaning against the bar, smiling down into the face of one of the club groupies. The Lean Bitches, the boys called them behind their backs, the women who wanted a piece of a Dog just for the danger and the thrill. They’d take whatever attention was given to them. The leggy blonde in front of Mercy was one of the favorites: Jasmine.

Today, Jasmine wore cutoffs, tan cowboy boots and a translucent turquoise top. Her hair was done up in artful, brassy waves down her back. She was tan, curvy in the right places; she had a mouthful of straight white teeth and glue-on lashes she batted like a pro. She had a hand in the center of Mercy’s chest, her weight shifted toward him, laughing at something he’d said, her posture suggestive without being lewd.

Every red-blooded man’s fantasy, that was Jasmine. And Mercy had a hand on her waist, at the little wedge of tan skin showing between her top and waistband.

Ava felt the heat rush to her face, the mingled hurt and betrayal. It wasn’t justifiable: she was seventeen and “a kid,” as Aidan had said. Mercy was a grown man with urges he would naturally want satisfied by a real woman. He had half-raised her; he wouldn’t see her in the sexual light in which she saw him. He wouldn’t want her, not the way he so obviously wanted Jasmine. He would never hook a finger through her belt loop and tow her back to a dorm. He would never let that wicked, lascivious gleam come into his eyes with her the way it had here now in front of Jasmine.

He would fuck Jasmine, because that’s what guys like him did. It wouldn’t mean anything, he wouldn’t think anything of it, and then he’d move on to some other groupie, and do her good too. And God, it had to be good, didn’t it? Six-feet-five-inches of gator-hunting fury – she could only imagine, superimposing movie scenes and book passages, filling the hero’s shoes with Mercy’s massive tread.

She was aroused; she was infuriated. She was seventeen and frustrated and she loved him and she couldn’t have him.

Ava whirled and fled, stepping over Ares, not stopping when Aidan asked her a question; she scooped her notebook and pens off the table, her battered copy ofWuthering Heights, and went straight to her truck, her cheeks aflame, emotion clogging her throat.

With her eyes clouding over, she didn’t see Carter standing beside her truck until she’d almost collided with him. She pulled up short, gasping.

“Whoa.” He reached to steady her. “Sorry. I thought you could see me.”

“No.” She turned away from him and saw her reflection in the satin black finish of her truck’s paint. Her eyes were huge and watery, her lips dry and quivering. She looked like she’d seen a ghost – the ghost of Mercy’s sex life.

“Ava.” Carter laid a hand on her shoulder. It was a soft, benign touch, but he’d never touched her before, and it felt like he was trying to take a step, like he was bringing a new closeness to their tenuous bond. It was kind, and though she normally wouldn’t have, she now found comfort in the gesture. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She dashed at her eyes and grabbed for an explanation. “Just something my brother said.” Which wasn’t really a lie.

“Oh.” His hand stayed put. “I thought maybe that huge guy scared you or something.”

Oh, yes, he’d scared her with the truth: he’d never want her the way she wanted him.

“No.” She shook off the last of her freakout and turned back to him. His hand fell away. “I’m fine. Just” – she made a gesture to the air – “sibling stuff, ya know?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Not really. I’m an only child.”

“Right.” She hadn’t known that. To be fair, she didn’t know anything about Carter save he played football, was failing English, and was friends with Mason Stephens.

“I get it, though,” he rushed to say. “I’ve got friends. My brothers on the team. I get it.” He nodded and chewed at his lower lip, like staring at her head-on made him nervous.

“Yeah.” She reached for her keys in her jeans pocket. “So I’ll see you Monday then.”

“Yeah.” But he didn’t step aside. The lip-chewing intensified, and he asked, “So you’ve heard about the party at Hamilton House, right?”

Hamilton House was an old ruin of a pre-War era mansion that sat just beyond city proper. It was a halfway mark between the Teagues’ house and Grandpa Teague’s old overgrown cattle property. A once-sweeping feat of Greek Revival architecture, the mansion had passed down through the hands of the Hamilton ancestors until it reached the grubby mitts of fourth-generation owners who didn’t care for the place or its historic value. The decades of neglect had seen the shriveling of the clapboard siding, the denuding of the roof, the death of the great towering oaks, and the feral overtaking of the gardens and lawns. It had been condemned ten years ago, and never demolished. It was a monument, a massive middle finger to all other haunted houses. Kids had been sneaking in for ghost hunts and dares and secret parties for twenty years now. Fifteen minutes inside its walls could send the biggest, burliest football linebackers running for the street.

Tonight there was a party at Hamilton House, and Ava would have had to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to know about it. Even if she wasn’t part of the popular crowd.

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