Page 1 of Fierce Love
Chapter One
Nathaniel
Fourteen years ago
Today will change my life. This marriage proposal has been looping figure eights through my head since I decided a ring was the perfect way to show Hollyn I’m completely committed to making us work, no matter where we live, even if I’m only seventeen.
With no colleges in Bellerive, we have no choice but to go off our small Atlantic island for our degrees. Tomorrow she’ll be in New York for art, and I’ll be in California taking business, both of us starting our freshman year of college.
And we’ll be planning a wedding.
As I come down the stairs of my family’s oceanfront mansion, one of my younger sisters, Sawyer, calls out from the main living room, “Mom’s on the rampage. She’s looking for you. Not sure what you did, but I’d avoid her.”
I duck into the open-plan living room, kitchen, and dining room, which takes up almost the entire back half of our massive house and looks out on the ocean. The huge windows are floor to ceiling, and there’s a cliff about a hundred meters from the back patio. For some reason, the view catches my attention today when I’d normally gloss over it. The first time Hollyn was at my house, she said she didn’t understand how there were peoplethisrich. A lot of the time, I forget that everyone doesn’t live like we do. Most people, in fact.
Despite the world I’m growing up in, billionaires are a rarity. Our Tucker family bubble of wealth kept me from seeing the full scope of how everyone else on the island lives, but that bubble burst with Hollyn’s family. There’s no unknowing what I’ve seen now.
Maren, my thirteen-year-old sister, pops up beside Sawyer on the white leather couch, and she leans over the back, crossing her arms, tanned from the long summer months spent outdoors. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Mom’s just being Celia Tucker.” Socialite and social-status obsessed, like always.
If she finds out I plan to propose to Hollyn, she’ll be livid, not just because of my age but because Hollyn’s family doesn’t have two pennies to rub together. She’s been living with her aunt for the last ten years while her parents float in and out of trouble. Not exactly an ideal match in my mother’s eyes. Or my father’s, if he was paying attention. But he leaves us and our troubles to our mother.
In two months, I’ll be eighteen, and there will be nothing Celia Tucker or anyone else can do to stop a wedding. I’ll have accessto the Tucker family trust, and I’ll be legally able to do whatever I want. Until then, I just have to ride out her disapproval. Easy enough from California.
“Whenever she gets like this, one of us has done something to damage her social clout. Did you get Hollyn pregnant?” Sawyer asks.
“No!” My response is quick, but if they could read my mind, they’d know I wouldn’t have been upset if thathadhappened. Anything that gets me Hollyn forever is just fine with me. But being a teen mother is the last thing Hollyn would want. The first time we had sex, she asked me if I could double bag my dick and go with her to get Plan B, just in case. So yeah—not pregnant.
But if she ever was, I’d parent our kids so differently from how Celia and Jonathan have raised me. I’d give a shit when they succeeded, just as much as when they failed. I also wouldn’t tell my kids that I liked them best before they learned to talk—Thanks, Mom—which she fully admits is why she had us all so close together.
“Where are you going?” Maren asks, eyeing my outfit.
The jeans I have on are the ones Hollyn loves, and the shirt I’m wearing is the one she bought me. She claims this blueish hue matches my eyes, but other people have called my eyes green too. I never know what to label their color.
“I’m going out. And I’m not telling either of you where in case you sell me out to Mom.”
“Sell you out!” Maren scoffs. “What could she possibly offer us?”
“Easy,” I say, because they think I don’t pay attention to the chatter around the house. As the oldest of five, I used to be the one helping to persuade Mom that the Tucker name could take a hit or two. Until I was the one delivering the blows and she stopped listening to me. “Maren, she could sign the permission forms for you to go on whatever adventure race that teacherhas talked you into, and for you”—I turn to Sawyer—“she could let you participate in that sit-in in Tucker’s Town over climate change.” Excessive exercise and protests are things Celia Tucker finds distasteful and beneath the family.
They both stare at me and then turn to each other, as though they are dumbfounded by my infinite knowledge.
“Exactly,” I say, and I point at both of them before grabbing my keys off the table and heading for the bank of garages. The Range Rover is mine, though my parents don’t care which of the thirty-odd cars I drive as long as I don’t get into an accident. No dents, scratches, or scrapes allowed.
The drive to the campground is short. Nothing in Bellerive is particularly far away—at least, if you’ve experienced enough of the world to know the difference. An hour’s drive from one end of the island to the other, and about the same widthwise, though that’s more about the hilly, mountainous terrain the roads have to conquer than the distance itself.
Hollyn is meeting me when she’s done with her waitressing shift at The Drunk Raccoon. Tucker’s campground overlooks the ocean, prime real estate, just like everything else the Tucker family possesses. Generational wealth is real and prevalent in Bellerive. Unescapable, which Hollyn has reminded me of countless times. In Bellerive, you’re either already ahead or you’re behind. The middle class is a myth or such a minority that it feels like a myth—I’m never sure which.
Cal, my distant cousin, best friend, and the son of the branch of the Tucker family that owns this slice of land, meets me at the front gate.
“Does Celia know yet?” he asks, almost giddy, as I get out of the Range Rover, the ring box banging against my leg as I walk toward the spot I’ve had strung with fairy lights, a blanket, and a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne. Hollyn doesn’t drink.
“Fuck no,” I say with a laugh.
“Celia will need an enema when she finds out. She’ll be constipated for weeks over this.”
“Possibly for the rest of her life.” But I’m not worried about it, and maybe I should be. My mother can be a force to be reckoned with, but I’m so close to getting financial freedom that her thoughts and opinions are less and less important.
