ARROGANT BASTARD (10 page)

When Juliette found the picture I’d drawn of her she stopped. I expected her to yell at me, to take it to my father, to scold me and tell me how dirty and fucked up I was. Instead she set the pad down gently on my nightstand and shut my bedroom door.

“Are you curious about me, Jensen?” she purred. Her overfilled lips curled into a smile. “It’s okay if you are. I won’t tell anyone.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m curious,” I said, sitting frozen on the edge of my bed. Juliette had never come onto me like this before. “Juliette, have you been drinking?”

Her fingers traced down the front of her white silk blouse until they found the top button. One by one, her blouse came undone. She stepped toward me, reaching down for my hand and placing it over the outside of her bra. The warmth of her body radiated through my palms and her breast overflowed in my hand.

“You’re not a virgin, are you?” she asked with a wicked glint in her eyes.

“You’re not going to tell my dad, are you?” Not that I cared what he thought, but I wasn’t in the mood for another one of his lecture-and-beatings.

“We’re on the same team, you and me,” she whispered, pretending like my hand on her breast was the most natural thing in the world. My eyes trailed up to her pretty face. Her hollow cheeks and hollow eyes were shadowed, covered up by layers of makeup. For the longest time, I wondered why she wore so much of it, and then I saw the bruises. “We’re stuck here. We’re bound to him. What if I told you there was something we could do to make ourselves feel better about our… situation? Don’t you want to feel vindicated, Jensen? Satisfied?”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. Scratch that—I knew damn well what she was getting at. I just couldn’t believe it was really happening.

“You’re testing me.” I retract my hand from her bra cup.

“Oh, but I’m not.” Her face fell, morphing into something I could only describe as the greediest lust I’d ever seen in my entire life. “He punishes us all the time. Let’s give him something to punish us for.”

“Why don’t you just leave him?”

I was sixteen. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t leave unless I wanted to dive headfirst into foster care, but Juliette? She could walk out the door at any time and never look back.

“It’s complicated,” she cooed, raking her pink fingernails through my hair and pouting. She reached back and unhooked her bra, her double-D tits bouncing into a perky position. Her nipples hardened. “Adult stuff. Someday, you’ll understand.”

She climbed onto my lap, sending my cock throbbing. Grabbing fistfuls of my shirt, she tugged it over my head before pressing me back onto my mattress. “God, Josiah would be so pissed if he knew…”

Every beating. Every harsh word. Every hypocrisy. They all rushed through my mind at the same time, painting a picture of the monster that lived and breathed and abused us both for no other reason than to build himself up, make himself stronger.

We could fight back, her and me, in small, stolen moments and behind locked doors.

I stared into her despondent gray eyes, and I decided then and there that we could help each other. We could fuck the shit out of each other and not feel a damn thing except revenge toward my father.

“I never knew you liked to draw,” Waverly says, snapping me into the present moment. I can’t help but feel dirty against her pure-white presence.

I pull the sketchpad out of her grasp and shut the cover, shoving everything back into my bag. Mrs. Davenport is talking at the front of the classroom. The hour is over. Waverly’s stare is invading, intrusive. She can have me at face value. I’ll give her that. But my past? That’s something she’ll never touch. I won’t allow it. She wouldn’t understand.

“Do you have more of those?” she asks. She won’t fucking drop it. I’m not sure why she cares.

“Of you? No.”

“No, any more drawings.”

“In my art class, sure.”

“At home.”

I shake my head. “Left everything at the old house.”

It was true. I left that place with a few clothes shoved into a duffel bag. Juliette cried as my dad assured her since I was eighteen that it wasn’t statutory rape. I’ll never forget my father standing there, knuckles bruised and bloody, and he’s calm as a fucking yoga instructor as he shoots the shit with the cops our neighbors called when they heard Juliette’s guttural shrieks. I left with a bag of clothes and the social worker. As for Juliette’s fate, I’m sure my father roughed her up pretty good, and for the first time, I wasn’t there to protect her.

“You’re incredibly talented,” Waverly says.

“You seem surprised.”

“It’s not a bad thing. I’m impressed, is all.”

Claire Fahlander spins around and shoots Waverly a dirty look before shushing us both. I have half a mind to break her heart just for the sport of it. I bet she’s one of those girls who ugly cries.

“That’s what happens when you judge a book by its cover.” I smirk.

She leans close, her steady breaths tickling my ear. “
Likewise
.”

I knew it.

I fucking knew it.

Underneath her prim and proper façade is a girl dying to break free from the confines of her ass-backward religious restraints. She’s straddling the line. I can see it. It’s written all over in the way she looks at me, like I make her feel things that terrify and excite her all at the same time.

Any guilt I might have felt by pushing her buttons last night evaporates. I have my work cut out for me, that’s for sure, but I’m so not done with her yet…

I forced myself to talk at dinner tonight. I couldn’t take another family meal smothered by the weight of Jensen’s stare. I’m a big girl. I made a decision. I touched myself last night, and I enjoyed it.

End of story.

Bellamy always says everyone has secrets; some are just better at hiding them than others.

So now I have a secret. It burns hot inside me, fresh as the instant it was placed there by the most earth-shattering orgasm I could’ve ever dreamed up. But it’s there now, and there’s no getting around it.

I finish dish duty and glance out the sliding door toward the backyard, where Jensen is outside playing with Gretchen and Gideon after the light drizzle we got that evening. They’re half-siblings, but they look nothing alike. They have soft features like Kath does, but their hair is almost colorless. Dad said his hair was that pale when he was a kid. The twins are like two effervescent angels. Jensen is dark and hardened. The three of them all laughing and playing together is a sight to see.

A warm hand wraps around my shoulder. “You okay, Waverly?”

It’s my father.

“Of course I’m okay.” I force a smile and pray to God he can’t see right through me.

“Is Jensen bothering you?” His lips go straight and his brows meet in the middle. “You haven’t been yourself since he came around.”

“School stuff,” I say, placing my hand over his. “Getting nervous about getting into college. Still haven’t heard from my number one and graduation’s coming up.”

His face relaxes as he kisses my forehead. “You worry too much about your future. You know I’ll always make sure you’re provided for.”

“I appreciate it, Dad, but this is my dream.”

Dad leans down, kissing my forehead. “You’re a good girl, Waverly. Heavenly Father has big plans for you. I feel it in my soul.”

“After college, Dad.” I smile. “I just want to study literature, make some friends, and then I’ll settle down.”

He doesn’t say much, which concerns me, but I chalk it up to my anxiety about not hearing back yet from the University of Utah.

“I’ve been doing good, though, right, Dad?” I glance up at him, meeting his eyes with as much hope as I can muster. “I’m doing all the right things. Making you proud. Showing you I can handle being on my own for a few years.”

“We need to get through the rest of the summer,” he says, his eyes whipping outside to Jensen. “A lot can happen after high school graduation. People change. Attitudes change.”

“Dad.” I tilt my head. “You know me. I’m not like most young women my age.”

I glance across the room at Bellamy. She’s sitting in Dad’s overstuffed club chair flipping through a
Better Homes & Gardens
magazine. At almost twenty-two, she’s never moved from home, not even after finishing her associate’s degree last year.

I love my sister more than words, but I have no desire to still be living at home at this age, waiting to be married off—if that’s even what she’s doing. I want to settle down someday, but I want to live a little first.

“You could always go to Whispering Hills Community College.” Dad loosens his grip on my shoulder and pats my back. “Bellamy loved it.”

Bellamy is a closed book. Sometimes I think she talks about everyone else’s secrets just to cover up the fact that she has a few of her own. None of us know what she’s thinking half the time. She could’ve hated college, for all we knew.

“You know where I want to go,” I say to Dad. We’ve had this talk before. I applied to four in-state schools, though my first pick is Utah. As long as I get accepted and get a partial scholarship, I can go. Dad, even on his pharmacist’s salary, can’t afford to send me away. He has way too many mouths to feed here.

He made the requirements crystal clear to me last year. Walk a straight line. Get a scholarship. That’s all I have to do to get out of here.

“Listen, everything will work out just the way Heavenly Father wants it to.” His words, normally a downy soft pillow of comfort on which to land, don’t offer the same effect this time. Dad releases my shoulder from his grip and disappears, retiring to his den for his nightly devotions.

I plop down into a nearby chair, resting my chin into my palm. The solid ground upon which I’d been building my future seems to be shakier than before. The only thing I can pin it on is Jensen. Something about him is making my father doubt my ability to go out into the world on my own.

“I found out what happened to Jensen.” Bellamy’s words hook me hard. “Why he was sent here.”

“Oh, yeah?” I take the chair next to her and do my best to pretend I’m not overly interested. “How?”

“Overheard Mom talking to Kath and Summer.” Bellamy licks her index finger and pages through her magazine. She rests it in her lap for a moment, glancing out the sliding door to where Gideon is stomping into tiny water puddles and splashing Gretchen. Jensen clearly taught him that.

“Okay, so what happened?” I hate that she’s keeping me on edge, but I can’t let on that I care as much as I do.

Bellamy folds her magazine and turns to me, leaning in. I do the same. Her face holds no expression. “He slept with his stepmother.”

I want to throw up.

My stomach sours and I fight the retching that threatens my throat. It’s the most vile, disgusting thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. How can Bellamy just sit there and pretend like we’re discussing the weather? How is she not equally as disgusted?

I remove my gaze from outside, where Jensen’s still playing. I can’t look at him the same, not anymore. I’m not sure what makes me more nauseous—the fact that he slept with his stepmother, the fact that he convinced me it was perfectly natural to touch myself while thinking of him, or the fact that I willingly did it.

I was a fool to think he actually gave a shit about me. He’s a manipulative con artist, filled with sin and blackness, and I was nothing but a pawn in his twisted game.

I walked right into his web.

I took the bait.

I fell for his cunning lines. His persuasive insistence. His charm.

Nothing but one giant act to cover up his incestuous cravings.

I’m stunned senseless.

I’ve never hated anyone in my life, but as of right now, I hate Jensen Mackey.

Waverly disappeared after dinner tonight. I watched her clear the table with her mom and sister until Kath asked me to go outside and play with the kids.

“They need to get to know their big brother,” she said with a soft smile. “You need to get to know them too. You’re family.”

I put on a good face, slipped on my jacket, and headed outside to teach the small kids the joy of good, old-fashioned puddle jumping.

Mark can thank me later.

After a solid hour, Summer called all the kids inside and they filed to their respective houses for what I can only assume is their bedtime routine. Everyone seems to head to bed around seven thirty in this family.

I trek up the stairs after an hour of watching public television documentaries about dead presidents and pass by Waverly’s closed door. I knock lightly and hold my ear up against it.

“Go away, Jensen.”

“How’d you know?” I whisper through the closed door.

It’s silent on the other side, but my feet cement to the floor. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got all night. My devious mind doesn’t shut off until half-past midnight, most nights.

The door swings open. She’s standing there in floral pajamas, her hair piled on top of her head and her face scrubbed clean. A small bedside lamp illuminates her otherwise dark room, and a book is lying open-faced on her bedspread.

“You always bother me this time of night.” There’s an auditory huff in her hushed words.

“I
bother
you? I thought you enjoyed it.”

“Never.”

“Lying is a sin.”

She squints, a feeble attempt at a dirty look. It’s cute at best. A wasted effort. “Go to bed, Jensen.”

She tries to shut the door in my face, but I block it with my body. I step inside, one foot on her blue carpet. “I’m not tired. Are you tired?”

“Exhausted.”

“You hide it well.”

“What do you want?” Her crystal eyes lock into mine. I like her this way—feisty. Feisty Waverly is sexy as fuck.

“I want to talk.” I stand firm.

She studies my face, and maybe she’s trying to summon strength from her God or whatever, but she and I both know I’ll knock down any walls she tries to build in two seconds flat.

“We have nothing to talk about.” She crosses her arms and steps away from me. I take it as an invitation.

“I want to talk about last night. We didn’t have a chance earlier. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Her eyes fall to my feet, her arms locked tighter than ever. I hear her inhale. “I
was
okay with it, until...”

“Until?”

“Until I realized what a lying piece of garbage you are.”

Goddamn it.

She’s the prudish, eighteen-year-old, modern-AUB version of Josiah-fucking-Mackey. I refuse to stand there and let her judge me when she doesn’t know half of what my life’s been like.

My fists clench at my sides. The nerve she’s just struck is raw and stings like hell, but I grit my teeth and breathe through it.

“What did I lie about?” My jaw is set so tight it’ll take a pair of pliers to pry it apart.

She steps back until she falls on her bed. “You convinced me to… touch myself… but you did it for yourself. For your pleasure. I know what you did, Jensen. And it’s disgusting.”

“What did I do, Waverly?” I prepare myself for a whole host of things. I’m not a saint. I never pretended to be one.

“You slept with your stepmother,” she hisses. Her words cut me, but only because she doesn’t know the half of it. She’s judging me, looking at me with cold, piercing eyes I’d once found alluring.

“Don’t fucking look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Judging me, like you know fuck about what I’ve been through.”

“You’re a sexual deviant, Jensen. You get off on… incest.”

“We’re not fucking related, Waverly.”

“I can’t be around you anymore.” She folds her arms. “I’m going to ask Dad to move you into Summer’s house tomorrow.”

Have fun explaining that…

“Whatever helps you sleep.”

I toss my hands up. I don’t appreciate being treated like a shit stain, and I fucking hate assumptions. My nostrils flare, and my blood threatens to burn clear through my veins if I don’t do something quick. I could stand here and explain myself to her, give a crash course in my life that would leave her disturbed, tell her things she’ll never be able to un-hear.

Or…

I can just leave. Walk away.

For the longest time, I didn’t have that option with Josiah.

I have it now.

I can just walk out of here and mourn the words I’ll never have a chance to say because no one tries to fucking understand.

Besides, I don’t need to explain myself to her. My life is none of her damn business. I’m not sure what I ever saw in her anyway aside from the fact that she was a sexy as fuck, impossibly uptight virgin I was dying to unwind. I thought I maybe there was something good in her, something worth salvaging. A hunger for something real behind those pale blue eyes.

I was dead wrong.

Fucking waste of time, is what she is.

That’s fine.

We’ll live like two passing ships in the night for the next few months. As soon as August comes, I’ll slip out of here and buy a bus ticket to L.A. She can marry some secret polygamist who receives her father’s stamp of approval, and she can pop out a bunch of babies and judge people to her little heart’s content.

I must have blacked out between that moment and now, because suddenly I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat of my truck, my left foot on the clutch and the right one on the brake as I start her up.

She’s loud as hell, and I might wake up the whole neighborhood, but I don’t care. I fly across town, getting the fuck away from the Miller Circus, and speed into a parking spot outside the shop. The light is on at Liberty’s place.

I’ve only worked with her a couple days, but she seems like a pretty cool chick. She’s the only friend I have in this stupid ass town, and right now I need to get as far away from everything as possible.

“Hey,” she says as she pulls the door open. She lives in a little apartment above her father’s shop. “What are you doing here? Need into the shop?”

There’s music coming from behind her, which I assume is her guitar-wielding boyfriend, Kian. I met him at work yesterday when he came in to drop dinner off for her.

She examines my face and chews on her lip. “Shit go down at Uncle Mark’s?”

I shrug.

“Oh, God. What’d he do?” Liberty pulls the door wide and welcomes me in. I lock eyes with Kian, who’s cradling a cherry red Fender guitar and gives me a tightlipped smile.

Kian’s wearing a white tank top that shows off his sleeves. Every inch of his arms is covered in multicolored tats.

My people.

“Mark didn’t do anything,” I say, taking a seat on a stained, velour sofa. I’m not sure what color it’s supposed to be, but it ain’t pretty. Judging by the general appearance of her apartment, it’s been ridden hard and put away wet one too many times. Empty beer cans line the kitchen sink, and there’s a perpetual beer-burp scent in the air. These are the people my father warned me about, and they’re the nicest, most laidback people I’ve ever met in my life.

“Oh.” Liberty scratches the side of her head and slides in next to Kian, resting her head on his shoulder as he picks the strings of his guitar like he’s in his own little world. “Waverly?”

I shrug, as if to neither confirm nor deny. She sees right through it.

“Not Waverly.” Liberty laughs. “She’s so sweet and innocent.”

Kian puts his guitar down and pulls a cigarette from a pack in his pocket. He lights up and passes it to Liberty, who takes a long drag and gives it back. Watching them together is like watching the inner workings of a clock: intricate, intentional, and in sync.

“What’d she do?” she asks, exhaling a lungful of smoke.

“Not in the mood to talk about it.” I recline in my seat and rest my hands behind my head. Her walls are covered in posters of various rock and metal bands. How she and the Miller girls could possibly be from the same genetic pool is beyond me.

“Anybody want a beer?” Kian sits his guitar aside and rises up.

“I’ll take one,” Liberty says. I found out earlier that day that she was twenty-one. She appears a lot younger, minus the tattoos. “Jensen, you want one?”

“Got anything stronger?” I ask.

Kian laughs. “You’ve got a lot of balls, man. I like you. You sure you’re still in high school?”

“Told you,” Liberty says. “He acts older than the two of us combined.”

I feel old as fuck sometimes. It tends to happen like that when you spend the majority of your youth raising yourself, questioning authority, and growing up long before everyone else.

Kian comes back with two Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys and a fifth of off-brand vodka that’s half gone. “Take this. You can have it. Hide it. You didn’t get it from me.”

I accept his offering. “Thanks, man.”

Kian winks. “I know what it’s like.”

He leaves it at that, and I’m not in a mood to pry. It’s none of my business, and Kian seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t appreciate another man prying into his personal affairs, much like myself.

Kian’s phone dings.

“Who the hell’s texting you this late at night?” Liberty’s entire demeanor shifts. Her blue eyes burn dark and she sits up. Kian yanks the phone away from her like he’s hiding something.

“Okay, well, I should probably head out before anyone notices I’m gone…” I rise, shoving the half-empty fifth of vodka into my interior coat pocket and heading toward the door. They continue bickering like cats and dogs, and I’m not even sure they saw me leave.

Liberty will probably apologize tomorrow at work. Then again, she might not. She doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who’s sorry for a whole lot. I like that about her. She’s a take-me-or-leave-me kind of girl.

She’s earned my respect, that’s for damn sure.

***

I park in front of the main house, fully expecting Mark to be standing in the living room window again, hands on his hips, ready to give me a talking-to, but the house is dark.

Either no one noticed I left or no one fucking cares. The latter wouldn’t surprise me.

I carefully pad up the sidewalk and ready my key.

“Jensen.”

My heart drops. I don’t startle easily, but when you’re trying to sneak in to your own house and someone whispers your name from the bushes, it has a tendency to do that to a person.

Bushes rustle to my right, and I squint only to find what looks like Bellamy crouched down in between two trimmed hedges.

“What the hell are you doing down there?” I hop off the steps and reach for her hand, pulling her up. She’s dressed like a five-dollar hooker. Well, not quite. She actually looks hot as fuck. Two-dollar whore is what Josiah Mackey would call any woman who wore anything that showed any bit of skin. Juliette was the exception. She couldn’t hide her curves behind even her most conservative Sunday best, and Josiah liked that.

“I’m locked out.” She stands, smoothing the creases of her tight, dark dress. A small fur something-or-other hugs her shoulders. Other than that she’s got a whole lot of skin showing for a cool spring night like this.

“How were you planning to get back in?”

“I saw your truck was gone. I figured you’d be back soon.”

“And if I didn’t come back?” She’s shivering, though she tries to fight it. I grab her arm and lead her to the door, slipping my key in slowly and quietly praying the lock doesn’t clack enough to wake up the Big Man. I’m shocked he doesn’t have a security system installed.

“Guess I’d have frozen to death.” She laughs as if it’s funny—like she doesn’t care. Her eyes dart down to my jacket. “Your liquor’s showing.”

I feel like I’m talking to a complete stranger, and while I’ve only known Bellamy a few days, I’m starting to realize she is absolutely nothing like she seems. I know she commutes to a job in Salt Lake City. I know she walks a straight line when Mark’s around and keeps her mouth shut. That’s it. She’s pretty quiet most days, and it looks like she has damn good reason to be.