Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (24 page)

I stood and nodded at myself in the full-length mirror that was propped up against the bathroom door, still waiting to be hung up. Peter might be here and that was fine. He wouldn’t bother me anymore.

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As we got ready for the party side by side, I was reminded of the very first party I had gone to with my friend Cassie from back home. The similarities of that disastrous night were eerie and I tried to push them out of mind as I applied a shimmery lip gloss that made my lips look nearly twice as big as they usually did. Cat pulled on a slinky black dress behind me as I turned my face from side to side, making sure that my contour was perfectly blended. I frowned at the way my nose hooked and the slightly uneven tilt of my eyes. Peter had always impersonated me by tilting his face to one side, and I’d always smacked him for it. Dammit, why was I thinking about Peter again?

“So,” she said, moving on to the equally slinky black boots. I glanced up at her, catching her gaze through the mirror. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling back. I wouldn’t get any prettier; she was right. We’d better go before the lines got too long and my feet started aching in these monstrous heels I’d bought awhile back. “Let’s go.”

I pulled on my jacket over the deep red halter top. It almost was longer than the tight black skirt I wore, and I smiled to think of Mom’s horrified expression. Except she wouldn’t have one. She’d just look at me with those dead eyes and tell me to put something else on. Before the smile could slip from my face, I turned to Cat and started asking her about all of the details of the club.

We met with the rest of the group that I had been acquainted with at dinner, and I gave them curt nods in greeting. Darren, the tall, lanky man slung an arm around my shoulder as if we had known each other for years. “So, April,” he drawled in his sweet southern accent. “What brings such a good-doing girl like you to our club?”

I stiffened. Had my reputation somehow preceded me?

“Don’t tease her,” Cat tutted. “She can dye her hair black if she wants.”

I relaxed. It was a joke. I forced a smile and faked an innocent voice. “My friends said I was studying too much and needed to get out. They even gave me an I.D. I can’t tell if it’s fake or not.”

I flashed the hundred and fifty dollar Pennsylvania I.D. at them, and Darren laughed. He ruffled my hair, completely destroying any semblance of the sexy curls I had been aiming for, but I found that I didn’t mind. Maybe messy would look better. “I like you,” he said. “You’re a lot more fun than any of these old farts.”

“Woah, boy,” another, the pierced-and-tattooed senior Anita said. I looked over at her, and then at the arm that was around her waist. That tattoo of the Chinese dragon was chillingly familiar. As I followed the arm to the owner, I took in a deep breath and ducked out of Darren’s arm.

Peter grinned at me. I hadn’t noticed before, but he had ditched the leather and death metal band t-shirts. He wore a black button-up shirt that had pearl buttons and was accentuated with a red bowtie. His trousers were freshly pressed and looked sharp enough to cut someone when they got too close. I frowned at him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

Cat looked back at me in surprise, and then when she glanced at Peter, understanding flashed across her face. “We were talking about the same guy,” she said, almost thoughtfully as we began walking.

“Sights to see, girls to screw,” Peter said offhandedly.

I turned my face away from him and caught up to Cat. “I didn’t know that he’d be here or I would have never agreed to this,” I hissed at her. Cat looked over at me, frowning.

“I didn’t know that he was the same Peter. He’s certainly changed from the last time you saw him.”

Was it possible that she was right? Peter had pretended before. After his first arrest for breaking and entering, he’d pretended to stop everything. He’d make up elaborate study date lies and call the school to mark himself absent so that neither parent would receive any calls about him being gone from all of his classes multiple times a week. He’d even managed to bring his grades back up for the time being though I didn’t know how. We had all thought that he was going back to being normal and that we could take a breath and get the break we deserved.

But it had all fallen apart when I’d found him selling drugs on campus. It hadn’t been anything too lethal, just Vicodin, but the simple fact that he was doing such a thing would have everyone freaking out. He’d shut me up by threatening to tell Mom that he’d seen me kissing Robert Landon, resident bookish nerd. At the time, the thought had completely mortified me, so I’d kept silent. I realized now that it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if he told Mom or not, because she didn’t care, not anymore.

I shook my head. Peter couldn’t have changed. It was impossible. He loved trouble too much and the thrill that the adrenaline that came with it brought. I completely understood that, now, but I always stuck to things that were legal. Well, mostly legal. But, I reminded myself quickly, there’s a world of difference between breaking into a house and lying about your age.

We walked down the street and I hardly looked at any of the storefronts as we passed; I was so deeply engrossed in my own thoughts. I almost ran into Cat as we stopped at the line, and I blinked myself back into the present time.

The air was chilly enough that I was glad I’d brought my jacket, even if it did disturb the complete look of my outfit and the line was long enough that I was debating the wisdom of my choice of shoes. The club itself was in a low, black building with blacked-out windows that looked plain except for the one wall that was completely covered in graffiti art. A neon sign had an abstract figure of a girl leaned back in rapturous song, violin clenched tight between her chin and shoulder. Her hair spiraled back and became the word virtuosity. I glanced over at Cat. It looked fair enough, but like nothing special. I’d been to clubs all over the different states and I knew a good club when I saw one. This one wasn’t peaking my interest. Of course, it could have been partially due to the burning black hole of Peter the misery-bringer that was standing directly behind me and a bit to my left. I refused to glance back at him, even when I heard him laugh softly or when my name was mentioned in the group. Even when he said my name, I kept my gaze trained firmly on a man’s broad pair of shoulders in front of me.

I couldn’t help but think that no matter what kind of demon Peter was, he was a damn good-looking one. In his elegant attire, he looked like someone who made a lot of money just by sitting there; like a famous singer or actor. Probably the latter; he was too beautiful to be anything but. Too bad he couldn’t act unless he was lying about something.

The line moved forward, and I shuffled my feet forward. A touch on my shoulder caused me to look back. Peter leaned towards me and I flinched away from him. “How are you going to get in?”

“Fake I.D?” I asked. “Duh.” I waved it in front of his face. He snatched it from my fingers and I made a quick grab for it, straining my hands upwards.  He held it out of reach easily. Even with my extra four inches, Peter still managed to tower over me quite annoyingly. I put my hands on my hips. “Give it back.”

“I will not,” he said, reading it over. “This is an ugly picture of you, April.”

“Give it.” I held out my hand and narrowed my eyes at him. He looked up at me, and though his lips were only slightly tilted up, I could just see his eyes laughing. I grimaced and wiggled my fingers. “Now.”

“Nope.”

I sighed and crossed my arms, tapping my fingers along my biceps while I waited for him to get over his glee at stealing my I.D. from me. “Are you going to give it back?” I prodded.

“Maybe,” he said.

God, he was so infuriating. We were almost at the door and I was beginning to panic. What if I didn’t have my I.D.? Would he tell the bouncer that I wasn’t of age yet? None of us technically were, but out of all of us—save maybe Cat—I looked the youngest with my boyish body and lack of a decent rack.

Just when the bouncer was about two feet away and I was truly starting to panic, Peter reached out and poked my nose with my license before shoving it into my palm and taking out his own. I let out a huff of a breath that let him know that I was incredibly irritated with him. I turned to see Anita watching us.

“You two fight like an old married couple,” she observed. I scowled.

“Do we now?” I asked, jabbing Peter in the arm. Hard muscle didn’t yield around my finger, and I drew back with a frown. Had he been lifting weights?

Before I could contemplate why that made my lower stomach warm suddenly, the bouncer was asking me for my I.D. Distractedly, I handed it to him, too concentrated on what was wrong with me to even be truly worried that my I.D. might look fake. I passed inside with no trouble, however, and Cat pulled me alongside her as people streamed by chattering and laughing, buzzing with only the type of energy that comes from a club.  

“What’s with you two?” she asked, jerking her head towards Peter.

“We don’t like each other,” I said.

“Oh, he likes you plenty,” Cat said, grinning a bit. “He’s just one of the guys that never grew out of the teasing stage of flirting.”

“Flirting?” I asked, half horrified and half intrigued. Nope, not intrigued. “You do know we’re step-siblings, right?”

She grinned at me again. “Key word in that sentence: step. You aren’t related by blood, so I don’t see the big issue here.” I gaped at her, unable to think of any good words to say back. Before I could fully comprehend and process everything, she was pulling me away and towards the buzzing commotion that was the dance floor.

Now that we were inside, I could see why she liked it. The club was chic and polished, but retro and funky at the same time. The dance floor was sunk into the ground a few steps, and the tables were separated by the walking space by another set of three or four steps. It was private and just the kind of place that would make someone who wasn’t used to coming to clubs feel welcome. Good thing I was plenty used to it by now.

We all chose a table and sat around it, talking for several minutes before a waiter came by. I was sandwiched between Cat and Peter—how the hell had this happened?—and constantly tried to keep my knee from brushing his. As I sipped my strawberry daiquiri, I attempted to discern what about Peter was different. His hair was the same messily I-just-had-sex sort of look and he still had the same face. Even his expressions were the same, as he looked over at me and poked me in my ribs when I least expected it just to hear the squeak that was wrenched out of me each and every time.

Nothing appeared to be different about him, except that he talked about school instead of what kind of drug he’d gotten or which house he’d stolen from last night. He sounded polished, nearly professional, and it made me wonder what exactly had happened to him, and why I was feeling this tingling feeling as his leg brushed against mine.

When Cat suggested that we go to dance, I gladly accepted, nearly leaping out of my seat the instant she was up. I needed to get away from Peter, away from his smile—the only thing that I could find different about his expressions—so that I could clear my head and remind myself of all of the terrible things he had done to me and my family.

The music was slow and sensuous, moving my body in fluid ways. I lost myself in it, so much so that I hardly noticed when a pair of hands slipped around my hips.

As they moved forward, skating along the sequined front of my skirt, I startled from my trance and jerked myself away. I looked back—it was no one that I knew; some random drunk guy who was looking to find someone easy. Well, I wasn’t easy. I pulled my hips from his grip and spun around to face him.

“Excuse you,” I spat, and attempted to look around for Cat. Where had she gone off to? I had seen her to my left the last time I’d closed my eyes, but now there wasn’t a blond in sight.

The man didn’t leave. He tried to reach around my waist again, and I put my hand out against his chest, keeping him at that distance. “Dance with me?” he asked, and I could smell the reek of whiskey from my position a few feet away.

That simple statement brought it all back. That’s what he had said at the first dance. The nameless, faceless man who had tried to back me into a corner and molest me, going as far as yanking my shirt down and hiking my skirt up around my waist. That was before I had truly known how to be bad, and it had scared me shitless. Though Cassie had saved me, backhanding the man with a vigor I hadn’t seen since, I hadn’t been able to get over it.

When I had gone to Peter to ask for a ride home, shaking and in tears, he had refused, grinding himself against some girl whose name he probably didn’t know and saying that he was having too much fun. Cassie had been too drunk to drive, and I didn’t trust myself at the wheel, though I’d only had a beer and margarita. I’d had to call Mom and ask her to come get me.

That had been the first time she’d looked at me with that disappointed look that she always gave Peter when he was still around to receive it. That was also the first time I realized that I couldn’t rely on Peter for anything. In my one moment of need and desperation, he’d left me with nothing. He’d left me to resorting to call the very person who would ground me and put me on dishes duty for six weeks.

He hadn’t even cared that I had almost gotten raped against the wall of some club downtown. I hated him for every single day because of that.