“Where’re you going?” he asks.
“To pee,” I lie. I hate that he always invites me to these parties but acts like he’s my dad when it comes to me leaving his side.
He stares at me, studying my eyes as if he can tell that I’m lying, but I turn away. I feel his eyes on me as I cross the living room, so I walk toward the staircase. The only bathrooms in this massive house are all upstairs, which of course makes no sense, but that’s frat houses for you.
I take the stairs slowly, and when I reach the top, I look back at my brother, then turn around and run smack into a black wall.
Only it’s not a wall—it’s Hardin’s chest.
“Shit, sorry!” I exclaim, wiping at the splatter of wetness on his shirt from my wine cooler. “At least it won’t stain,” I tease.
His eyes are bright green and so intense that I have to look away.
“Haha,” he says, monotone.
Rude. “My brother told me to stay away from you,” I blurt out without thinking. His stare is so intense it’s driving me crazy to keep eye contact, but I don’t want to back down from him. I get the feeling he’s used to that. I get the feeling that’s how you lose with this one.
He raises the brow that has a ring in it. “Did he, now?”
Yep, definitely an English accent. I want to comment on it, but I know how annoying it is when people point out how you talk. I get it all the time.
I nod, and the Brit opens his mouth to speak again. “And why is that?”
I don’t know . . . but I want to.
“You must be pretty bad if Dan doesn’t like you,” I joke.
He doesn’t laugh.
My shoulders are tense now; Hardin’s energy has captured me already.
“If we’re taking character judgments from him, we’re all fucked,” he says.
My instinct is to fight him, to tell him that my brother isn’t that bad, just misunderstood. I should defend him against this insult.
But then I remember the day when the entire family of Dan’s last girlfriend showed up to the house, the poor pregnant girl hiding behind her angry father. My dad wrote a check, and the lot of them disappeared with my niece or nephew, never to be heard from again. Something inside me knows there’s something darker inside my brother, but I refuse to acknowledge it.
With my mom so far away and my dad so far up Tasha’s butt, he’s all I have.
I laugh. “I’m sure you’re so much better.”
Hardin lifts his tattooed hand up and pushes his hair off his forehead. “Nope, I’m worse.”
Looking directly into my brown eyes, I somehow know he’s serious. I can feel the warning behind his words, but when he offers me the half-empty bottle of whiskey, I take a swig.
The whiskey burns as bright as his eyes . . .
And I have the feeling that Hardin is made of gasoline.
Steph
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.ti hguorht sllorts ehs sa moor eht ot secnuonna aivilO ”,derit os m’I“
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