Chapter 1 #2
Someone very, very different from me. Sean’s world was one utterly outside my own, a world of breaking rules and laws, of waking up to the cops banging on your door—everything I’d been raised to be terrified of.
I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.
I might have to live surrounded by the gangs, but I keep as far away from it all as possible.
Maybe that’s why I could feel that thread of heat pulsing and twisting like a glowing wire inside me.
I’m so good—I’ve always been so good—that the idea of a guy like Sean O’Harra taking me and—
Stripping me.
Spreading me.
Destroying me. Taking all my goodness and making me as dark and dirty as him—
I pressed my thighs together. I didn’t dare look at him again. What if he was looking at me? What if he could tell?
I focused on the feel of the elevator clunking its way down through the floors.
God, I could feel the heat of him, so close in the little metal box.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed his hand finally descending.
..but, as it swung down, it came almost within touching range of my breast..
.then my hip...then my thigh. And I realized my whole body was tense, waiting for the brush of his fingers.
I didn’t dare look up but, when I glanced carefully sideways, I could see the hazy reflection of him in the polished steel between the graffiti.
And it looked as if he was staring down at me with such intensity every inch of my skin should have been bursting into flame. Sean O’Harra was looking at me.
Stop it. Like I’m the sort of woman he’d be into.
I couldn’t be more unlike one of his conquests.
They’re always blonde and tanned. I have hair the color of copper wire and my skin refuses to tan, even after years of living in California.
I can stay out of the sun or I can burn.
And my boobs are on the big side, making me awkwardly top-heavy and I don’t have time to wear anything but jeans and t-shirts or to spend hours on fancy make-up. I’m just a—
Well, basically I’m a mom. In every sense apart from the literal, genetic one.
A sex-starved, slowly-going-insane mom who can’t go out on dates or bring guys back to my apartment.
That’s why I was having crazy, fleeting fantasies about Sean O’Harra: because this brief interlude in the elevator was the closest I’d been to a man in months. That was the only reason.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
The elevator stopped. I heard the doors slide open behind me and I backed out, wheeled around, and ran before I could do anything stupid.
And I tried to ignore the itching between my shoulder blades, the feeling that he was watching me go.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting at an intersection, strumming my fingers on the wheel and willing the red light to change to green.
There was nothing coming in either direction but I’m the sort of person who never, ever runs a red.
I just know there’ll be a cop somewhere, hiding behind a billboard, ready to leap out and haul me off to jail.
Why was he in the elevator?
It had been niggling at me ever since I got into my car.
The elevator had been on the way down and Sean lived on the ninth floor, one below me.
So why had he been passing the tenth? There were only two more floors above mine.
..had he been visiting someone? I’d never heard of him making social calls before.
Unless he’d been all the way up on the roof.
What would he be doing on the roof?
The light finally changed and I roared across the silent intersection. I was going to be late and I knew it. I shouldn’t have run home to change after finishing my shift at the garden store, but I hadn’t wanted to show up at the school in a dirt-covered apron.
The view didn’t do anything to improve my stress levels: nothing but concrete, bleached sickly white by the sun. It was only April but the temperature was already in the seventies. I was really, really going to have to find the money to get the car’s air conditioning fixed before summer.
I hate Los Angeles. When my folks first moved us here, they seduced us with stories of beaches and palm trees, movie stars and endless sunshine.
But that was before. Before I had to move us from the modest but comfortable house to the crappy apartment we now inhabit, with its graffiti and cracking plaster and people like Sean O’Harra as our neighbors. Before it all went wrong.
Before it was just the two of us.
I pulled up in front of Kayley’s school, swinging around manicured flower beds and slotting my wreck of a car between the gleaming SUVs the other parents drove.
It’s a public school but it’s one of the best and the sole reason I chose our crappy apartment—it was the only place I could afford that qualified Kayley to keep going to this school.
I like the place, even if I feel like a charity case next to the other parents.
I like the fact it doesn’t feel like a fortress and the fact it has flowers outside.
It’s a paltry amount of greenery, really, but it’s better than the endless concrete I see everywhere else.
Sometimes, when I’m picking up Kayley from school and the wind blows the scent of the flowers just right, I can kid myself that I’m back in Vermont.
I raced up the steps and straight over to the reception window. I could see Kayley through the glass, sitting swinging her legs, and tapping out messages to her classmates on her phone. “Hi,” I said breathlessly. “I’m here for Kayley. Kayley Willowby.”
The woman peered at me owlishly. “You’re her...mom?” she asked uncertainly. Kayley is fourteen. I’m twenty-two.
“Her sister. Louise.”
“Give me a minute.”
I understand they have to check. I’m glad they’re careful, really. And I get that it’s an unusual situation. But waiting while she brought up Kayley’s school record on her computer and checked I really was her legal guardian and allowed to take her out of school felt like it took a half hour.
Then Kayley was running towards me, five feet four of blonde curls and energy.
Thank God she got my mom’s looks and not the pale skin and red hair I got from our dad.
Unlike me, she fits right in in LA. She threw herself into my arms, talking at eighty-three miles an hour about Darren, the cute boy in her math class, and the band he’s formed.
And suddenly, life was bearable. It was as if I could breathe for the first time all day. I didn’t care about being late, or poor, or being trapped in this concrete hell. I squeezed her close, close enough that she rolled her eyes and muttered that I was embarrassing her.
As long as I had my sister, I was okay.
“C’mon,” I told her, my voice muffled by her hair. “We’ve got to go.” And I hauled on her hand, hurrying her towards the door.
“I claim music!”
I sighed. That was our rule: whoever said it first got to choose the music.
That meant a half hour of listening to British punk rock from the eighties.
Why couldn’t she be into boy bands like any other teenager?
But I didn’t care too much. Even though I didn’t like pulling her out of school, even though the appointment was worrying me, it was good just to spend time together.
Minutes later, we were sitting in traffic with her babbling happily and me trying to figure out whether we’d make it on time.
I don’t know if it’s because of the age gap, but we don’t really argue.
Ever. Even before our folks died. I’ve always been the serious, studious one and she’s always been the fun-loving risk taker. We complement each other.
“I think I could be one of his dancers,” said Kayley. She had her feet up on the dash and was touching up her toenails. “Or at least a back-up dancer. But I think I need to go more...dark.”
“You are not getting anything pierced,” I said automatically.
“Maybe an eyebrow.”
“No!”
“Nose?”
“No! You’re perfect the way you are.”
She crossed her arms and mock-scowled at me. But she was perfect. Smarter than me and more daring, too—not that that’s difficult. And bouncing with energy.
Well...until recently.
A month ago, I’d started to have to tumble her out of bed just to wake her up.
At first, I’d figured it was just teenage moodiness, but then the school started to complain about her falling asleep during lessons.
Sometimes, like now, she seemed to be her old, energetic self, but sometimes she just seemed to slump.
And the bruises. She would say they were from hockey at school, but lately it looked like she’d fallen down the stairs.
When she’d started losing weight, I took her to the physician.
Hormones, he’d said. Probably a thyroid issue.
And he’d made us this appointment to have some tests run.
“Will it hurt?” asked Kayley.
“Nope,” I told her confidently. My stomach tightened at the thought of anyone stabbing her with a needle, but I didn’t want her to get scared.
“Liar,” she said.
Dammit. She always could see straight through me. How do other moms do it? Maybe it’s because we were sisters for so long before I moved into the mom role—we’re too connected for me to lie convincingly.
At the hospital, I filled out about a thousand forms and Kayley chattered away happily to the male nurse taking blood from her arm.
At first, I thought she was doing it to distract herself.
It was only when she mentioned for the third time that I was single that I realized she was trying to match make us.
“Stop that!” I muttered when he turned away.
“He’s cute!” she whispered back. “And he’s totally into you!”
“Kayley!” He was cute, in a way. He had floppy blond hair and a nice smile—handsome in a sweet, unthreatening way. I could see why Kayley liked him. But he wasn’t like—
My face went hot. Had I really just nearly thought he’s not like Sean O’Harra?