Chapter 2
He’s staring at me.
From his spot across the ballroom, where he’s watching everyone else at this party, I imagine his eyes on me. That he’s watching me dance with him.
His twin brother.
That he’s watching and he’s seething.
His fingers are tightening and tightening around his still almost full whiskey tumbler. His dark eyes, chocolate brown like his hair, are narrowing and flashing. His jaw, always clean-shaven and so angular and hard, is clenching in anger.
I imagine he wants to push off that wall and stride across the room.
And he wants to do it in a hurry.
So much so that he shoves people away. He puts his large hands on their body and physically removes them from his path. And he can do it too. He’s so tall and broad and built. Not in a brutish way, though. In a way that all soccer players are built: sleek and sculpted, with dense bones and streamlined muscles. Even though he doesn’t play anymore, he still looks the part. And he’s going to use his quiet strength to destroy all obstacles in his path to get what he wants.
Me.
And when, at last, he gets to me, I imagine him ripping me from his twin’s arms. I imagine him spinning me around and crashing me against his muscular body. And when I gasp at the force, at his violence, he captures it with his cigarette-smoking mouth.
He finally, finally gives me what I asked him for.
A year ago.
On my eighteenth birthday.
A kiss.
A soul-wrecking, gut-clenching kiss.
But it’s not going to happen.
He’s not going to kiss me.
He’s probably not even looking at me right now.
First because this isn’t a movie. He’s not a tortured hero and I’m not a tragic heroine. Our love isn’t star-crossed or written in the wind. And second because it’s been a year now and he hasn’t done any of those things. In fact, he hasn’t even spared me more than a passing glance. So instead of making up scenarios in my head, all cinematic complete with a background score, I should focus on the present. I should focus on what I’m actually doing right now.
And what’s happening around me.
I’m on the dance floor and I’m kinda being watched.
Not by whom I want but by Jupiter.
Okay, don’t quote me on this, but I think, I think, she has a little crush on the man I’m dancing with. I’ve caught her staring at him a few times but haven’t broached the subject with her.
Because well, he’s with me.
I mean, he just claimed me in front of everyone.
That’s what he did, didn’t he?
He claimed me.
This isn’t the first time he has done that, though. He’s offered me his hand, his arm to hold on to; he’s pulled out chairs for me; he’s opened doors for me. One time, he even carried me in his arms because my heel broke while we were walking down the street, and instead of letting me limp along, he bent down and carried me to the restaurant we had been headed to, to meet his teammates.
And I’m not going to lie, I’ve encouraged it.
I’ve encouraged his hand holding, hugging, carrying me around.
His claiming.
Because it served a purpose.
A very selfish purpose he’s unaware of.
“Are you ready for the season?” I ask.
I know it sounded abrupt.
Given that we haven’t said a single word to each other ever since he dragged me out here on the dance floor with several other couples who are swaying in each other’s arms to slow music.
Which is very unlike us.
If we’re both good at one thing, it’s the talking.
Sharing jokes.
Making each other laugh.
Something that was apparent the very first time I met him at my eighteenth birthday party. The moment I found him by the pool chatting with some of his teammates and asked him to dance with me, I knew. I knew from his arrogant smirk and the impish look in his eyes that we were going to be best friends.
Oh, and then there were his words: Let me guess, you’re trying to piss someone off. Your dad, most likely.
And when I asked if he’d help me, he went, Fuck yeah. Not a huge fan of your daddy.
Instant best friends.
It was like I found a kindred soul.
Ever since then, we’ve been inseparable. And it would be amazing if our forced proximity was only because I very unexpectedly found a best friend in him when I was, in fact, trying to piss someone off—just not my daddy.
But it’s not, is it?
And it’s becoming increasingly difficult to bear that burden.
“Are we making useless chitchat now?” he asks instead.
My eyes snap up from his Adam’s apple—the spot I’ve been looking at all this time—and go to his face. His dark eyes shine with mischief. Thick, curly lashes, that mussed up hair he runs his fingers through. That arrogant nose and those lips, always on the verge of smirking. Like he knows a secret joke no one else does.
Shepard Thorne is a quintessential bad boy.
A rule breaker. Fun, irreverent.
Popular and arrogant.
Life of a party.
And a complete and utter opposite of a certain someone I can’t get out of my head.
I wave all that away, though.
“What?” I try to pinch his arm but fail. “It’s a legit question. The season’s starting next week. Are you ready or not?”
He gives me a look. “All right then. To answer your question, Miss Holmes, yes. I am ready. The entire team is ready. We brought home the trophy last time and we’re doing it this time too. Because we don’t fuck around when it’s something that belongs to us.”
I raise my eyebrows. “That was a little arrogant, don’t you think, Mr. Thorne?”
“Arrogance is just confidence with a few extra inches,” he shoots back. “And if you know anything about me, you know I’ve got a lot of those.”
“Are you saying you’ve got a few extra inches?”
“I’m saying I’ve got a lot of few extra inches.”
I shake my head, trying to curb my smile. “Maybe you’re not aware, Mr. Thorne, but you’ve just made a double entendre on national TV.”
“Oh, I’m aware, Miss Holmes.”
“I don’t know if it’s appropriate for our delicate audience, however.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to bleep me out, then.”
“I guess so.”
“What about you, though?”
“What about me?”
He dips his face toward me. “Are you too delicate for my double entendres and extra inches?”
I pretend to think. “Well, I’m going to have to think about that. On one hand, I am a lady, but on the other, I’m also very well aware of your pre-season rituals, so I don’t know, Mr. Thorne. It’s a tough choice.”
I laugh then.
Because until I said it, I had completely forgotten about that.
About his pre-season ritual.
Or more like start of the season ritual.
Something he’d told me about the same night we’d met. While dancing together, we started exchanging crazy things we’d done in our lives. Mine was streaking through a party on a dare—I was drunk and in a playful mood. And his was the twins story. So for the lack of a better way to explain it: every start of the season—ever since his high school soccer career—he somehow finds two girls who are identical twins and has a threesome with them.
Yup.
A threesome.
With identical twins.
First of all, it’s so hard to find identical twins, or at least I imagine it would be. And second of all, if he did find them and if they’re age-appropriate, so many things have to align: they have to be willing to have a threesome with him. They have to be willing to get naked in front of their sibling. Not to mention, they have to be willing to be a one-night stand. And when I raised all those questions to him, and I did at the time, he told me it just happened for him. That he never had to put in a lot of effort in finding these girls; they just showed up and everybody banged and then everybody left.
The girls for his last season came all the way from Chicago.
But anyway.
The important thing is that I’m laughing. That all the heaviness from earlier, all the awkwardness I’d built up in my head, my encounter with my mother is gone and it’s all because of him.
Is it any wonder that I love him?
As a friend, I mean.
Which puts an instant damper on my mirth.
And I realize that the heaviness is still there, after all. Because he isn’t laughing.
He doesn’t think anything is funny.
“Yeah, you know about that, don’t you?” he murmurs.
“I don’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I?—”
“Just for the record, I didn’t this year.” He shrugs, kinda sheepishly. “Not that it makes me a prince or anything. I?—”
“It does,” I interrupt him, trying to put his mind at ease. “I-I mean, you already were. A prince. With or without it. And, Shep, I don’t care if you sleep with other girls. You’re my friend and I know you, and it doesn’t matter to me that?—”
“I’m your friend, huh?”
I realize that heaviness that was lingering in the air has now reached his frame. His expression.
His eyes.
And my heart squeezes.
It squeezes and squeezes, and I just… I want to turn back time.
I want to go back to the moment when we first met, and when he’d said that thing about pissing off my dad, I want to tell him the truth this time. I want to tell him exactly who I was trying to piss off.
I want a do-over.
Please.
Or actually just let me go back to any of the other moments that came after, when I started to get the feeling that he thought of me as more than a friend.
“Shepard,” I begin. “I?—”
“It was a big surprise for all of us when my brother got hooked up,” he begins.
And I stumble a little.
At the mention of his brother.
At the mention of… him.
That’s who Shepard is talking about, isn’t it?
He is… Oh God, is it?
Is it him?
Did he hook up with someone? Who did he hook up with?
Who is she?
I’ve been watching him for the past year.
Obsessively. Sickly. Madly.
How did I not notice that he’s with someone? That?—
“Conrad,” he clarifies and my frantic thoughts break.
I’m able to take a breath that was caught up somewhere in my chest, tangled up with the veins in my lungs, the chambers of my heart.
Okay, so Conrad.
Right.
I mean, it’s not as if Shepard has one brother only. He has three.
Conrad Thorne, the oldest Thorne sibling and the head coach. Ledger Thorne, the youngest Thorne brother—not the youngest sibling, though; they also have a sister and she’s the youngest of all.
And well, him, his twin.
“Especially when we all heard that it was with a student of his,” he continues, his eyes now settled on something over my shoulder. “A student who’s fourteen years younger and also happens to be Callie’s best friend.”
Callie, their baby sister.
That I am a year younger than.
Calliope Thorne, or, well, Jackson now. Because she’s married to Tempest Thorne’s—formerly Jackson—brother, Reed. They were supposed to be here too, but Callie’s pregnant with their second baby; they have an adorable little girl, Halo. I’ve only met Callie once, so I don’t know her that well, but I’ve heard good things about her. She also belongs to the girl gang with Tempest and Wyn that I was talking about earlier.
“I actually took a bet,” Shepard confesses, his focus still somewhere else. “Thought it wouldn’t happen. Lost two hundred dollars to Ledge. That fucker.”
“You took a bet against your own brother?” I ask, incredulous.
He comes back to me and shrugs. “I knew he’d fallen for her. We all did. I just didn’t think Con would ever admit to it. That he’d fallen for someone inappropriate like Wyn.” Then, “I’m happy that he did, though. He deserves it.”
I think so too.
I’ve only known the Thorne brothers personally for a year now, but I know their story. I knew it before I knew them. It’s almost a legend in town. And like every legend, it has tragedy and perseverance embedded in the very core of it.
Everyone knows their father abandoned them when Callie was only a few months old. Leaving their mother to take care of all the Thorne children, and since Conrad was the oldest—and in his teens by the time Callie was born—he took the brunt of all the responsibility. Meaning that Conrad stood by their mother, supported her in every way possible while she worked three jobs just to keep the roof over their heads.
As sad and tough as that sounds, it still would have been fine. They were surviving. They were happy even, from what I hear. But then a few years later, tragedy struck again when their mom got sick with cancer. She died when Conrad turned eighteen after her long battle with the disease. At which point, Conrad dropped out of college, left his still-in-the-making but stellar soccer career so he could take care of his siblings.
Honestly, it makes my heart ache just thinking about it.
Just thinking about everything they went through and they did it all alone. I don’t even know how they did it. Just that I can’t help but admire their courage and strength and want to shower them in hugs. I want to even hug Coach Thorne, who looks all kinds of scary to me, and Ledger, who appears so unapproachable with his anger and handsomeness; I regularly hug Shepard and if I met Callie again, I’d give her a hug as well.
And him…
Well, I don’t want to think about him right now.
Not when my best friend is trying to tell me something.
“I was even more surprised when Ledge hooked up,” he informs me as we sway lightly to the music. “Not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because I never thought he’d settle down. He was just too wrapped up in himself and in the game to get involved with someone.”
“But that’s a good thing, right?” I prod when he doesn’t speak for a bit. “Your siblings settling down, finding love.”
“Yeah, it is,” he replies, his eyes boring into me. “Now.”
“What does that mean?”
His answer is to sigh, his broad chest undulating. “I felt betrayed.”
“What?”
“At first.” Another deep breath before he explains, “I felt like I was left behind. Like we were a team, all five of us, or at least all four of us brothers, who took care of our baby sister. But then suddenly, they had someone else they needed to take care of. That they brought into the family when it had always been just us. We were a family. Us and no one else. We knew how cruel the world could be, how cruel fate could be. Everyone who’d loved us or was supposed to love us either died or disappeared. And for the longest time, all we had was each other. We shouldered responsibilities. We wiped each other’s tears. We cheered each other up. We made each other laugh, and… I resented their love in the beginning. I resented my siblings moving on, expanding their world. But then I…”
“Then you what?”
As soon as I ask the question, I know what he’s going to say.
I know.
And my heart breaks.
My heart bleeds for him.
Not only will he hate me if I tell him the truth now and I will lose his friendship—something I’ve never had much of in my life—I will also hurt him.
God, I will hurt him so badly.
And I don’t know how to deal with that.
I don’t know how to prevent that from happening.
From the pain I may cause him one day.
“Then I met you.” He looks back at me. “You were different.”
And I want to stop him.
I want to open my mouth and tell him to stop talking.
To not say the things he’s going to say.
They’re lovely things, wonderful things.
But I don’t deserve to hear them.
He should hear the truth first.
But my voice is gone.
All I can do is stare up at him and his serious expression. Something that’s a rare sight.
His resting face is irreverent and full of playfulness.
“You made me laugh. Not many people can do that. You weren’t impressed by me and my soccer skills. Again, not many people can resist that. Girls definitely can’t. You called me out on my bullshit. And I never thought I’d like that. Every time I put my moves on you, tried to use my charms on you, you remained unaffected. And I thought to myself,” he scoffs, “she’s going to be a challenge. I thought to myself that I liked that. I liked that you were going to be tough to crack. I liked that you weren’t starstruck, that you weren’t intimidated by me. You held your own. You can hold your own. And so I thought maybe she just needs time. Maybe I need to be patient with her, chase her a little. So this is me chasing you.”
I grip the sleeves of his jacket. “Shep, listen, there’s something you need to know. There’s?—”
“I want you,” he says, his eyes on me, penetrating, dark. “I want us to be together. I want what other people already think we have and they do, don’t they?”
They do.
They do.
And that’s the whole point.
Oh my God, that has been the whole point all along.
I wanted that.
I wanted them to think we were together, Shepard and I.
I wanted the world to think we were a couple.
It didn’t start out that way, though.
When I asked him to dance with me on my birthday a year ago, that was all it was going to be.
One dance.
A few minutes of flirting and that’s it.
A few minutes of talking and laughing together and pretending that I was into him. As it turns out, I was—just as a friend, though—because I genuinely found Shepard wonderful and amazing.
But when that one dance wasn’t enough, I deliberately started showing up wherever Shepard went. I deliberately started taking an interest in soccer games and practices. I purposely made dates with Shepard and showed up at team events and parties.
All because of one thing and one thing only: him.
The Cold Thorn.
Who feels as hot as wildfire.
To make him jealous. To move him. To melt him.
To get him to eat his words from that night.
To get him to kiss me.
Like a selfish, immature girl with a heart swollen with too many feelings, I pursued him with a one-minded devotion. I pursued him with everything in me, uncaring of consequences, unbothered by the means I was using.
Means being his twin brother.
I thought it was the perfect plan. I thought even though the world thought we were together, Shepard wouldn’t. I thought a player like him—with pre-season rituals and one-night stands galore—would never be interested in me.
But I should’ve known, shouldn’t I?
My mom calls me a slut for a reason.
She calls me a temptation to men. She says I’m the one who provokes them into doing things, and that’s what I did here. That’s what I always do.
I use men.
And while I never felt bad about that before, I do now.
I feel bad for using Shepard. For throwing myself at him to make him jealous.
For making him want to be with me while every time I dance with him, I imagine it’s his arms around me. I imagine him finally being overcome with jealousy and claiming me with a kiss.
God, I’m awful.
I’m an awful human being.
“They do,” I whisper at last.
Shepard watches me for a few beats and I know I could use this silence to finally tell him the truth about me. But like a coward, I stay silent too.
I wait for him to say whatever it is he’s going to say.
And when he does, I blink in confusion.
“Our first home game is in eight weeks,” he informs me.
“First… Okay.”
“You’ve got until then to decide.”
“D-decide what?”
“Whether you want to be with me.”
“Whether…”
“Because as it turns out, patience isn’t my strong suit.”
I run his words in my head over and over.
I try to make sense of them.
I know it’s there, right there, the implication of things, but it’s taking me some time to figure it out.
Then, “Are you… Is this an ultimatum?”
His jaw clenches, stubbled, unlike him. “Yes. Because I don’t think I can take it anymore.”
“Take w-what?”
“Being your friend.” Then, studying my face, “Just your friend.”
My fingers tighten in his suit jacket.
As if I can stop him from doing this. As if I can stop him from making commands he already has. “Shepard, I?—”
He steals my words when he says, “I love you, Isadora. And I want you to be with me.”
Then he bends down and places a soft kiss.
On my forehead. “Good night.”
And then he turns around and leaves.
I should go after him.
I know that.
I should stop him from leaving.
I should tell him the truth. I should put him out of his misery.
If he knows the truth, he’ll hate me and that’s better than wanting to be with me, isn’t it?
Isn’t hate better than love?
Oh God, he loves me.
Loves.
It’s the worst. Because I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like to be in love with someone who doesn’t love you back.
I know.
I also know I can’t go to him yet. I can’t.
I have to…
I have to go to him.
For some reason, I need him in this moment.
When I glance at those doors, though, he’s not there anymore. He’s gone and I have to find him.
I have to find my wildfire.