Chapter 8

“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

When he first met the flame-haired girl whose arms were covered in tattoos, he saw something dark in her. He felt something competitive in the way she stared at her friend with hair lighter than her own. She compared everything they did, and he saw that desperation for attention that she held inside of her. She reminded him of a maiden named Roussette from a fairy tale he’d read when he was a child. The red-haired princess was jealous of her younger sisters when they married princes, even though she’d wed an admiral herself. It wasn’t good enough, though; he wasn’t good enough unless he made her better than her sisters. The girl hated the idea of losing anything, even things she claimed were not hers. She couldn’t stand being second-best, and she hungered to be the one people paid attention to. She couldn’t stand the idea of someone else getting what she felt she deserved, and she believed that what she deserved was nothing less than everything under the sun.

My dad is home late from work again. He’s been late every night, and I was supposed to be able to use his car to pick up my prom dress this week. All of my friends got their dresses a month ago, and I’m starting to panic. If I don’t have a dress for prom, I will lose my fucking mind. I’m so frustrated, and it’s complete bullshit that my dad is late again and my mom is too busy watching my niece to listen to my justified complaints.

Everything revolves around my sister and her baby. People always talk that bullshit about the youngest being the baby of the family. It sounds nice, but I grew up with nothing but hand-me-downs and last-minute birthday parties where no one showed up except my immediate family. I’m the reject of the family, the weird one who’s become a ghost in her own home. And I’m not even sure why.

The last time my mom said more than two words to me was when I stained the sink upstairs red with cheap hair dye. She was frantic because my timing was perfect: the night before my sister Olivia’s baby shower. I may have accidently spilled a little on the bath mat, and it’s possible that I used my parents’ embroidered towels to cover my shoulders while I let the fire-engine-red dye soak into my strands.

But I hadn’t dared ruin Olivia’s shirt from when she was my age, you see.

That’s another thing I hate to hear: “When Olivia was seventeen, she was the student council president,” or “When Olivia was seventeen, she had straight A’s and a popular boyfriend who she married right after high school.”

I’m so tired of being compared to my sister—she was the golden child, and there’s nothing I can do to even win silver, it feels like. I can’t wait to leave for college. Due to my parents’ constant pressure, I’m going to Washington Central, where Olivia graduated with honors.

They never cared about that college until my sister went there, and I’ll never live up to the comparisons to her, but I’m done trying and it’s easier just to say yes to going there and blow this place.

As soon as my dad’s Jeep pulls into the driveway, I grab my purse, check the mirror one last time, and rush down the stairs, where I nearly run into my mom—not that she even notices my fishnet tights or red leather top. She just mumbles something while looking at her e-reader. That’s all she ever does.

The front door opens, and my sister walks into the living room with my dad. Sierra, my baby niece, is asleep in my sister’s arms.

“I’m so tired,” Olivia announces to the room as she strolls through it.

Quickly, my mom appears, closing the case of her tablet and setting it absentmindedly on the mantel of the fireplace. Of course, for Olivia she can take a break from her precious screen.