AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It really shows how much attention this woman pays me if she hasn’t realised that my encounters with Mitch end with steam coming off his body. I look over to where he’s standing across the room and I see that he’s gnawing on the square edge of his thumb.
“And that’s why I know that I can tell you this now,” she continues, “because you’ve been so well behaved whilst we’ve been staying here.”
Her elongated pause makes my heart start hammering at a dangerously fast pace.
“I know that I told you that our staying with Mitch during the renovations was a temporary situation, but really it’s been a trial run - to see how well you mesh with him in the family. Mitch’s work onourhouse is almost done and that means that, in a matter of weeks, I’m going to finally put it on the market – he’s made it so saleable that it’ll be off our hands in the flip of a switch, and then we’ll be able to officially move… here. To Mitch’s house. Permanently.”
She gives me a littleta-da!smile and then pulls me into a tight squeeze before I can wipe the shock off my face.
What.
The.
Fuck.
*
When I wake up in my bed it’s still pitch black outside. I roll over, face smushed against the dark pillow case, and I grapple for my phone so that I can see what the time is.2:52am.
I guess that’s not so strange, but something thatisstrange is the fact that there is so much life coming from outside in Mitch’s back yard right now. I sit upright, slipping on my glasses, and then I push off the bed. As quietly as I can, I open my door and tiptoe down the two flights of steps until I’m on the first floor landing. Then I turn around and start making my way to the back of the house so that I can look out of the windows overlooking the garden.
So that’s why Tate was still here when I came home tonight. I don’t even know if he knows that I’m going to be “permanently” moving into his room, at least until I enrol into college, and it technically wouldn’t be of any consequence to him seeing as he lives in some unbeknown secret location, but it doesn’t matter anyway – my “talk” with my mom is not the reason why he stayed here tonight.
Tate is hosting a pool party.
It’s weird to see a pool party in November, especially when it’s raining, but for all I know Mitch’s new pool might be as equipped as a hot tub – and, judging from the steam clouding up from the surface, it is.
I haven’t dared venture into the outdoor pool before, mainly because I never thought of Mitch’s house as my home, but now that it sort ofisI’m annoyed with myself. I don’t want to get inthere after all of the guys Tate hangs around with have washed their junk in it.
And I definitely don’t want to get in there after all of the girls.
My stomach is rolling as I tentatively walk up to the window ledge to get a clearer look. I feel like I stepped out of bed and fell into a frat house, because Mitch’s garden - lit up with yard lanterns and glowing cigarette ends - is perfectly illuminating a biker-chic college orgy for this one woman audience. It’s dudes with tattoos and backwards caps (atnight-time –in therain) and girls with bleached hair and fitted stringy bikinis for as far as the eye can see. I try to ignore the fact that I love the song currently vibrating from the portable speakers.
When I see Tate I feel even worse. He’s sitting on the edge of the pool, muscled legs spread wide with his calves half-dipped in the water, and his tanned abdomen fully on display. He’s shirtless and his hair is mussed up, as if he’s ran his hands through it fifty times in the last ten minutes.
Or as if someone else has.
There’s a girl sat next to him talking animatedly and I think that she’s trying to read what it says on his tattoo. I scowl. I wonder if she’s the one who roughed up his hair.
When I look back at Tate I almost jump out of my skin because his eyes are dead straight burning into mine. I immediately falter backwards, bumping into the living room sofa like a pinball, but he’s already shaking off the pool water and striding right for me. I put an armchair between us once he’s inside the room.
“I wondered if you would show up,” he says huskily as he shakes the rain from his tousled hair, momentarily entrancing me.
I fold my arms across my chest and flick my eyes outside again. The girl who was next to him is craning her neck to seewhere he’s gone to. I hope that she can’t see in here as well as he could.
“It’s very loud out there,” I observe, kind of hating how librariany I sound right now.
“I thought you’d like the music,” he says, his mouth lifting slightly at the side.
“I do,” I reply, “especially at three in the morning.”
His dimples deepen. “You came down here to punish me?” he teases, stepping a little closer than before. I can smell the rain and the water radiating off his heated skin and it’s… enticing. Once he’s as close to me as the armchair will allow he tilts his head down and asks provocatively, “What exactly did you have in mind?”
I turn my head away and make a little dignified cough. “For all I know it could have been my mom and your dad out there,” I lie.
He rests his hands on the back on the armchair and then grips into it as he takes a chest-swelling inhalation. “Yeah, I bet your mom loves Three Days Grace,” he says, his eyes burning into mine.
I shake my head and move to exit the room but he pushes his body up and jumps stealthily over the armchair, regaining his stance instantly and then taking my shoulders in his hands.
