Rush (4 page)

I must have been dreaming. I glanced at
the clock to see it was only five-thirty. Whoever was on the other side of my
door had some explaining to do, and the explanation had better be that the
building was on fire.

With another groan, I crawled out of bed
and hobbled to the door. Opening it, I found Paige in the hallway, looking
offensively bright and chipper. She had full make-up on her face, for pity’s
sake. And she carried one of those enormous flat doughnut boxes from a
supermarket, with a tray of coffee cups balanced on top.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I
croaked. “Where’s the fire?”

She brandished the treats at me. “I
brought buttermilk old-fashioned. Your favorite. And coffee.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Five-thirty.” She had the nerve to
smile at me.

I opened the door to let her enter. “I’m
in pain right now, Paige.”

She pranced into my room like she’d done
something wonderful. “I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I thought I might as
well get up and get us some breakfast.”

Why? Rubbing my eyes, I fought down the
urge to glare at her. She meant well, after all. “My first class isn’t until
nine. Which I scheduled on purpose, just so I wouldn’t have to get up at
five-freaking-thirty.”

“Oops.” She sent me an apologetic
glance. “Sorry. I thought you had a seven o’clock like usual.”

“Just get me some of that coffee, quick.
But what’s with all the cups?”

“They were running a special. I figured
we couldn’t have too much coffee this early in the morning.”

“You got that right.”

Paige set the doughnuts and coffee on
the tiny built-in desk that would have belonged to my roommate, if I’d had one.
I’d lucked out this year and gotten a room to myself. I opened the doughnut box
and grabbed one, sniffing its sugary aroma before taking a bite.

“How come Trent never mentioned Max?”
she said.

I shrugged, trying to seem casual. “They
don’t get along.”

“That’s some pretty serious
not-getting-along, if he won’t even talk about him.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And he’s so freaking hot. I thought I
was seeing things when I walked up to you two at the cafe.”

“Yeah, he is good-looking.” No way was I
going to admit how much I lusted after him. I took another bite of doughnut.
Nope, no inappropriate hankering going on here.

“You like him, don’t you?” Paige said.

“No, I don’t. He’s weird. He kind of
gives me the creeps.”

“Really?” Her delicate dark brows
climbed. “Why? He seemed nice to me.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the way he
looks at me.” I set down my doughnut. “You can’t tell anyone you saw us
together. Have you told anyone yet?”

“No.” Her eyes were wide and serious. I
hoped she was telling me the truth, because I really didn’t want any gossip
about this.

“I can’t have it getting back to Trent.
He’ll have a fit.”

“You guys were in public. Other people
besides me probably saw you.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t know who Max is.”

“You don’t know that,” she said. “One of
Trent’s frat brothers might have been hanging around and we didn’t see him.”

“That’s true.” I rubbed my eyes again. “What
if he wanted to be seen with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Trent claims he’s a major manipulator
and that he has it in for him. What if he’s getting all cozy with me just to
irritate Trent?”

“That’s twisted.” She bit thoughtfully
into a maple bar. “Do you suppose he’s really that bad? Maybe Trent is
exaggerating.”

“I don’t know. What really bugs me is he
wouldn’t say why he hates Max so much. He just said he was a wild kid and ran
away when he was sixteen.”

“Sounds like you need to do some
detective work.”

“Do I? Maybe I just need to mind my own
business.” Besides, I hadn’t got a single clue how to be a detective.

Chapter 4

Max

The next time I saw Caroline, it was
several days after our cafe meeting. She was walking along the sidewalk next to
the chem hall, wearing a huge backpack slung over one shoulder. She had on
shorts that exposed the bottom half of her legs and a hoodie to keep her warm
in the morning chill.

Those were some incredible legs. Tight
with muscle, a sexy curve in her calves, tiny ankles. I swallowed hard as I
watched her stroll down the street ahead of me, unaware of my presence. She
didn’t have Selene’s overt sexuality, yet I couldn’t stop looking at her.

Our prior conversation had revealed a
different person than the one I’d expected. She wasn’t quite the empty-headed
party girl I’d thought she’d be, but she still looked like Miss Sweet Girl Next
Door with her long shorts...you know, the kind that go all the way down to the
knee. Prissy. And she was still Trent’s girlfriend, so although she might be
friendly on the surface, she had to be like him underneath. Where it counted.

I quickened my pace to catch up with
her. My heart started its usual frantic pounding whenever I saw her, which was
totally due to the fact I was ruthlessly using her to get back at Trent.
Treating women badly wasn’t normal behavior for me and I didn’t much like it.
But I wouldn’t really hurt her; I’d only go far enough to drive my stepbrother
crazy and then I’d back off.

“Hey, Caroline,” I said as I came
shoulder to shoulder with her.

She jerked her head around and stared at
me like I’d really scared her. “Um...hi.”

Was she afraid of me? Maybe Trent had
already told her what I’d done. My pounding heart seemed to shrivel up inside
my chest at the thought that Caroline saw me as a murderer.

I forced a smile. “How are you?”

“I’m good. You?”

“I’m fine.” Yeah. A scintillating
conversationalist, too. “So...are you headed to class?”

“Um...” She glanced around as if looking
for someone to bail her out of a bad situation. “No. I have an hour until my
next one.”

“What a coincidence. So do I.”

“Oh.” She smiled weakly. Trent had
definitely scared her.

A good guy would back off at this point
and let her go her way. But I wasn’t a particularly good guy, and I wanted to
shake up my stepbrother badly enough that it didn’t matter to me if I made
Caroline nervous.

Okay, yeah, it bothered me. A lot. But I
wasn’t going to let that get in my way.

“I was just on my way to get some
coffee. Come with me, keep me company.”

She ducked her head. “Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

“Aw, come on. I promise I won’t bite.”

Her lips pressed together like she was
trying not to smile. “How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”

“I always keep my promises.”

Caroline glanced furtively around at the
other people going to and from classes. “No. Really. Trent might find out.”

“You’re that worried about him?” Good.

“Yes. He told me to stay away from you.”

“Hmm.” I tilted my head, watching her as
we continued down the sidewalk. “I thought you liked to make up your own mind.”

“I do. But I don’t want to make him
jealous, either.”

“Jealous?” I laughed a little. “Over
coffee? I think he’s way too controlling if you can’t even go out for coffee
with a friend.”

That must have been the right button to
push, because she lifted her head with a determined frown. “You’re right. Okay,
let’s go.”

“Great. You want to hit the same place
as last time?”

“No. I know a place downtown.”

“Won’t that make you late for your next
class?”

She glanced at me with a
sheepish-looking smile. “I sort of lied. I don’t have another class until this
afternoon.”

I’d hit the jackpot. I could have her to
myself for a couple of hours, maybe. That would give me plenty of time to work
on getting her defenses down.

Another point: maybe she hadn’t heard
about my crimes from Trent, because if she had she probably wouldn’t want to
have anything to do with me. In my experience, people who kill their little
brothers have a hard time making friends. Especially with Miss Sweet Girl Next
Door.

We didn’t talk much on the way to her
coffee house. The thought that she would eventually find out what I’d done made
me less talkative than I’d otherwise be. And Caroline kept looking over her
shoulder. She was really worried that Trent would find out we’d been hanging
out.

An ugly idea occurred to me. Maybe his
controlling went beyond warnings and into physical violence. The thought made
my heart hammer in my chest and my throat go so tight it started to hurt. It
was strange for me to get so angry, considering I really didn’t know Caroline
very well. While I hated the idea of any woman being subjected to violence, I
didn’t normally get so worked up about it unless the woman was a true friend of
mine.

“Will you be okay?” I said as we
approached Avery’s Crossing’s tiny downtown. My voice was hard with the tension
I felt.

“Okay? What do you mean?”

“If Trent finds out. Will you be safe?”

Her mouth opened but no sound came out.
She closed it, then opened it again. “Of course I’ll be safe.”

“Good. I just wanted to be sure.”

She put a hand on my arm. The heat of
her touch pierced right through the sleeve of my denim jacket. “He doesn’t hit
me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I wanted to put my hand on top of hers,
but I didn’t. “I just don’t want to put you in danger. But I like you. I liked
talking to you the other day.”

That was true, even though I’d initiated
the conversation with revenge in mind. In fact, I’d enjoyed her company a
little too much, but I could keep it together long enough to make things
difficult for Trent.

Her face turned an adorable shade of
pink. “I liked talking to you, too.”

Now we were making progress. I stifled a
grin. “If you ever feel unsafe, you’ll let me know, right?”

“Um...sure. But he’s not like that.
Really, he isn’t.”

“Okay.”

“We turn here.” She took a sharp right and
I followed.

Avery’s Crossing had that all-American
small town feeling, especially downtown. Old buildings from the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, a sprinkling of big shade trees and old-timey
storefronts gave it a charm you usually only see in movies. I hadn’t made up my
mind how I felt about it yet. Sometimes I just wanted to run back to Seattle
and the hurry-hurry of a big city.

Things felt awfully slow here.

The coffee house was on the edge of the
downtown core and from the minute I walked in, I could see it was another
student hang-out. There seemed to be older people here, too, though. Maybe
Caroline thought it was less likely we’d be seen in this place.

Finally, we had our drinks and snacks,
and had claimed a table in a back corner where we could be incognito. Caroline
leaned across the table with an earnest expression.

“Why did you think Trent would hit me?”

“I didn’t. It was just a random thought,
that’s all.”

“Oh.” She had the longest blond
eyelashes I’d ever seen. “Why does he hate you so much?”

Well. She didn’t waste any time, did
she? I leaned back in my seat to cover my discomfort. “It’s a long story. Goes
back to when my dad married his mom.”

“Yeah, you said that to Paige.”

I shrugged. “It’s the truth.” Part of
it, anyway.

“So that’s all there is to it?”

“No, of course not. We have years of
childhood fighting behind us.”

“Are you older or younger?”

“Younger by six months.” I gave a
humorless laugh. “Our parents thought it was a good thing we were so close in
age. They thought we’d be great buddies or something.”

Her eyes—chocolate brown and unusually
dark for a blonde—softened in sympathy. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”

“You have no idea.”

“Couldn’t you have gone to live with
your mom?”

“She died when I was five,” I said, with
as little expression as I could manage.

“Oh, no.” She put her hand over her
mouth. “I’m so sorry; I didn’t know.”

“Obviously.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” I waved off her concern
with a shake of my head. “It happened a long time ago. I hardly remember her.”
Except for that trip to the ice-cream parlor. For some reason, that one memory
stood out after all these years.

“Still. I just assumed your parents got
a divorce.”

“Don’t worry about it, Caroline. I don’t.”
I forced another smile. “So tell me about your family. Are your parents still
together?”

“Yes, they are.” She took a bite of the
carrot cake on her plate.

“Any sisters or brothers?”

“I have one of each. Lily and Landon.
They’re twins, ten years old.”

I smiled, more out of politeness than
anything. “Your family sounds...nice.”

“They are. My mom is a high school
teacher and my dad works for the Bonneville Power Administration. What does
your dad do?”

I shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Really? You’re that out of touch with
him?”

I truly didn’t want to talk about him. “It’s
been a while. He owns a construction business in Billings.”

“Oh. Duh. I already know that. Because
of Trent.”

The expression on her face was one of
guilt. Was she worried about hurting my feelings? It seemed like every time I
talked to her, she surprised me by being someone so different from the person I’d
expected. Maybe she wasn’t the stuck up rich girl I’d seen the night of the
party. She wasn’t a flaky party girl, either, and I wasn’t sure anymore about
the prissy good girl. The fact was, I didn’t know what kind of girl she was,
but I was starting to genuinely like her.

That wasn’t going to stop me from taking
her away from Trent, though.

That asshole had been asking for a
take-down from me for so many years I’d lost count and I wasn’t going to pass
up an opportunity as golden as this one.

“Hey,” I said, glancing around the room.
“Want to get out of here? We could walk along the river bank. It’s only a block
away from here, right?”

“That’s right. Sure, sounds good.”

We put away our dishes in the bussing
station and left the coffee house. The sun outside was so bright it almost hurt
my eyes after the dim lighting of the restaurant. I squinted into the glare.
Everyone had told me it rained down here almost as much as it did in Seattle,
but we were just on the cusp of the wet, still coming out of the dry time of
the year, when the sky seemed perpetually blue. Rain was coming, though. There
was no such thing as a dry winter in the Pacific Northwest.

We ambled down to the river, not saying
much along the way. I can’t claim it was a comfortable silence. I think we were
both too aware of each other...or maybe that was just me. I couldn’t think of
much else besides the way her body moved, the swing of her curvy hips, the way
her hair was made up of every imaginable shade of gold and amber.

What was she thinking about? I have no
idea. She didn’t seem to be afraid of me, though, and that was a good thing. If
she’d been afraid of me, it would make my plan a lot more difficult to carry out.

The river bank was mostly unimproved,
although there was a narrow footpath we followed along the edge of the water.
This was the Willamette, and the crossing for which the town was named was
somewhere along here. According to my Internet research—I’d read a couple of
Wikipedia articles before moving here—Avery’s Crossing was named after a local
farmer, one of the original settlers of the town, who’d also operated a crude
ferry right in this area.

Out of the corner of my left eye, as if
on cue, a shadowy shape moved out across the water. It was flat, like a large
raft, with a human figure on top. Unlike a raft, it moved perpendicular to the
current. I moved my head to get a better look and it was gone.

“What is it?” Caroline said.

“Did you see it, too?”

“See what?”

I glanced at her. She looked puzzled,
but I wasn’t prepared to discuss my occult activities with her, or the fact
that I sometimes saw things, shadows of the past. “Never mind. I just thought I
saw a bird. A heron or something.”

“Yeah, we see them around here
sometimes.”

Besides, the ferry ghost might have been
a trick of the light or some other illusion. Even when you have the second
sight, not everything you notice is really a spirit.

Caroline leaned her back against the
trunk of an oak tree, turning her head to smile at me. “It’s beautiful here.”