The Big Sister - Part One (17 page)

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, shuddering and hugging myself with my arms even though it wasn’t a chilly night. A humidity that forecast rain hung heavy in the air. My shiver was because of the kiss I couldn’t just will from my mind. A kiss and a flood of feelings I couldn’t explain. Was I actually glad to finally see him in the flesh, standing right in front of me? Excited? My skin tingled.

“You weren’t taking my calls,” he said, holding his phone out as if it were an excuse. “I needed to talk to you.”

“I don’t have anything else to say to you,” I said. Why was he standing between me and the door? I just wanted to go inside, get away from this, but he was in my way. My irritation at not being able to avoid Adam forever was tempered by the fact that he looked good — damn good — lit just by the street lamps, his tan deeper than ever, his gaze intense, piercing, completely sexy.

I shook my head quickly, trying to reignite my indignant anger. This man — an educator at my brother’s school — had shown up to my home completely unannounced. There had to be something in the St. Anthony’s handbook to tell me how I could deal with this. This was highly irregular.

“Is that how you deal with all problems relating to your brother?” Adam asked, the tone of his voice dangerously close to a taunt. “Do you just avoid them? Ignore them?”

“If you want to talk to me about my brother, we can do so at a more appropriate hour,” I said coldly, my hackles raising at the realization that the teacher was trying to use Luke against me. Who did that?

My rage seemed to take some of the wind out of Adam’s sails.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I wanted to talk about us — well, what we did. Us kissing. I’m sorry. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

My breath left me in a whoosh. There it was, for the entire world to see, what I had been actively running away from ever since my initial meeting with Adam. Did he really want to discuss this now?

“It’s late,” I tried. “I’m just getting home from work, and I’m tired. Can’t we make an appointment or something?”

Adam laughed, a sound that surprised me. It wasn’t sarcastic or biting in the least — it was genuinely warm and pleasant.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do by calling you,” he said. “But you never answer. Can’t we just talk about it now? I just want to make sure we air it out, whatever’s between us. I don’t like ignoring things. That’s how they fester.”

Fester? That wouldn’t be the word I’d have picked to describe my feelings toward Adam. Right now, my stomach was doing somersaults at the sight of him, and it was obvious that my attraction had increased.

“Okay,” I said. “Talk.”

Adam clasped his hands. “I hope you didn’t think I was too forward,” he said. “I really care about your brother and want what’s best for him.”

“So do I,” I said. “Is that why you kissed his sister?”

There was that laugh again. I frowned extra hard, if only to keep from smiling. I didn’t want Adam knowing that the sound of his joy made my heart lift, made me want to smile.

“If I remember correctly, it was you who kissed me,” he pointed out.

“I think we kissed each other,” I lied. Of course it had been me who’d kissed him first. I just couldn’t admit it.

“I just wanted to be honest with you about that,” Adam said. “I think you’re beautiful. I think you’re devoted. I know that I’m attracted to you. But we can never be together. It’s unprofessional.”

I’d thought of all of this. I knew it was all true. But even as joy filled me at his admission of attraction, disappointment flooded through my veins. Had I really wanted to “be together” with Adam, as he’d said? What had I wanted out of all of this? I’d started out wanting the best for Luke, but now my motivations were muddled. Was it possible to want something different now?

“What are you thinking?” Adam asked.

I walked closer to him, aware that our voices were echoing off the tall brick apartment building. The last thing I wanted was an audience to our discussion about our apparent mutual attraction or my brother’s performance at school.

“I’m thinking that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” I said. It was so much easier to just put it out there instead of pretending anything different. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about us kissing, either.”

And then, right there in the parking lot, Adam took me in his arms and kissed me again. I didn’t so much as splutter in surprise. I rubbed my hands over that buzz cut and drank him in, pushing at his lips with my own and a sense of urgency I didn’t understand. That blossom of hot arousal was back, and only increased as his hands rubbed downward over my back.

“Dammit,” he said, pulling away for a moment.

“What?”

“I thought kissing you one more time would exorcise it, get it out of my system,” he explained, looking deep into my eyes. He smelled good — like citrus and sunshine.

“It didn’t?” I asked, feeling a little dizzy. All I could look at were those lips.

“No,” he said, smiling. “It just left me wanting even more.”

I never wanted to stop kissing him. I wanted to memorize the taste of him, the feel of his mouth on mine. I wanted to inhale for him and have him exhale for me.

Our tongues were playful and serious at the same time, frolicking and exploring, getting to know each other, rediscovering what they’d liked about each other in the first place. Being in his arms felt right, and we kissed until we had to come up for air or risk passing out.

How many mistakes could a girl make in a week? How many beautiful, beautiful mistakes was I allowed?

First I’d blown it with encouraging Luke to do his homework properly. Then I’d failed to follow up to make sure some semblance of caution was followed in that stupid language arts assignment. Then, after fits of rage not befitting a guardian of a vulnerable boy, I’d kissed the very teacher concerned with our living situation.

And then, after avoiding the man for only a few days, I’d kissed him again.

I’d kissed him, and it surprised me how much I liked it.

We rested our foreheads together, both of us a little out of breath, and let the sounds of the night surround us. Crickets chirped in the bushes by the door. A stray seagull flapped in the dark above us, flushed out of its roost by something. And the constant wind rattled through the fronds of the palms dotting the road.

“I know how I can come off,” Adam said, cradling me in his arms. It was a strangely intimate gesture in spite of all our kisses. It wasn’t like we were dating, or anything, but it still felt like we’d been in this together for a while.

“Pushy?” I joked. “Like an asshole.”

“Very funny,” he said. “I know that I can be hard to deal with, but would you let me try to explain? I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole. I want you to understand why I do what I do.”

“Why you stalk girls in parking lots and kiss them breathless?” I asked, but I knew the time for jokes was over. Adam had something to say, and I realized that I really wanted to hear it.

“I just want the best for people,” Adam said. “I wasn’t always so … pushy. But I’ve seen what can happen if a person isn’t pushy about something that needs to happen, what happens when someone falls through the cracks.”

“My brother is never going to fall through the cracks,” I warned him. “Not with me around.”

“I will always be a tireless advocate for your brother,” he reminded me. “I’m his teacher, after all. It’s my job. It’s — this is personal.”

My interest was more than piqued. It was strange and a little unnerving that I was watching Adam actively search for the words and the method to open up to me. It was even stranger that I wanted to hear what he had to say, that I cared about him, that I wanted to know what made Adam Shapiro tick.

I told myself it was so I could better understand my enemy, so I could know where to head him off, be attuned to how I could better shield my brother from his attention. At the same time, though, I knew that I wanted to know what made Adam tick because I wanted to know him as a person. I cared about him. If I was being completely honest, I had more than a tiny crush on the man — even after all the suffering he’d caused me. In the end, it had only been because he was concerned about Luke. How could I discount someone who had as much concern for my family as I did?

“I come from something of a broken family, too,” Adam said finally, looking into the night, away from me. This admission surprised me, but then I realized how much sense it made. He’d become a teacher to give comfort to kids who hadn’t known comfort in their own home lives. It was fitting.

“Nothing as dramatic as yours and Luke’s, of course,” he said, glancing quickly at me before studying the empty road. I listened to his heart thump beneath his shirt, felt the strength of the arms around me. It was a wonderful feeling to be held, to be comforted. I never would’ve been able to foresee just who this wonderful comfort was going to come from, though.

“My parents got divorced when I was just a kid, and my mother didn’t take it well,” Adam continued. “She was so profoundly depressed that my father had to take full custody of me. We moved away, and I rarely saw her.”

How difficult that must have been for a young child — to know that your parents were both alive and well but couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I wondered briefly what was more traumatic: losing my parents in that car crash, or Adam losing any semblance of family in the divorce or subsequent events. Arguments could be made for either situation.

“Once I graduated from college, though, it became important to me to try to reconnect with her,” he said. “I didn’t want to lose that part of myself just because circumstances were so different. I hadn’t spoken with her or seen her in years, but I’d kind of learned through the grapevine that she’d remarried, that she’d adopted.”

My body jerked with recognition. What were the odds of that? It sounded oddly similar to my brother’s situation — adopted by a remarried woman. Adam didn’t know that, though. No one here knew that. It was a small world, that was all. I continued to listen.

“I waited too long, though,” Adam said, his head gradually bowing until his chin came to rest on the top of my own head. “I missed my chance to help my mother. I don’t know a lot about it — no one does — but it seems like she bit off more than she could chew with the little boy she adopted. She raised him as best she could, but he ended up killing the man my mother married.”

No world could be as small as this. I tried to pull back, tried to draw back so I could see Adam’s face, but he was holding me too tightly, his arms constricting involuntarily as he told me about something I didn’t want to hear.

“My mother sank into a depression even worse than the one she fell into after the divorce,” Adam said. “I tried to reach out to her many times, but she was too far gone to return my letters or phone calls. It wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that she even agreed to see me.”

I tried to still my heart, terrified that he would feel it vibrating in my chest. This was too close to reality, too close to my brother and me. I willed Adam’s story off course, tried to use my mind to force it farther away. This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be true.

Adam took a shuddering breath, and I hugged him mainly so he wouldn’t notice that I was trembling in dread.

“She died,” he said. “The doctors were mystified by it, and one nurse told me that she thought my mother just gave up the will to live after her husband was killed by the child she’d tried to raise. My mother died, but not before she told me to find him.”

I swallowed hard. “Find who?”

He jumped as if he’d forgotten I’d been here with him this entire time.

“Find Luke,” Adam said, looking down at me. “The boy she’d raised. The boy who killed the man she loved.”

Adam’s eyes chilled me to the bone, and I belatedly realized that his grip on my arms had increased to bruising force.