It was a good thing, too, because if it weren’t for the Jacuzzi and the booze, and the satellite TV, she’d go crazy out here.
Ever since her mother had shipped her out to the middle of nowhere, claiming that a year at her father’s house in the desert would do wonders for her character, life had become one long, uninterrupted stretch of tedium. While her mother was taking full advantage of her new childless state, whoring around New York’s spas, sales, and singles bars like a middle-aged Hilton sister, Kaia was stuck here in this scorching hot ghost town, making nice with the low-rent losers who made up the local teen scene. She’d caught only the occasional glimpse of her father, who’d claimed he was delighted to have her, then promptly left town, returning to his desert McMansion and his delinquent daughter for a few hours each week before getting the hell out again.
Kaia couldn’t blame him. If she had the cash, she’d head for the hills (or better, L.A., only a six-hour drive away) and never look back.
But Daddy Dearest had sliced through all her credit cards, so she was stuck. Now that she’d proven to herself that she could bed the two hottest guys in school—and for such a small and pathetic school, they were pretty damn hot—she was fresh out of ideas. Adam Morgan, with all of his supposed virtue and loyalty, hadn’t been much of a challenge, but the payoff had been fun, though not as much fun as watching his puppy dog face crumble when she’d blown him off a heartbeat later. Kane, on the other hand, had been no challenge at all, but that’s not to say he didn’t have his merits….
But now it was only October, and she was already bored. Again. What next? Storm the “popular crowd” and get voted homecoming queen? Rededicate herself to last month’s quest of screwing—and then screwing over—the dashing French teacher who seemed to think he was too good for her? Snag one of her father’s credit cards and get the hell back to New York?
Kaia let her head sink under the water for a moment and then burst back above the surface, the cool desert air stinging her dripping face. She was too blissfully comfortable right now to worry about tomorrow, or the next day. She was sure that eventually she’d manage to find herself some interesting trouble.
She always did.
Adam brushed Beth’s blond hair out of her face and gave her a soft kiss on the forehead. This time when he climbed out of bed and began to hunt around for his clothes, she made no move to pull him back down. It was too bad; things were so much easier when they were kissing instead of talking.
Then he didn’t have to worry about all the things he wasn’t allowed to say, things that kept threatening to spill from his lips. Things like, say, “I slept with Kaia.” Every time he opened his mouth, he feared the confession would pop out. Part of him just wanted it out in the open. Anything to be free of all this crushing guilt.
And, of course, when they were in the midst of hooking up, they were also relieved of the burden of not talking about the reason they always stopped hooking up. It was the only time they could, for once, ignore their biggest problem: sex—or the lack thereof.
It had been bad enough this summer, when it seemed like he couldn’t say anything right, when Beth assumed sex was all he wanted and seemed to silently hate him for it. Almost as much as he hated himself … because sometimes it felt like sex was all he wanted. But ever since the dance at the beginning of the school year, things had, on the surface, been much better—and beneath the surface, where it counted, much, much worse.
It was all a little hazy for him, but from what he could piece together from his drunken, fragmented memory of the night, Beth had decided that she was ready to sleep with him—and he’d passed out. When he awoke, sometime early the next morning, she was staring at him in disgust and wouldn’t say a word.
They hadn’t talked about it then, or the next day, or any time afterward. She had never brought it up. And he had never apologized.
And now sex, such a hot topic before, was off limits. Taboo. He never asked what had happened to her being “ready,” or when she might be again. Certainly never mentioned that he now knew what sex was like—and how much he wanted more of it. Sometimes he envied Kane, who could get any girl he wanted and could get anything out of her. Not that he would ever give up what he had with Beth, but sometimes he wished he could just take a break. Slip into a parallel universe where he was single. Free.
“So, it’s looking like the swim team might make it to the championships this year,” he said, trying to wipe such thoughts from his mind and searching for a neutral subject. Making it work with Beth meant not dwelling on what he couldn’t have. What he shouldn’t even want. “We’re having a pretty strong season.”
“I know,” she said with a rueful smile. “I wish I could make it to your meet tomorrow.”
“It’s okay,” he assured her, looking away. “I know you’re busy.” Last year Beth had come to all of his swim meets and basketball games, and cheered him on from the sidelines. This year she’d been too busy to make it to any of them. And he’d tried to pretend he didn’t care.
“If we do make it to the championships,” he began tentatively, “I think a bunch of kids from school will probably come along, sort of a cheering section, and maybe—”
“I’d love to go!” Beth cried. She hopped out of bed and gave him a quick hug before pulling on her denim skirt and a light pink tank top. “I mean, if you want me to be there….”
“Of course I do,” he said hastily, giving her a soft kiss. “I’ve missed my good luck charm. And it’d be fun to be there together. Good for … us, you know?”
“Speaking of us, Adam, I think we should—well, we haven’t really …” Her voice trailed off.
“What?” he prompted her gently, not really sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“Uh, I just think I should get going,” she said, her voice suddenly brisk and cheerful. “I want to get in some studying before work.”
“You have a test tomorrow?” It seemed unlikely. Usually when there was a test imminent, he knew it. It was generally pretty hard to miss—Beth had flashcards, study sessions, not to mention an endless litany of concerns about failing out of school—culminating, each time, in the inevitable A.
“No, for the SATs—you know, life-altering event only a few weeks away?” she reminded him.
“Plenty of time for that later,” he scoffed, pulling her toward him. She pushed him away. Sometimes their relationship felt like an endless tug of war. He pulled her in one direction, and something within her kept pulling in the other.
“This is my future—our future—that we’re talking about here,” she said passionately. “It’s important.”
“I know, I know,” he said, trying to reassure her.
“You are coming on Saturday, right?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “You know this thing is mandatory, right?”
“I know, you don’t have to remind me a million times,” he complained, turning away from her. “I’m not an idiot.”
“I just wish you’d take these things a little more seriously,” she whined. “You’re always—”
“What?” He tensed. Along with sex, they usually tried not to discuss the future—neither wanted to acknowledge that they were headed in two very different directions.
“Nothing.” She came up behind him and put her arms around him, massaging his chest and kissing his neck. “Let’s just forget it,” she mumbled, her lips against his skin.
It worked for him.
It was the worst possible timing.
Harper pulled into the driveway, and there they were, a few yards away, wrapped in each other’s arms. Couldn’t they ever just give it a rest?
“Hey, Harper!” Adam called to her in his lilting Southern accent. It was the one thing he’d held on to from an early childhood in South Carolina. Adam hated it, as he hated any reminder of his distant past. But to Harper, his voice was like a song, sweet and intoxicating. “Come over and say hello!”
“Can’t, busy, gotta—you know,” she babbled, waving back as she rac
ed for her front door.
Awkward postcoital convo with the love of her life and the love of his? No thanks.
Besides, they’d already forgotten her existence and gotten back to the serious business of groping each other. Harper shook her head in disgust and slammed through the doorway. When Adam had confessed to Harper—his oldest and most trustworthy friend—that he’d cheated on Beth, Harper had been sure that their relationship wouldn’t last the week. But the incident had proved nothing more than a hiccup, a tiny bump in the path of disgustingly true love. In fact, if their nonstop PDAs were any indication, he and Beth were going stronger than ever. It killed Harper to know that, with a few carefully chosen words, she could destroy their happiness. She could drive Beth away—but Adam would never forgive her.
Ignorance is bliss, Beth—right?
As for Adam, he’d never mentioned Kaia after that, and now, once again, all he could talk about was his perfect, wonderful Beth.
Screw that. Harper was done waiting around for Adam to wake up and discover he was with the wrong girl. Harper the passive good girl (if she’d ever existed) was gone. Harper the scheming bitch was back in action.
And finally, she had the beginnings of an idea….
chapter
2
Saturday morning, Haven High, room 232. The disgruntled seniors, all forty-eight of them, filtered into the room, spitting out variations on the same theme.
It was Saturday.
It was early.
And in a just world, they would all be at home in bed.
No one wanted to be there.
Not Kane, bleary-eyed and hungover from last night’s revelry, who thought studying was for saps and that SAT prep courses, even the lame one-time freebie offered by their tiny public school, should be reserved for those too stupid to score well on their own.
Not Adam, who’d decided he didn’t need the SATs or college—not when he was planning to stay in Grace until the day he died.
Not Beth, for whom every minute wasted in the classroom listening to the teacher drone on was a minute she wasn’t able to spend shut up in her room poring over Princeton Review books and searching for the magic strategy that would guarantee her a perfect score. (And the fact that the class was led by Mr. Powell, that she could feel his eyes boring into her even as she stared resolutely down at her desk? It didn’t help.)
And certainly not Jack Powell, who, as the newest hire, had been compelled to “volunteer” for the Saturday class. Sacrifice his morning. Stare down Beth and pray she wouldn’t grow a spine (or a mouth). Avoid the penetrating gaze of Kaia, whose very unwelcome and very public liplock with him in the middle of a school dance had left him the focus of hallway gossip, faculty lounge whispering, strict administrative scrutiny—and temporary probation.
No, Jack Powell would rather be at home and in bed too. Jack Powell would, in fact, rather be strapped into a dentist’s chair getting a root canal.
But no one had asked him.
“Okay kids, quiet down,” he called out in his clipped British accent. He was only too aware of its charm—he’d made girls swoon all up and down the eastern seaboard, and it wasn’t surprising that the upper crust London inflection had an even greater effect out in this desert wasteland. “I know you don’t want to be here.”
Shouts of agreement.
Join the club, he thought, with more than a trace of bitterness. If his former colleagues could see him now, stranded in the middle of nowhere, policing these deadbeats-in-training. None of them knew how good they had it. He hadn’t known himself, until he’d ended up in this godforsaken corner of the world. And the worst part was, he had no one to blame but himself.
“Well, let’s make it quick and painless, then.” He began to distribute a practice test—at least that would keep them busy for an hour or so.
He looked around at the roomful of students with a flicker of pity. They don’t pay me enough to work on Saturdays, he reminded himself, but hell, these suckers have to be here for nothing.
Two hours later Beth staggered out of the school, feeling like she’d just emerged, not entirely unscathed, from an emotional car wreck. Sitting through French class with Powell was bad enough. Especially with the whole school buzzing about Kaia’s kiss at the dance: Debate still raged as to whether Kaia had thrown herself at the clueless young teacher—or whether the dashing Jack Powell was, in fact, carrying on a not-so-secret affair with his hottest student and God knew who else. Beth flushed every time the subject came up and just hoped no one could read the truth that was, she feared, written all over her red cheeks and tortured frown.
She still couldn’t believe that she’d been stupid enough to trust him. Yes, he was the new sponsor of the newspaper and she was its editor in chief—at the time it had made sense that he’d want to spend a series of long, intimate afternoons together, going over logistics—but it had been more than that, right from the start, hadn’t it? “Call me Jack,” he’d suggested—she shuddered at the memory. She had trusted him, believed in him, confided in him, until that final day. When it turned out that all he wanted was—
“Beth, wakeup!”
That was the trouble with zoning out—it made it a lot harder to avoid the people you didn’t want to see. People like Harper Grace. Haven High’s resident alpha girl: best dressed, best coiffed, best bitch. And, oh yeah, Adam’s best friend.
“Hey, Harper,” Beth greeted her, hoping her grin didn’t seem too fake.
She didn’t like Harper, didn’t trust Harper—but since she’d drifted away from her real girlfriends a few months into the relationship with Adam, she also didn’t have too many other options.
Harper pulled her away from the crowd of students milling across the school grounds and gave her a conspiratorial grin.
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said softly. “How are things going with you and Adam?”
“Uh … okay,” Beth responded guardedly.
“No,” Harper leaned in even closer. “I mean with, you know, that problem you were having.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” But Beth had a sinking feeling that she did. She’d made the mistake of confessing her fears about sex, and about her relationship, to Harper. The conversation hadn’t been a total nightmare, but she wasn’t looking for an instant replay anytime soon.
“I’ve been so concerned about you,” Harper said, linking her arm through Beth’s. “I mean, I just feel so terrible for you, with all your issues.”
Beth pulled her arm away but forced herself to do it with a smile. Adam was always urging her to see the good in Harper, and so for his sake she’d tried, and failed, and tried again. She was still working on it—the least she could do in the meantime was be polite.
“So … you two still haven’t …?” Harper prodded.
“That’s really none of your business,” Beth snapped.
Harper looked at her appraisingly. Beth squirmed under the scrutiny of her gaze.
“Mmm-hmm, that’s what I thought,” Harper said finally, nodding her head.
“Look, I really have to go,” Beth told her, pulling away, wishing that a hole would open up and swallow her before their little chat could go any further.
“No, no, I almost forgot why I wanted to talk to you in the first place,” Harper said, once again threading her arm through Beth’s as if they were the best of friends. As if they were anything. “So, listen, you aced that practice test, right?”
Beth darted her eyes toward the ground and reddened slightly.
“I guess…. Why?”
“We knew it!” Harper said triumphantly.
“We?”
“Me—and Kane. Look, he’d kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but Kane’s not too hot on standardized tests. He’s a smart guy, but he just freezes up. Have you heard that rumor, how they give you six hundred points just for writing your name?”
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled dubiously.
“Well, let’s just say Kane’s going
to need it.”
Beth snuck a glance over at the Greek god of Haven High, preening for a couple of blondes from the cheerleading team. Beth wasn’t surprised to hear he was lagging behind. From what she’d seen of Kane (another one of Adam’s friends whose “good side” was impossibly difficult to find), his definition of a hard day’s work involved vodka, girls, and plenty of naps. Still, it didn’t seem like her business—or her problem.
“Why are you telling me this, Harper?” she asked, again pulling her arm away.
“Kane doesn’t want to be stuck in this deadbeat town any more than the rest of us,” Harper explained. “Which means college. Which means decent SAT scores. Which means … he needs your help.”
“Me?” Beth wrinkled her face in surprise—but a warm rush of pride began to spread through her. That they were desperate, and they’d come to her, needed her …
“You,” Harper confirmed. “He wants you to tutor him.”
“Then why isn’t he asking me himself?”
Harper laughed and shrugged. “You know guys, they’re idiots. He’s just embarrassed. Kane can be a little shy sometimes, you know?”
“Kane?” Beth repeated in disbelief. She looked back toward the entrance of the school, where Kane had hoisted one of the cheerleaders into his arms and was now spinning her around as she squealed in mock dismay. He didn’t look shy to her. Arrogant, maybe. Sleazy. Impressed with his own existence. All of the above. But shy?
“I’m not really going to have that much time,” she cautioned Harper. “I don’t know if—”
“Beth, he needs you,” Harper pleaded. “Really, you’re his only hope. He told me he knew you were the only one who’d be able to help him.”
“Really?” When she was eleven, Beth had found a three-legged jackrabbit lying in her backyard and, with her father’s help, had nursed it back to health. She’d never been able to say no to desperation—and today was no different. “Well, I guess if he needs me …”