Spinning Out

2

Arrow

The house is

dark and quiet when I get home. Maybe everyone is sleeping, but that’s unlikely. At eleven, Dad’s probably drinking his first scotch. Maybe screwing his nubile young wife.

And Mia? Is she sleeping? Studying? Maybe she’s rocking the baby to sleep and humming a lullaby.

I climb the stairs and head straight to my room, each step feeling like another click of the invisible shackles of my house-arrest sentence. Tonight was my last night of freedom, and I spent it sitting in my car alone by the lake. Because apparently I’m a f*****g masochist who wanted to wallow in his memories for a while. As if having her in the room next to mine for the next six months isn’t going to be reminder enough.

I can’t decide if her nearness is a gift or a curse—if seeing her in the hall and catching her scent will be heaven or hell.

Pausing at the door to Mia’s room, I press my palm to the wood. I swear my pulse triples at the thought of her on the other side.

“Wrong door.”

I spin around at the sound of her voice and find myself face to face with Mia Mendez, my stepmother’s goddamn nanny, my best friend’s girl, and a reminder of everything I regret.

Her dark hair is piled in a sloppy knot on top of her head, and soft tendrils curl at the base of her neck. She’s wearing some sort of oversized, wide-necked T-shirt that’s slipped off one shoulder, exposing a dusting of freckles I know too damn well continue down to her bra line. Her feet are bare, her toenails painted pink, and her legs . . . Christ.

She swallows and stares at my chest, like she can’t look me in the eye anymore. Join the f*****g club. “That one’s mine,” she says softly.

“Yours?”

Her head bobs as she nods, and anger flares in my stomach, a hot flash over the lust that sucker-punched me the second she appeared. She’s ashamed of me. Or disgusted. It would only be worse if she had any idea what being this close to her does to me. “This isn’t your room,” I say. “It’s just where you’re staying while you work.”

She lets out a breath and shifts her gaze to the door. “Whatever.”

I give her another once-over, all the while telling myself the ugliest lies I can about her. Anger is so much easier to deal with than this soul-stealing desire. No. Desire would be easy. It’s basic. Practically juvenile compared to what I feel for Mia. This is something else. Something more. “You make a habit out of walking around my dad’s house like this?”

She arches a brow. “Like what?”

I shift my gaze down her torso and let it linger on her thighs just below the hem of her cotton sleep shorts. “Half naked?”

Shaking her head, she pushes past me and into her room. The shorts shift with each step, and I simultaneously wish they were longer and pray they might become shorter. Because this—the view of the caramel skin at the back of her thighs and the memory of how she whimpered when I rolled her onto her stomach and put my mouth there—this, without the gratification of seeing the curve at the bottom of her ass. This nightmare my life has become—having her so close and knowing she can’t ever be mine. This isn’t heaven or hell. It’s f*****g purgatory.

She nudges the door closed, but I catch it before it latches and push into the room. Coming in here is impulsive and foolish, but the instinct to get closer to Mia has been there since the day I first looked into her big brown eyes. Some things never change, even if we wish they would.

She throws up her hands. “Sure. Come on in. Make yourself at home.” She gives me her back and heads over to the basket of unfolded laundry sitting on the bed. The room is tidy, and except for the stack of books on the dresser and the laundry on the bed, it’s not much different from how it looked when it was the guest room. You’d think she’d decorate—put a poster on the walls or pictures of her and Brogan on the nightstand—something.

“Did you need something?” she asks, as I close the distance between us.

“I don’t like you being here.” Part of me hopes she’ll understand why I have to say it. I want her to know me well enough to see through my bullshit. I’m only trying to convince myself it’s true. But she flinches at the words, and I feel like the asshole I am.

“I’m here to watch Katie. It’s not for you to like or not like. It’s my job.” Not bothering to look at me as she speaks, she takes a new item of clothing from the laundry basket.

I snatch it from her hands. Red lace and spaghetti straps—there isn’t much to it. “Watch Katie?” I hold the garment by the straps for inspection. “Maybe you’re being more than the stand-in mom. Maybe you’re also the stand-in screw.”

She swings, her open palm coming toward my face, and I don’t bother to duck. I let it land and relish the sting of her fingers connecting with my skin. I’ve been numb for months, but it’s no surprise that Mia’s the first to make me feel something.

When I open my eyes, her nostrils are flared. Her chest rises and falls with her heavy breaths.

“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” she says in a sharp whisper. “Stay away from me.”

“I’m the guy you f****d behind your boyfriend’s back.” I scrape my gaze down her body and back up before throwing the red lace nightie on the bed. “And probably the one you think about when you wear that piece of trash.”

Her breath leaves her in a rush, and she bends at the waist as if I threw a punch to the gut.

The words I’m sorry sit heavily at the back of my throat, choking me. I want to bury my face in her chest and whimper my apologies like a four-year-old, but she wouldn’t understand what I was apologizing for, and I don’t deserve her forgiveness. I’ll say whatever horrible things I must to make sure she never tries to give it to me.

I leave her before she can reply and before I can say anything worse. Apologies won’t change what happened on New Year’s Eve. They won’t fix Brogan, and they won’t bring her brother back from the dead.