Rebel Wrong

Chapter Four: New Year's Eve from Hell

Cade could tell that her dad wasn't too impressed with her outfit or her attitude. She hadn't known her 'new family' was going to be home so early and she hadn't bothered to change out of her pajamas; plaid boxer shorts and an oversized t-shirt. Though it was clear he was bothered, he didn't let it show.

"Cadey, I'd like you to meet your step-mother, Mandy," Henry Quinn introduced, putting his arm around an impossibly thin woman.

Mandy Carmichael Quinn looked like, for the lack of a better term, a corpse that had been all dolled up with makeup and hair products. To say this woman was skinny would be an insult to skinny people everywhere. Her skin was a dark, leathery golden brown and was pulled taut over her bones. If the woman weighed more than a hundred pounds, Cade would have been surprised. 

"Hello, Cadey." Mandy came forward and hugged her, giving her an air kiss over each cheek. "Your father couldn't talk about anything other than you all week," she gushed.

"Yeah, we're all talking about how you made us come home early from our vacation," the bleach blonde girl, whom Cade assumed was Holly, said as she rolled her eyes.

"Please, you're just pissed that your ski instructor wouldn't sleep with you," the boy grinned over at his sister.

"Wes!" Mandy hissed at her son.

Holly and Wesley didn't look much like siblings. Holly resembled her mother in that both of them were impossibly skinny and had the same piercing blue eyes. If it weren't for Holly being a couple inches shorter than her mother and having a natural youthful look, they could have passed for clones.

Wesley, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He was tall and muscular, with dark hair and dark eyes. Although, in all honesty, both Mandy and Holly probably had the same hair color as Wesley. It was just hidden underneath gallons of bleach.

Cade couldn't help but to smile. This family was almost a bigger train wreck than her own. She had been expecting something along the lines of the Brady Bunch, but this version of the Carmichaels was so much better.

Wesley and Holly got into a little fight after that and Cade excused herself back to her room. She could hear Mandy yelling at them. It reminded her of all the times that her parents used to fight. 

"Cadence?" Her father knocked once before coming into her bedroom. 

"If you haven't noticed already, I don't really want to talk to you," she said, not bothering to look up from the magazine she was flipping through.

"I know you blame me for what happened to your mother-" her father began to apologize.

"Whoa, hold on now." Cade threw her magazine down and turned over to face her father. "What mom did was her own fault. She can take responsibility for her own actions," she huffed, reaching over to pick up her magazine.

"If you don't blame me, then why are you so mad at me?" he asked, in exasperation.

"I said I don't blame you for mom, but I sure as hell blame you for leaving your children with someone who couldn't even take care of herself," Cade snapped at him.

"Cadey, come on," her father tried to apologize.

"No, I don't want to hear it," she shook her head. "If Ax hadn't have called you, you would have left us all to rot in Michigan. I don't know if you took me in out of some sense of guilt or because you wanted to impress your new wife, but either way, I don't care." She gave him her best glare. "You and mom were never cut out to be parents, and I'm letting you off the hook by saying I don't want anything to do with you. So you can just leave now."

Cade spent the rest of the day in her bedroom. Luckily, her dad and new step-mother had some big party to go to and they left pretty early that night. Holly left almost immediately after that, hopping into a black Hummer that pulled up to the house, stereo cranked up so loud that Cade was pretty sure that her friends back home could hear it.

Her night would have been clost perfect if it hadn't have been for Wesley barging into her room, without even bothering to knock. She could have been naked, but that's probably what Wesley had been hoping for.

"What's going on?" Cade asked, warily.

"It's New Year's Eve. We're going to a party," Wes explained. He tossed a dress onto the edge of the bed. "I stole it from Holly."

"I am not going anywhere with you and I sure as hell am not going to wear this," she tossed the flimsy piece of black fabric at him.

"Okay, wear whatever you want then," he shrugged, rolling his eyes.

"What part of, 'I am not going anywhere with you', do you not understand?" she said, glaring at him.

In the end, Cade ended up going with Wesley. It was hard to refuse him after he threatened to stay in bed with her if she didn't go out. How bad could a party for rich kids be? 

"Relax, sweetie, it's just a party at a college dorm," Wes smiled over at her, placing his hand on her thigh. 

They had just pulled into the UCLA campus, which was overrun with already drunk college students. It was another reminder of her home back in Michigan, except now she also had a pervy step-brother to worry about.

"Don't touch me," she snapped, removing his hand from her leg. She quickly got out of the car after that.

Wesley got out of the car too. "Pretending not to want me only makes me want you more," he winked at her before heading towards the dorms. 

She thought about leaving right then and there, but a part of her wanted to be able to say that she had gone to a college party. The last party she had been to was when she was in the eighth grade and the craziest thing that happened was playing spin-the-bottle.

She spent most of the night being a wallflower and as midnight approached she was just standing in the middle of the crowd, not bothering to join in the countdown with the rest of the teens. When they reached five seconds, she got really annoyed and started to push her way through the crowd. At three seconds, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her back until she collided with a warm, solid body.

She looked up and found that Wesley was grinning down at her. She opened her mouth to say something, but before any words could come out, Wesley's mouth was on hers.

"Happy New Year!" The room erupted in cheers to bring in the new year.

She tried push him away, but Wesley was too strong for her. He slid his hands down over her back to cup her bottom and pull her body closer to his. She could feel his erection pressing against her lower abdomen and that's what sent her into panic mode.

She didn't know any self-defense moves, so she did the only thing she could think of. She kneed him in the groin and when he released her, she pulled away from him and took off running in the opposite direction.

She ran through the halls of the dorm, bumping into a lot of people on her way. She felt like they were all staring at her and judging her. She couldn't stand it so she opened the door that was closest to her and burst into the room, quickly shutting the door behind her.

"Uh, excuse me?" a male voice asked.

"Sorry, I didn't think anyone would be in here," Cade apologized.

"Yes, I often barge into other people's dorm rooms, expecting them to be empty," the guy said, turning fully around in his desk chair to face her. 

His eyes widened for a moment and Cade felt suddenly embarrassed about her ripped jeans and retro bomber's jacket. She didn't normally worry about what other people thought about her outfits, especially boys, but the way he was looking at her made her feel anxious.

"Is that a Molly Hatchet European tour t-shirt from 1996?" the guy suddenly asked, pointing to her shirt.

"Yeah. Do you like them?" she asked, pulling back her jacket so the shirt decal could be seen.

"I love them. I've been begging my parents to let me go to the UK for their comeback tour next year. This year," he corrected himself, frowning. "Is it after midnight yet?" he asked her.

"Yeah, like almost ten minutes after," Cade laughed. The guy was so random and out there, as was his hair. His chocolate brown hair was sticking out around his ears.

"Well, there goes the eighteenth consecutive year of not kissing a girl at midnight," he sighed, slouching back in his desk chair.

His words made her think about Wes's kiss. It hadn't been awful or anything. He was actually a pretty good kisser, but she hadn't wanted the kiss and that was what made her so mad. She had kissed him back. She wasn't going to deny that, but that didn't mean she wanted it to happen again.

"It's overrated," Cade sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed that was closest to the desk the guy was sitting at. 

"Did your boyfriend dump you? Or kiss someone else?" he asked, a completely sincere look on his face.

Cade didn't answer him. She just stared down at her lap. She had just kissed a guy that she had just met twelve hours ago. A guy that was now her step-brother and whom she would have to live with for the next year and a half. Family functions were going to be hell.

"I'm Sebastian, by the way," he said after a few moments of awkward silence, holding out his hand.

"That's an unfortunate name," Cade bit back a smile as she reached out to shake his hand, trying to shake away all thoughts of Wesley.

"It's my great-grandfather's name. Very regal," he sighed, heavily. He probably had to give that speech a lot.

"That name could be why you never get kissed on New Year's," she told him.

"It is," he admitted, dropping his head down in self-pity. "But on the bright side, the ladies at the local retirement community go nuts over me," he brought his head up and gave her a crooked smile.

Cade let out a burst of laughter that eventually ended in her snorting, which sent both she and Sebastian into hysterical fits. She hadn't laughed this hard since Trevor had accidentally touched a box of tampons and nearly had a seizure.

"Okay, okay, Sebastian isn't that bad of a name. It's better than being a Jake or a Mark. There's like seven guys named Jake in my Bio class," he defended.

"Oh yeah, Sebastian sure is unique," Cade agreed, fighting back another fit of laughter. 

"What's your name? I bet it's something horrible like Helga, right?" he teased, his blue-green eyes lighting up with humor.

Before Cade could correct him, the door opened and in walked Wesley. His gaze wondered from Sebastian over to her, his eyes darkening in anger. She jumped to her feet, suddenly feeling like she was in trouble.

"We need to leave. Now," Wesley ordered her.

Cade didn't want to make a scene in front of Sebastian, so she reluctantly went along with Wesley, but she wasn't going to make it easy for him.

"My name is Cade," she told Sebastian, giving him her sweetest smile. 

She gave Wesley a seething look before she stormed past him. She made it all the way to the car before Wesley caught up to her. He roughly grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him.

"Let me go!" She ripped her arm from his grasp and pulled away from him.

"What the hell was that? You act like it's so horrible to kiss me and then you just wander into another guy's dorm room!?" he yelled at her.

"Stop being melodramatic," Cade said, rolling her eyes. "You're my step-brother. We're not dating so of course I don't want you to kiss me. And I can hang out with whomever I want." She folded her arms across her chest in defiance.

"Whatever. Get in the car," Wesley ordered, going around to the driver's side of his car.

"I will drive," Cade stated, refusing to get in the car.

"Are you kidding me!?" Wes yelled in exasperation. "Get in the damn car," he ordered.

"I'm not riding with someone who's been drinking," she told him. She'd been through that enough times with her mother.

"Fine. Then your ass can stay here!" he snapped at her.

"Fine. I'd rather stay here than go anywhere with an i***t like you," she huffed, turning on her heels and storming off towards the dorm they were just at. 

Wesley shouted at her, using a very colorful vocabulary, but she just ignored him. She was an i***t for ever agreeing to go to the party with him in the first place. It was New Year's Eve and Wesley was a college freshman. Of course he was going to get drunk. 

Cade checked her phone as soon as she got back into the dorms. It was after one in the morning. She couldn't call anyone to come get her, not that she knew a lot of people to call in the first place. She was going to be stranded at the UCLA campus until at least morning.

There was really only one thing she could do in her current predicament. She had to ask Sebastian for help.