“I remember thinking about keeping her,” I whispered in the dark heat of the car. Of course the stepbeast said I had to give it up. It was too late to abort the pregnancy by the time my mother told him about it. “I thought if I could run away with her and start over…”

I sat up, wiping my eyes. “I wonder if that’s what my mother did?”

He cupped my face in his hands, wiping my tears with his thumbs. They just wouldn’t stop falling.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” His lips met mine, my salty tears pressed between us. “None of it was your fault, Sara. Don’t take it on.”

“I know.” I did know. Twice-weekly sessions with Dr. Jarvis had cured me of that. I didn’t blame myself for it anymore, at least not like I used to. “I just miss her.”

“I know.” Dale held me, and it didn’t occur to me until later that he never asked, “Who? The baby or your mother?” Because of course, it didn’t matter.

I missed them both.

CHAPTER TEN

If I had to spend one more minute with Dale’s sister, one of us was going to die.

It wasn’t just that Chrissy used my moisturizer in the bathroom without asking and left the lid off so it got hard. It wasn’t just that she left her clothes and shoes at the bottom of the stairs so I tripped over them every single time I went upstairs. It wasn’t just her fashion magazines all over the living room couch—I couldn’t count how many times I’d sat down on a Cosmo—and she painted her nails in there too, leaving her nail polish and red brush marks on the coffee table.

All of those things made living with her annoying but not impossible. Even her incessant whining was tolerable if I tuned her out. It was the way she treated her father and brother that infuriated me to the point of no return. She hadn’t said more than two words to me since she’d arrived two weeks ago—and I thought those had been, “Hi, Sara.” She pretended I didn’t exist, unless she was using me to make a point.

“You told Sara she could eat in the living room! Why can’t I?” She’d complained to John.

“Because Sara doesn’t wipe her fingers on my couch or leave her ice cream sandwich wrappers in the cushions like a two-year-old.”

Yeah, that didn’t go over so well. John came home from his long teaching day on Tuesday—that was the night I cooked dinner and I was busy in the kitchen with no clue to what she was doing in the other room—to find that she’d purposely opened every single ice cream sandwich in the box and left them to melt on the living room couch.

And when John called her downstairs from her room, she utterly denied it. I couldn’t believe it. It was truly like we were living with a two-year-old, not a girl about to enter college. John demanded she clean it up and she called him names I didn’t even know existed. Then she grabbed her purse and left the house.

“She’s just testing me.” John sighed and sank into a kitchen chair.

That’s what he said when he had his new girlfriend, Debra, over to dinner one night and Chrissy threw the entire bowl of mashed potatoes on the floor because John left lumps in them. I’d cleaned up the mashed potatoes—just like I cleaned up the sofa. Thankfully the kitchen floor was tile and the sofa was leather. But at the end of a very long two weeks I’d spent going out of my way to try to make her feel more at home (which is what John said she needed) and mediating fights between brother and sister (Dale ignored her until she got right in his face) I was getting very tired of cleaning up Chrissy’s messes.

And still, I might have continued to tolerate it if they were just toddler outbursts, adult temper tantrums. But Chrissy had an axe to grind and she was shining up the blade, waiting for just the right moment to use it.

She got into her father’s face, screaming at him until spittle flew from her lips.

“You’re a fucking coward, you know that?” She would shove him with both hands, trying to provoke him. “You’re a wimp. Fucking limp-dick! You couldn’t keep your wife happy and she left you! You should be ashamed of yourself! I hate you! I wish you were dead!”

And off she would go again, either to her room, slamming the door with such force the whole house shook, turning her heavy metal music up to deafening neighbors-likely-to-call-the-police volume, or she’d head out the door, God only knows where. I was beginning to prefer the latter, because at least we were spared the noise.

The strangest part was, an hour later, she was back, sweet as could be, pretending like nothing happened. In fact, if you mentioned it, she would get teary-eyed and upset, as if she was the one who had been hurt. And John would put his arms around her and hug her and she would ask for something—money to go to the mall, a leather bomber jacket, a fifty dollar pair of shoes—and he would give it to her.

I had asked Dale if that’s how it had always been with his sister.

“No.” He had stared up at the ceiling, arms behind his head. “I mean, she was always a little spoiled. But not like this. I don’t know, maybe my mother poisoned her against my dad.”

It was a reasonable explanation. I’d met Dale’s mother when she dropped Chrissy off. We all went out to dinner at Red Lobster—Chrissy’s favorite—and Dale’s mother had done nothing but talk about how she was making a killing in the real estate market. It was the only time I’d seen Chrissy be relatively quiet and behave, probably because her mother corrected her every few minutes.

Chrissy, sit up straight.

Chrissy, don’t use your fingers.

Chrissy, your napkin goes in your lap.

No dessert for you, Chrissy.

I said no.

And she’d say those things right in the middle of a sentence, then going on like they’d never happened. It was no wonder Chrissy acted like a child. Her mother treated her like one.

It was early on a warm August Monday morning that Chrissy really crossed her brother’s line. And Dale had a very long fuse, but when it reached the end, the explosion was formidable.

Dale loved sleeping with the windows open, and I liked waking up to a gentle breeze blowing the curtains over our head. I woke up first, a full half an hour before the alarm. Dale hated alarms and refused to use one. I’d searched high and low for an alarm that would wake us up with gentle sounds like ocean waves or crickets so they wouldn’t disturb him. And if Dale had to be up, well, I was his human alarm clock.

Today he didn’t have anywhere to go—the band had been practicing hard for the tour, getting together four times a week—and I thought about going to take a shower and just letting him sleep, since I had appointments to keep. But he was on his back, sheet tangled around his waist, one arm thrown over his head, the other resting on his chest, looking so tantalizing—and I did have an extra half hour.

I loved watching him sleep. He was so sweet and peaceful, his mouth slightly open, the first peek of the sun on the horizon kissing his cheeks and those full, pouty lips, turning them a rosy color. My gaze paused at that sexy little dimple in his chin, the one that made him look so much like Tyler. I had marveled about how much he looked like Tyler, even before I knew.

His chest hair was sparse and widespread. My gaze dipped lower, drinking in those glorious abs. He worked his ass off to keep them, doing crunches every night. But it paid off when he tore off his shirt mid-concert and tossed it into the crowd. The girls went insane. Not that I blamed them.

His navel was rimmed with dark hair, a fact everyone knew because girls all over the country already had him pasted to their walls. The one in Tiger Beat, a full-size foldout, reminded me of a Playboy centerfold—only this one was for thirteen year old girls. A shirtless, barefoot Dale with his thumbs hooked in the waistband of acid-washed jeans, pulling that inexplicably sexy studded belt down on his hips, revealing his lower abdominal muscles, those firm, external obliques making a delicious indentation on either side of his body like an arrow pointing south.

Dale had done that photo shoot on one of his many trips away during the past two years, so girls everywhere could put him on their walls, at just the right height, and stand tiptoe so they could look into those dark, animal eyes and practice kissing on his pouty lips.

But those pouty lips were mine. I was the only girl in the world who got to kiss them for real and knew just how soft they were. Listening to the deep, even sound of his breathing, I let my fingers lightly follow the dark line of hair that traveled down from his navel. I heard his breath catch when I slipped my hand under the sheet. He was already at half-mast and it didn’t take much stimulation before he was tenting the sheet.

He moaned softly when I stopped teasing and really started moving my hand rhythmically up and down his shaft. When I lifted my head to look at his face, his eyes were half-open, lips parted, and I managed to elicit another moan from him when I rubbed my thumb back and forth over the head.

“Good morning,” I whispered. We always whispered now and tried to keep it down because Chrissy was right next door. Before she moved in, I’d felt less inhibited because John’s room was on the first floor, on the other side of the house.

“Very good.” His voice was hoarse from sleep. I felt his hand moving in my hair, sliding down the curve of my back to lift the t-shirt I’d worn to bed. I wasn’t wearing any panties. “Wanna go for a ride with me?”

“I wanna go for a ride on you.” I grinned, shoving the sheet aside and admiring my handiwork for a moment—straight up hard and ready for me—before straddling him.

Dale’s eyes lit up when I peeled my t-shirt off, tossing it onto the floor. His hands went instantly to my breasts and my nipples hardened in response. I stroked him against my lower belly, anticipating the feel of him inside of me. Holding off was such sweet torture. But Dale had other plans.

“Come here.” He grabbed my hips, seating me easily over his face, his tongue already exploring.

I gasped, leaning against the windowsill, the curtains fluttering around me as Dale drank me in. Our room was at the back of the house and the window overlooked over a field of tall unmowed grass and wildflowers. There was no one to see me as I rolled my hips and arched, nails raking the window screen when he pushed me over the edge with the slick lash of his tongue. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, hanging onto the window ledge, my thighs trembling with the force of my orgasm.

“Mmmm.” Dale wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as I slid down his body.”Breakfast of Champions.”

“You’re so bad.” But I was smiling as I caught his hard shaft between us, rocking my hips so he parted that slippery seam, so wet from his mouth.

“Taste.”

Slipping a hand behind my head, he brought me down for a long, hot kiss. I moaned, rocking on top of him, the sensation almost too intense as his hips began to move, seeking entrance. Then his hands moved down my sides, grabbing and guiding me, rolling my hips forward so he was right there, poised for entry.

I moaned as he lifted his pelvis, his cock parting my labia, sinking slowly into my flesh. Savoring the sensation, I held perfectly still, my eyes locked with his. Then he began to move, rolling his hips, not sliding out all the way, just making slow, short, easy strokes, in and out. He knew exactly how to drive me crazy. I cried out when he moved one hand off my hip, to focus between my thighs, thumb rubbing me in fast little circles.