LITMIR.BIZ

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he’d gotten for her, she went back to the bathroom. The sooner they got out of this suite and back onto solid friendship ground, the better.

      A few minutes later she returned to find a hastily scrawled note atop the bed.

       Had to rush out. My driver is waiting for you downstairs.

       I’ll get your address and stop over this afternoon.

      Payton stared down at the note in blatant disbelief. She’d been on the other side of the door, a few panels of wood between then, and he’d left a note? The nerve!

      No—this was something other than nerve. Nate would never intentionally hurt her. He might cat around, but he wasn’t cruel and he wasn’t callous. Her mind played back the minutes before he’d left, slowing to that last glimpse of desire and then anger. He hadn’t wanted to see her that way. Hadn’t wanted the attraction.

      So be it. She’d look at this as the clean break they needed.

      When she saw him again, it would be as friends.

      And then her friend could explain what kind of a mess he’d gotten himself into that he needed a pretend affair to cover it up.

      Nate raked his fingers through his hair, balling them at the base of his skull before letting go with a grunt. His dogged strides ate up the sidewalk, taking him fast from the scene of the crime. He was a jackass of the most contemptible variety. But seeing her there, wrapped in that towel, wet tendrils of hair snaking over her bare shoulders, tiny beads of water sprinkled across the swells of her freshly scrubbed skin—it was like being thrown back in time. To a place he didn’t want to revisit.

      To a time when he was still mere potential and promise. Trying to exist within the confines of an environment that wanted to squelch the pride and drive out of him. Teach him a lesson. Show him he wasn’t good enough. That nothing he did could change it.

      When all the frustrations and inequities of his youth came to a head—all driven by one inadvertent mistake. One look. One girl.

      And like that, the years folded over and his feet were pounding up the stairs at the Liss house as he went for the textbook he’d left on Brandt’s floor the night before. Breaking the landing, he’d looked up, and through the open door of Payton’s bedroom, there she was. Brandt’s little sister emerging from her bathroom—fresh from the shower. Totally unaware.

       He stopped breathing. Stood, mouth agape, stunned. Payton, his little shadow—always bundled in those conservative sweaters, jackets and formless clothing, her hair restrained, her legs covered—stood wrapped in a towel, her curls wet and wild, her curves unmistakable, her legs bare and pink and looking so soft. He jerked his gaze away. Snapped his jaw shut and forced his fists into his pockets.

       God help him, she was beautiful. Hell, he’d known she was beautiful. Sweet and funny. But he’d never wanted her until that very minute and it caught him like a sock to the gut.

       For too many reasons he had to get out of there. Couldn’t risk that he’d look again.

       Turning, he opened his eyes to the enraged red of Brandt’s face. And in that instant the façade of forced civility between them crumbled and the cold truth glared back at him.

       Hatred.

       Nate had always been aware of the barely contained aggression simmering beneath the surface with Brandt. It wound the kid off to no end to be dependent on a guy he considered his inferior for the tutoring that put the Ivy League school so necessary to his elitist identity within reach. There’d always been a cool distance. The laughingly misplaced attitude Brandt was the one doing Nate a favor, rather than the other way around. Yeah, Nate had gotten paid—he sure as hell hadn’t spent four afternoons a week for three years waiting on Brandt to get off the phone or bother to show up out of friendship. But still, he hadn’t expected the depth of loathing he now saw.

       “Take it easy. It’s not what you think—”

       “Bull! You were staring at her.” A hand shot out, shoving hard at Nate’s shoulder. “I saw your damn face, man. You aren’t good enough for her. Not even to look!”

       Nate didn’t take to being pushed around. Not by anybody, but Payton was Brandt’s little sister. So, rather than knocking the guy’s head back with the punch gathering in his fist, he reached out and hauled him down the stairs and out to the front yard. Away from Payton. “You’re off base. I was leaving.”

       “Damn straight you are,” Brandt sneered. “And you’re nuts if you think you’re ever coming back here.”

       “Fine, whatever.” Let the Lisses deal with the fallout. The school year was nearly over anyway. He’d get another job, something to last through the summer until he got out of this inbred cesspool and into U of I. “Look, I was going for my Calc book upstairs. If you get it for me, I’ll take off.”

       Brandt let out a snort, rocking back on his heels to look down his nose at Nate. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

       He looked up to the house. He needed that book and, after this, going to Payton wasn’t an option either.

       Brandt followed his eyes and let out a disgusted grunt. “What’d you think, with summer a few weeks off you needed another ticket onto the gravy train? That sniffing around my sister would get you back by the poolside?”

       Screw him.

       “Forget it, Evans, Payton’s not like the rest of your dates. The girls who go out with trash to get back at their daddies.”

       Nate’s blood, already hot, began to boil beneath the rise of a deep-seated pride held too long in check. It was absurd and he knew it. But still something in the jab stung. Hit a little too close to an insecurity he didn’t want to acknowledge. A sense of alienation he couldn’t quite get past. “Go to hell.”

       “After you. And here.” Brandt went for his wallet and pulled out a stack of crisp bills. More money than Nate earned in a month. “For the cost of your book.”

       Extracting a fifty, Brandt dropped the bill to the dirt and ground it in with his heel. “Go ahead. Pick it up. You know you can’t afford to replace it on your own.”

       Nate’s muscles bunched, his knuckles whitened at his side as the world closed in around him. He had to get out of there. Forcing his legs to move, he turned. Took a step to leave.

       It didn’t matter. Brandt didn’t matter.

       But the kid wouldn’t give it up and grabbed for him. “Hey, I’m not done with you yet.”

       “Don’t be stupid, Liss,” he warned, easily shaking the other boy off, determined to walk away.

       “You calling me stupid?” Brandt grabbed again…cocking his arm as he spun Nate back.

       Mistake. One too many…and then the blood was flowing fast and red before Nate even realized he’d thrown. Brandt staggered back a step, fell on his ass with a howl before finding his feet and running toward the house. “You’re going to pay for that, Evans!”

       Damn it, where was his control? Nate’s heart slammed within his chest as the repercussions of his actions sped through his mind. Arrest, expulsion, college, his escape from a life he’d almost been free of. His dad could end up paying for this mistake. What the hell had he done?

       The door to the Liss house flew open and Payton, now dressed in jeans and a turtleneck, rushed onto the lawn. Eyes wide with hurt disbelief, she stared down at Nate’s knuckles and the smear of her brother’s blood streaking them.

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