Wild Reckless (Harper Boys #1)(15)
I know I shouldn’t, but I turn around anyway, and I give Owen my full, undivided attention. His friends have already left, and he’s slowly walking backward, showing me his middle finger and smiling with that faint half-grin I’ve seen far too often over the last three days.
I don’t know what makes me do it. In fact, I don’t know why I am the way I am with Owen. I’ve been careful and timid and obedient my entire life, my only mission to please everyone—please my father, Chen, my mother, my friends, my teachers. Please, please, please, please, please. That’s all I do. And all it’s done for me is land me in Woodstock, away from my friends and the senior year I was expecting to have. I’m not pleasing Owen Harper, too. So I stand with my tray and raise my arm slowly by my side, my eyes zeroed in on his until I’m pointing at him. I close one eye and cock my head slightly to the right, like I’m making sure I have him in my sights—and then I pull the trigger.
“Jesus H Christ, Kensi! What’s wrong with you?” Willow asks. She pulls my arm back down, but I keep my eyes on Owen, staring into his gray-blue eyes—eyes that look like a wolf’s. “What are you doing?”
“I’m starting a war, Willow,” I say, my heart speeding up and my breath growing more ragged as reality catches up with me.
I’m starting a war with a guy who doesn’t lose—a guy who doesn’t play by the rules.
A guy who scares me, and who knows where I sleep at night.
Chapter 5
Each day happens exactly the same. Owen sits behind me, lounging his feet on my desk until I make him move. He makes out with the dark-haired girl named Kiera—practically putting on a show for me at lunch—then he taps on the window and sends me off with a message. One day it was a kiss to the glass, the other, he threw a dollar on the ground. I went outside when he walked away and put it in my pocket, and when I got home, I pinned it to my wall.
Despite the stories and rumors, Owen Harper didn’t scare me. Everything he did was predictable; all show with no real threat, and nothing I couldn’t easily ignore. I had my circle of friends, and I wasn’t interested in winning a popularity contest, so I was fine not being a part of Owen Harper’s cool crowd.
I’d endured bigger threats than he could offer—threats my father dealt out any time I talked about the idea of maybe not going to college at all, maybe studying jazz or just performing on the road, period. He was quick to poison those dreams, stopping short of disowning me. I was more than welcome to walk my own path in life; I’d just have to pay for it all myself, and not expect to live under his roof ever again.
What hurts more is how my mom always supports him. I’m not the same na?ve girl I was a few years ago. I understand the economic dynamics of my family now, and I know my mom earns at least twice my father’s salary. But he has this hold on her, and she puts him on a pedestal. My father, Dean Worth, is a talented musician, and when he commands the orchestra, it’s impossible not to feel prideful watching him work. But my mother has let that pride take all of the power—and somehow, power over me, and my life, was bargained away with it.
The first football game was at a school only a town or two over, so the bus trip was just long enough to be an adventure. Our team lost, but the band sounded good, so I celebrated with Willow, Elise, and Jess afterward at the ice cream parlor in the old part of town.
Normal teenagers would want to keep the party going, to stay out with their friends until the sun threatens to rise. But I know there’s an empty house waiting for me at home, and I’m desperate to touch my piano. What I want and reality, though, are two very different dimensions. I know something is off the second we turn the corner to my street.
There are cars packed in both my and Owen’s driveway, many with lights on, pointed directly at the hoop anchored to my garage. There are about a dozen guys all playing ball and crushing beer cans right below my bedroom window, my bedroom window that I can see plainly through the thin veil of curtains thanks to the flooding lights.
“You wanted war,” Willow says, shaking her head at the scene.
“Yeah…” I say, grabbing my heavy bag and pulling it over my shoulder as I step out of her car. “I guess I did.”
“You want me to stay? Come in for a while?” She’s asking to be nice, but I can tell she doesn’t really want to be a part of whatever the hell this is that I started.
“No, it’s all right. I’m just going to put some music on and go to bed. Really, let them do whatever out here. I don’t care,” I lie.
I wait at the front door until Willow pulls away, then push my key in and quickly shut the door behind me.
“What are you doing?” I whisper to myself, letting my bag, coat, scarf and sweatshirt all fall into one pile by the front door. I pull my boots from my feet and slide along the wood floor in my socks toward the kitchen, stroking my hand along the smoothness of the piano top as I pass it. I could still play, but for some reason, playing while there’s practically a party happening on the other side of the wall is far less appealing. It’s not so much their disruption and the noise as it is my fear of them hearing me—of them stopping and listening. Maybe a fear of them mocking me and taking away something that’s mine.
I grab a Coke from the fridge and climb the steps, careful not to turn on my light. I don’t need to give them a reason to look up. On all fours, I crawl to the window and lean my back against the side of my bed, cracking the tab on my soda.