Hawk (A Stepbrother Romance #3)(12)

Tom sniffs the air. "You smell like pickle relish."

I swallow. "Well…"

He laughs. "I only meant that's enough for today. Take down the signage and close up the carts. I'll have one of my crews come get them. You two can run along home when you're done. You can make it for the fireworks if you hurry."

"Thanks, dad." I smile.

I want to vomit. Every time that word passes my lips I want to shriek at the top of my lungs, you are not my father, I hate you I hate you I hate you, but I can't. I can't even call him stepdad or stepfather in his hearing. He, and my mother, insist we call him dad.

Like we're all one big, happy family.

I keep my cool. I don't think I turn green until I'm out of his sight; he's rushing off somewhere, and good, more power to him. Stay the hell away from me. Every time I'm around Tom I feel like his eyes are peeling back the layers of my clothes, his gaze like an unwelcome touch. I remind myself that he's never touched me, and a tiny little voice always says, yet.

Part of me wanted to do what Hawk said I should do, only years ago-grab my sister and run, but I already know Tom's reach is long. There is no place he won't find us, nowhere we can run that we won't be caught. As the years have passed, I've only watched his connections grow. Last year, everything went crazy and there was a kind of power vacuum, for lack of a better word. Tom would never have a shot at the mayor's office if three men-James Katzenberg, his brother, Adam, and James's son, Elliot, were still in the picture. James and Adam are in prison; Elliot was shot and killed over a year ago.

Everything has been insane since it all happened. Now Hawk is back, and I can feel the world drumming around my ears. It feels like I'm watching another person kill the gas burner under the hot dog steamer in the cart, furl up the sign and close the whole thing down. May is sitting on an upturned bucket, double-fisting hot dogs slathered in mustard and ketchup. I haven't eaten today, but I don't feel hungry. She presses one into my hand anyway and I sit there and eat it in three big bites, and then eat the next one more slowly while May chomps down a third and then fourth, and slugs back a can of Coke. I don't know she puts it away like that and stays so skinny.

"Are you okay?" she asks, her voice muffled by a mouthful of hot dog.

"Yeah."

She looks around, and lowers her voice. "Are you going to be Hawk's girlfriend now?"

"What? No!" I snap, "He's my stepbrother now. Our stepbrother. Whatever. It doesn't matter. No."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

I glare at her and stand up. "Let's get home and get changed. I want to get out of here."

"Okay."

May and I finish packing everything and wipe our hands up on napkins. As we head home, May munches on her fifth hot dog and I find myself wondering how she can keep it down while walking in this stifling heat. By the time we get to our street, there's a big wet patch on my back and under my arms, so heavy I can feel it against my skin, and it doesn't do anything to cool me down. May is so sweaty she's shining.

The house stands on the corner in the best part of Paradise Falls, which is also the oldest. Only a few houses have been torn down and replaced with more modern ones, the rest are almost as old as the town. Ours isn't the oldest, but it's from before 1900 and it's enormous. It's Hawks' house, really, not mine.

It looks like the set of a cheeseball haunted house movie-at the front there's a big tower jutting up from the main structure with a little room inside that's only used for storage now. The bottom floor has a master suite, where Tom f*cks my mother, to put it bluntly. Besides that there's a dining room big enough for twenty people, a foyer, a den, Tom's home office, a huge kitchen and a big porch on the back. Second floor has five bedrooms, two of which are taken up by May and myself, in adjoining rooms. Lance has a room to himself on the third floor, which is otherwise empty. It's a big house for so few people.

Big enough to hold a lot of secrets.

I let May rush up the stairs to "beat me" to the bathroom, and trudge up the big wide staircase myself. Tom's office is right near the bottom, the door locked. I give it a glance as I pass, shuddering. We're alone in the house but I feel his presence anyway.

It's been almost four years of this. When Mom told me she'd gotten married I felt like I was going to puke out my liver. To him, of all people. I had no idea they were even involved.

Just thinking about it… ugh.

While May showers, and she'll be at it for a while, I sit on my bed and try not to smell the pickle relish. Damn you, Hawk. The moment I'm alone, he creeps into the back of my mind and I feel my eyes burn. I can't blink away the blur and a tear itches down my cheek, cutting a hot line. I thought I'd cut him out, put him away, but I can't forget his hands on my body, his mouth on mine, his fingers inside me. It was so strange seeing him. So different, and yet exactly the same. One look and it comes flooding back to me, all of it, from the first time I saw him in third grade to the last day of our senior year together when he told me at lunch to wear something nice, he was going to pick me up at six.

May finally finishes in the bathroom and calls out, "All yours," and I trudge inside.

I take a towel, but forget my robe, and it doesn't hit me until I've already stripped down and locked the door. May left the water running and steam coats every surface, strokes against my body and heats my skin. I break out in a sweat again, itching my back and legs even before I slip under the hot stream and turn it up higher to flush away that relish smell. Water runs in hot fingers down my back, between my legs, soaks my hair and paints it down my back. Leaning on the wall, I let the spray flow over my head, drumming on my scalp.