The Color of Us (College Bound Book 2) (6 page)

LIAM

I was an asshole. Alexis was off-limits for so many reasons, and yet I couldn’t stay away. Part of me wondered if I kept coming back for more because I knew I shouldn’t. Breaking the rules was so ingrained in me, and she was such a challenge, that I just couldn’t resist the chase.

Which was ridiculous because we were complete opposites. Someone like her could never truly want someone like me. We didn’t fit.

Alexis was headed off to the university to get her expensive degree, and I’d barely earned my GED. She had a membership to an upscale country club while I was one infraction away from permanent residence at the county jail. Worst of all, she’d bared her soul to me about her sister, but I had so many secrets it was hard to keep track of them all.

I knew I didn’t deserve her. But I wanted her. And for some unexplained reason, she wanted me too. That would change soon enough because I couldn’t hide the truth forever. Asking her out was a mistake. Driving to her home was an even bigger one.

I grinned to myself. I’d never done the right thing before. Why start now?

I pressed down on the accelerator, my pulse echoing the speed of my Jeep as I hurtled down the back roads. The ragged scenery of my hometown faded away as my car devoured the miles to her house where the better half lived.

With every passing minute I told myself more lies. That what I was doing wasn’t a big deal, that she wasn’t expecting anything from me but a summer fling. Alexis would be going away to school at the end of August, and I wasn’t the kind of guy who fit into her perfect future.

She might be complicated, but this thing between us didn’t have to be. I was a detour. A distraction. A way for her to pass the time until she went off to college and followed her dreams.

The closer I got to her home, I reminded myself that’s all I wanted anyway.

***

Alexis lived on the respectable side of the next town over from mine. There weren’t any tracks exactly, but there was no doubt that we were on opposite sides of something. I already knew that her parents must be well off since she was a member at Eagle Crest, but pulling up in front of her house was undeniable proof of how different we were.

I shut the door of my Jeep and started up the front walk. All around me the lawn spread out in a huge carpet of perfectly mowed lines, just like a baseball field. There were no weeds in the garden, and the lawn was brushed clean of grass clippings, all of which made everything less real. Fake. As fake as all the other lawns I worked on every day.

When I reached the porch, I looked up at the house itself. It was all impressive stone and shiny windows. Lots of fucking windows.

I imagined that most people would call Alexis’s home stately. But I wasn’t most people. Fussy. That’s the word that came to mind as I took in the overwhelming amount of tamed beauty around me. Alexis had that sense of tamed beauty too, and I wondered what she would be like if she was ever truly set free.

I intended to find out.

I cast one look back at my Jeep still splattered with mud from my time on the levees earlier today. Parked at the curb, my ride looked like a bruise. Imperfection in a neighborhood that could be a Hollywood set. It didn’t belong.

Neither did I, but I couldn’t force myself to care.

I climbed the front steps, and with a jab of my finger, rang the doorbell. Through the large glass panels of the double front door, I could see a woman wearing a pantsuit and a matching frown as she walked toward me. She pulled one of the doors open just enough to speak through it. Her hesitance made me want to kick it in all the way.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here for Lex.” My fingers twitched with the need to hold a cigarette, so I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans instead.

“I’m sorry. You must have the wrong address.” The woman’s scowl said more than her dismissive answer. She started to close the door, and I put my hand on the handle to stop her before she could shut me out completely. I wasn’t going to be turned away like this. This was not Eagle Crest.

The steely glare that had looked permanently etched onto the woman’s face just a moment before was immediately replaced with anxiety as I held the door open. For a second I saw myself reflected perfectly in her expression, and she was right. I
was
dangerous.

“Hey, Mom.” Alexis ran up behind the woman and pulled on the door, opening it wider. “You met Liam?” She flashed me a smile that was so genuinely happy I wondered how I’d actually thought it would be possible to forget about her.

“You know this…” Alexis’s mom turned to face me. “You know this young man?”

I didn’t miss how difficult it was for her for find a label for me, and I was damn sure “young man” wasn’t the first thing that came to her mind.

“Mom, this is Liam,” Alexis said, gesturing to me. “Liam, this is my mom, Claudia.”

“Claudia.” I nodded my head toward her in greeting and held out my hand. It hung in the air, ignored, as Claudia’s mouth froze in displeasure.

“Mrs. Sinclair,” she finally bit out. “You can call me Mrs. Sinclair.”

“Right.” I gave her a lazy grin and returned my hand to my pocket, enjoying the way she bristled when I didn’t correct myself. Adults were so fucking attached to their titles, and I was always so tempted to ignore them.

“Liam and I have plans tonight.” Alexis filled the heavy silence that had fallen between us. “I’ll just get my purse.” She ducked back inside the house, missing the horrified expression her mother now wore.

Claudia was no longer looking at me like something disgusting she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. Now I was that shadow in the dark alley that made her want to pull her purse a little closer.

“Plans? What sort of plans?” she asked me.

“It’s a surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises, young man.” Claudia crossed her arms and lifted her chin so she could look down her nose at me.

“You can call me Liam.” I gave her another lazy grin.

She took a deep breath through her nose. “I don’t like surprises, Liam.”

“But Lex does.” Actually, I didn’t know that for sure.

Claudia’s hand clutched at the necklace around her neck. She was probably envisioning all the depraved ways I might know her daughter and what she liked. Claudia clearly didn’t want me to take her daughter out.

I didn’t blame her.

Alexis returned with her purse, a cautious smile finding its way to her mouth when she noticed the tension in her mother’s stance. “I’ll be back later, Mom.” She leaned in to give her mother a kiss. Claudia never took her eyes off me.

“I need to know where you’re going to be tonight, Alexis,” Claudia insisted.

Alexis’s eyes widened in embarrassment. “Mom. I’m eighteen, and this is just a date. It’s not like he’s taking me on a cross-country road trip.” She turned toward me, her lips twitching up in a grin. “You’re not are you?”

“Not tonight.” I winked.

Alexis smiled wide, her cheeks flushing pink. She held her purse loosely in her hand as she turned to her mom. “You’re the one who wanted me to get out of the house. Just following orders.”

“Alexis Marie Sinclair,” Claudia warned.

“Relax, Mom. I’ll see you later.”

Claudia opened her mouth to argue, but Alexis grabbed my hand and led me down the perfect walkway and toward what I’m sure her mother thought was a black hole of bad decisions. It was really just my Jeep.

Beside me, Alexis nearly glowed in her white jeans, tiny white tank, and sweater. She was so innocent; she was hard to look at directly. She really did look the part of an angel. Especially with me walking beside her, playing the part of sin so well.

I led her around to the passenger side and helped her in, all under the watch of Claudia’s death glare. Once we were buckled in, I turned the key in the ignition, wishing I’d spent the time to take the top down. I imagined the sight of Alexis’s long blond curls tangled in the grip of the wind and mentally kicked myself. That would have been fucking incredible. Although I felt a little sense of victory when I shut the driver’s side door and knew that Claudia could no longer see us beyond the tinted windows.

She could look down her nose all she wanted, but she didn’t know me. No matter what Claudia believed, not everything was black and white and could be shoved in a little box with a perfect little label. I had a feeling that’s the way Alexis had grown up, shoved in a little box, living in the confines of other people’s expectations. That box was slowly suffocating her.

I wanted to show her how to demolish her box, to smash the rules of black and white. I wanted her to break free, even if just for a little while.

***

The carnival was loud and gaudy and messy. Alexis’s smile and the tight grip she had on my hand as she pulled me through the entrance was all I needed to know that she loved it. And she was hungry to explore.

“Wait.” She stopped in front of me and began digging in her purse. When she extracted her phone from the bag, she tapped the shoulder of a girl walking by and asked her to take a picture of us.

We stood in front of the swings, and I pulled Alexis to my side where she clicked in place, almost as if I was a faulty machine getting a fancy upgrade. She made me feel new and improved.

I hugged her tightly, loving the way she smelled like berries—sweet and juicy, something to devour. I wondered how long I’d be able to resist before I had to pull her in for a kiss to see if her lips tasted as sweet as she smelled.

“What do you want to do first?” I laced my fingers with hers, and I could feel her body shiver with that simple touch.

She looked over her shoulder. “Let’s do the swings first.”

Damn straight. I’d finally get to see those long curls of hers twisting in the wind.

***

“I’ve never been to a carnival before.” Alexis tore a bite-sized piece off the funnel cake, and when she put it in her mouth, her eyes closed as she purred in satisfaction. “I don’t care if it’s only a moment on the lips,” she muttered, “this is so good.”

Alexis’s curls were chaotic and wild from all the rides, and I wanted to bury my fingers in her hair and kiss her until she begged me to never stop.

“Want to ride anything else?”
Like me?

Jesus, O’Connell, get a grip.

Alexis shook her head and popped another piece of funnel cake in her mouth. When she started moaning again, I had to start rattling off baseball stats in my head. Alexis was sweet torment.

“Let’s play some games,” she said. “I want to win you a stuffed bear.”

“You’re going to win me a bear?” I chuckled and reached up to release the piece of hair that had blown across her face and gotten caught between her lips.

Lucky hair.

She raised her eyebrows, mouth slightly open as another piece of pastry made its way toward her lips. “I’ll have you know I’m highly skilled at the horse race game.”

“Highly skilled?” I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. “I thought you said you’d never been to the carnival before.”

“I haven’t.” Another piece of funnel cake disappeared between her lips, and a trace of sugar dusted her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered closed as she chewed. “My mother thinks carnivals are cesspools of disease and delinquents.” She grinned and opened her eyes, the white powder on her lips taunting me to sample it. “Her words, not mine. But I’ve been to lots of amusement parks, and I’m telling you I’m an expert at that horse race game where you roll the ball in the slow, medium, and fast holes.” She mimicked the motion of playing. “I suck at the darts and water gun game, but I’m good with balls.”

Adam Jones. Orioles centerfielder. Bats right. Throws right. Thirty doubles, two triples, and twenty-eight home runs in the 2014 season. Shit. No. Twenty-nine home runs. Nineteen bases on balls. Balls…

Fuck!

Alexis was still happily bragging about her ball skills when I took her face in my hands and pulled her in for a kiss. With her berry smell filling my head and the sweetness of the sugar between our lips, I was sure I could survive off nothing but Alexis Sinclair for the rest of my life.

“Dude. Where’d you find this sweet piece of ass?”

My lips stilled against Alexis’s, and I wondered what the punishment would be for murdering your best friend if they totally deserved it. I turned to glare at Leroy and pushed up from the bench that Alexis and I were sitting on. Behind Leroy, our friends Bruce and Adam were grinning like hyenas ready to go in for a bite after the kill.

Leroy laughed at my reaction and held his hands up in front of him, a cigarette jammed between his first two fingers. “Easy. It was a joke.”

“This is Lex,” I snarled. “Say something nice, Leroy, or you’ll be picking your molars up off the ground after I put my fist through that dickless smile.”

Bruce and Adam howled with laughter at my threat and taunted Leroy with insults about his ability to give better blow jobs the next time he was arrested if he had no teeth.

Leroy, calm as ever, stuffed the cigarette between his lips and leaned to the side to peer past me so that he could see Alexis. “Sorry, Lex. It was just a joke. I’m not used to seeing a pretty girl with this asshole.”