Page 2 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

Maybe he understood the feeling, but only one of them had gotten paid out on a two-million-dollar contract and had this apartment to live in. Which was maybe because he’d bought his parents a house with a good chunk of that money, but still !

Elle pushed an unwashed strand of hair behind her ear and let out a petulant huff. “I’m not a seventeen-year-old boy that you need to motivate on the field, Wyatt.”

He shot her a charming smile and shrugged his shoulders. “But you have to admit I’m pretty good at it, right?”

She smirked. He was such an ass, but for some reason, she loved him all the more for it. “Think you missed your calling as a motivational speaker?”

He stood up, shaking his head. “Boys grow up to be men, so you’re welcome for trying to shepherd in as many of them who aren’t assholes as I can.”

“Ah, yes. The Wyatt Pierce TedTalk on ‘Living With Purpose,’” Elle said seriously, though her grin betrayed her. “Coming to the Rock Harbor Pier this summer.”

He ignored her and walked over to the open kitchen to make a protein shake. He was always making a protein shake. For no longer being an athlete, he still lived his life like one. Disciplined. Focused. An intense degree of personal responsibility.

Elle stood up and stretched before following her brother, like she’d done throughout their childhood. She sat across from him on a bar stool at the small island. “How’s the team looking, by the way?”

In the last five years, her brother had taken the rag tag football team of their former high school and molded them into state champions. And she had no doubt he’d do it again this year.

Wyatt looked past his shoulder and then turned his head to look around again.

He dropped another scoop of powder into the blender before meeting Elle’s stare.

He drew his eyebrows up comically. “Oh, did you mean me? A question for little old me? Does this mean you’re back from Planet Elle and here with us mere mortals on Earth? ”

Elle rolled her eyes. Even if his comment was deserved. She pointed back and forth between them. “Shut it, Wyatt. I’m trying to be engaged here.”

“And far be it from me to stand in the way of progress,” he yelled over the sound of the blender.

God, she wanted to strangle him and hug him in equal measures sometimes.

“The team’s doing great,” he screamed, shutting the blender off halfway through so the ‘great’ boomed across the living room.

She covered her ears and winced. “Jesus.”

Wyatt smiled and started to pour the smoothie into a mug. “Need a voice that carries across the football field, you know?”

“Well, isn’t it great you’ll have a chance to get it out of your system for two weeks.”

“It comes from the belly.” He patted his t-shirt-clad stomach. “I watched a YouTube video about it.”

“Of course you did.”

“As the poet Bubba Sparxxx said, ‘whatever it is that you do, do it admirably.’” She could tell how pleased he was with that one, his straight teeth taking up his entire smile.

Elle was struck with the strangest feeling, then. She was going to miss Wyatt while he was gone. He drove her crazy in a way that only a sibling could, but he didn’t hold her current attitude against her. If anything, it only made him more intent to pull her out of it.

“Why do you look like you’re about to cry?” Wyatt asked, alarm etched across his face. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re just a really good brother. I’m lucky to have you,” she said, her voice catching as she willed away the tears prickling behind her eyes.

God, what was wrong with her lately? She never cried. Except that apparently now, she did.

She picked at the sticker on an apple in the fruit bowl on the small island counter, distracting herself from thinking about the last few weeks of her life.

Wyatt never leaned on her the way she did with him, but it had always been this way. He was four years older. Her brother. Her protector.

“These really are unprecedented times,” Wyatt said, already around the island and scooping her up in a surprisingly gentle hug.

Her life was an absolute mess, but at least she had a great brother and a private place to get back on her feet over the next few weeks.

It wasn’t all she wanted, but it was something.

The mood was set.

The lights were turned off. An ambient candle that smelled like fresh pine needles was burning on the coffee table to the left of where her feet were perched. She’d draped the oversized, deep burgundy blanket–freshly washed and warm from the dryer–across her body for maximum coziness.

Elle was ready .

She pressed play as the sight of a bustling summer camp came into view on Wyatt’s ridiculously oversized television, stereo sound enveloping the room with the laughter of campers who had no idea what horrors were about to befall them. Elle knew a little something about that.

Snuggling in deeper on the sofa, she leaned back to take in the full view of the screen.

In her Boston bedroom, in an apartment she’d shared with a roommate who’d lived there first, she’d barely managed to fit a television on her dresser.

And it was at a weird angle, so she could never really see the bottom right corner unless she sat up against her headboard .

But this? This felt like a night at the movies. The thought reminded her to grab the popcorn bowl from the end table, and she wrapped her arms snugly around it like she was swaddling a baby.

The ease only lasted for a few minutes until a piercing scream filled the room.

Elle jumped instinctively, even though she’d seen this movie dozens of times throughout her life.

The first time, and inarguably the best, had been when she’d been eight, and had hidden under her brother’s bed after already having been told that it was too scary for her.

She’d always been curious. So sue her.

And she would have gotten away with it, except that about halfway through the movie, she’d finally had to pee so badly that staying still was no longer an option.

So, she’d slowly army crawled out on all fours from under the bed where her brother and his best friend, Cam, had sat riveted in the darkness.

And then the top of her head had brushed Wyatt’s foot.

Touching any part of her pubescent, teenage brother had been so unbelievably gross that she’d let out a strangled sound, but nothing could compare to the blood curdling scream that Wyatt had let out in response.

The moment had quickly descended into chaos.

She’d let out another sound, an ‘oof,’ as the bed had dipped from his weight as he’d sprung to the floor.

He’d run, but only across the room to get his baseball bat.

Her brother had been momentarily furious with her, though it only lasted for about as long as it took for his heart rate to return to normal, until he’d finally joined her and Cam in the kind of laughter that had made her stomach ache.

She hadn’t laughed that hard in years.

They’d let her watch the rest of the movie, sitting in between them on the bed, her love of horror movies cemented in that moment.

Wyatt still kept a baseball bat these days, only now it lived by the front door.

Whose location she glanced at across the room to confirm for the second time in the last ten seconds, the sound of something scraping on the metal staircase outside rising over the din of her rapidly increasing heartbeat.

She tilted her head, her ear trying to catch the sound again. Usually, when she came to Rock Harbor, she stayed with her parents. She hadn’t been alone in Wyatt’s apartment–their childhood home–in years.

It was probably one of the overgrown maple trees near the side of the building, she told herself. Wyatt was handy, but she’d noticed the trees, lush with foliage, hanging heavy in the summer humidity when she’d snuck into town days ago.

But then it happened again.

Louder, the metal steps creaking under the weight of something that sounded suspiciously like a person.

Wyatt would have told her if he was coming back, she was sure about that much from the way they’d parted earlier today.

When she saw the locked doorknob twist slightly, her stomach bottomed out. Someone was trying to get into the apartment. All of her good thoughts from only moments ago evaporated, terrifying reality crashing down around her.

Did someone know that Wyatt was out of town? Maybe they thought that this was their chance to rob him? He did have that stupidly oversized television. And while she had no idea about his current financial situation, he was a former pro athlete. Everyone in town knew that.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up at attention, and she thought she saw the candle on the table flicker.

Fuck. She was not prepared to deal with this right now.

Except that, in some ways, she was. Life had been giving her a whole lot of lemons lately, and she wasn’t going to let this be the next one. She’d take that lemon and pelt it–hard–at whoever was trying to ruin her night of solitude.

She was a woman with a lot of pent up rage, and very soon, whoever was on the other side of that door was going to wish they’d picked another house to burgle.

Quietly, she placed the popcorn bowl back on the end table and muted the movie.

She stood up from the sofa, keeping the blanket wrapped around her.

Maybe she could throw it over the intruder and trap them.

All she needed now was to wrap a rope around one of the exposed beams that criss-crossed the ceiling to make a pulley system, and they’d be dragged up.

No . None of this was helpful. That’s not even how that worked. The blanket would need to be on the ground and she didn’t even know how she could fashion a tripwire right now.

And more importantly, this wasn’t an episode of Tom & Jerry .

She shook her head and let out a deep breath. Her hand tightened around the blanket to stop it from shaking.

Her mind went blank as she heard something heavy drop on the landing right outside the door.

Murder tools .

No, she chided herself as she stalked across the room silently, the blanket thrown over her head like a hooded cloak. The intruder didn’t know someone was home. And that was good. She had the element of surprise.

She’d have laughed at the absurdity of her situation right now if she wasn’t worried she’d start hyperventilating.

Elle’s life had not been going according to plan, and she wouldn’t let this be another in a long line of things that were out of her control.

Wyatt wasn’t the only Pierce with a sense of responsibility. She’d protect this homestead, damnit.

She slipped over to the window next to the door, where the baseball bat was placed. Picking it up, she felt the weight in her hands.

She could do this. She had to do this.

It happened in slow motion. The click of the lock. The doorknob turning ninety degrees. The door opening without a sound. Her blood rushed through her ears, but she focused her eyes in the darkness, waiting.

Elle wrapped her hands around the bat and balanced it over her shoulder, ready for the smash hit of her life.

When the figure came into view, Elle made, in retrospect, what she would call her only mistake.

Right before she swung the bat, she screamed.