Page 15 of Burning Demons (Burning Torments #1)

Chapter 15

Wren

School had a weird way of dragging the days out and making them zip by at the same time. This year was no exception. I’d had expectations of how my last year of high school would go. In some ways, I was spot-on. My classmates had a sort of relaxed and relieved vibe going on. Like, we’d made it to the end, though graduation was nine months off. Even our teachers seemed, I dunno, nicer or something. As if we’d moved on from being annoying students in eleventh grade to almost like friends with this history between us they knew wouldn’t last for much longer.

We weren’t a full month into the year, but everywhere were conversations about the future. Teachers talked about the ACTs, scholarships, and making sure we had all the credits needed to graduate. Students talked about prom, the senior prank, a senior trip, and doing things they’d never thought of before, like actually attending a band performance.

As much excitement as was floating around about parties, festivals, and field trips to colleges, my interest lay pretty much in one direction. Home. I could be a little closer with Tate at home. I could stare at him, watch him eat, or drool a little when he took his shirt off to get in the pool. Momma and Sam were busy adulting as usual, so we had solid hours each afternoon to just be and figure shit out.

But to get to the afternoons, I had to get through the school day, which meant keeping my eyes and hands off him as much as possible.

“I think the napkin is dead.”

“Huh?” I blinked out of my thoughts and stared at Tate across the lunchroom table.

He nodded toward my hands or, more accurately, the pile of tiny napkin pieces below them.

“Oh.” I laughed so he wouldn’t think anything was wrong. “Just lost in thought.”

“Mhmm.” As usual, he hadn’t eaten anything for lunch but went through the line and grabbed food for me. “Been hearing about a party this weekend. Cody, the only one around here who has parties, apparently, is having one for Labor Day.”

He wasn’t wrong about Cody being the only one who had parties worth mentioning. That guy had the nice house and the absent parents—it made sense.

“You wanna go?” I asked.

Tate shrugged and glanced around the room. Sienna was talking to a group of cheerleaders, and thankfully, without her around, Alex was talking to some of his teammates. The two of us sat alone at our unofficially assigned seats.

“Maybe. It’s a reason to get out of the house.”

“Yeah. Sam usually closes the pool after Labor Day.”

“Hmm. No more night swims.”

I pressed my lips together hard to fight their twitching. “Nope. We’ll have to get in the pool before the weekend is out. Make this last one count.”

He didn’t have such qualms about letting a smile spread his mouth as he huffed a laugh, leaned back while stretching, and boldly checked me out. Since that afternoon at Parlo, we’d been letting our fingers do a bit more walking. I had held his hand on that picnic table and nearly busted a nut. Talk about embarrassing. He hadn’t noticed or, at least, hadn’t brought attention to how much the innocent touch was not innocent at all to my dick.

I struggled a bit when I thought about the boyfriend he left in New York. Tate had been exposed to so much more than I probably ever imagined, and here I was showing that evidence by getting all nervous, twitchy, and hard over the limited contact with him. He never acted bored or impatient, though.

“Hey!” Tate and I jumped as Sienna jolted us out of a stare-off I hadn’t realized we were in. “It’s not until next month, but the cheerleaders are in charge of the face painting booth at the fall festival, and we could use your help.”

I blinked and blinked some more, trying to get my gears off Tate and rolling with what she was talking about. Tate, ever composed, jumped in for me.

“Doing what exactly? Are we to be the test subjects for your painting designs?”

Sienna laughed and bumped her hip against his shoulder. I darted my gaze to Alex, who, of course, saw that. He’d been extra territorial this year when it came to his longtime crush he never had the balls to acknowledge, and I was pretty sure Tate was the reason. On one hand, that was fucking funny because neither Tate nor Sienna had any interest in each other. On the other hand, it was beyond annoying because it made me irritated with a friend. Or sort of friend. Alex and I weren’t besties by a long shot, but at one time, we played in the same woods, even pissed on the same trees. Maybe it was a bond, a bro code of some sort, that made us friendly. Ish.

“Nah. The cheerleaders have been playin’ with makeup since we were in first grade. We know how to use a paintbrush. We need muscles to set up our table and the banner we’re puttin’ together.”

Tate looked to me for the answer. I hadn’t mentioned the festival to him, but plenty of teachers already had. A yearly event held here, but most of the town got involved in it, making it a huge deal.

“Does it get us out of class?” I asked the all-important decision factor.

Sienna glared but couldn’t hold back her smile. “I’m sure I can make that happen.”

Of that, I was not doubting. Sienna was the most proactive, go-getter, self-motivated person in our entire school. When she set her mind to something, it created a movement . To her, no was short for negotiable.

“Then count us in,” I said.

“Great.” She bounded off, ponytail swinging, to rejoin her cheerleaders. The entire table turned as one, like meerkats on a plain, as she, I supposed, told them of our pledge to assist.

“Chicks are scary,” Tate said.

I snickered. “Facts.”

Sam invited some of his and Momma’s friends over for a cookout Labor Day weekend. In preparation, Momma was in the kitchen late Friday afternoon with Tate helping her before they came out to show off the fruits of their labor.

“What’s all this?” Sam asked.

“This is the food we’ve been working on for the get-together.” Mom pointed at each grouping on the platter. “These are just turkey sandwiches, but these are a new chicken salad recipe.” Sam reached for one but froze when Mom said it had grapes in it. He swallowed hard and took one anyway. Brave man. “These are magic bars. There’s chocolate, peanut butter, and lemon.”

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the last group of, uh, something.

“Those are Tate bars,” Mom huffed.

“Tate bars?”

He stood behind Mom with a shy grin and pink ears.

“Yes, well, he wanted to try to make some and couldn’t follow directions. They are a mix of all three, but not really bars, are they?”

They looked like piles of shit with coconut flakes as hair. I would regret it, but I reached for a Tate bar and shoved the whole thing in my mouth. Each flavor hit me at once, and I about choked. The lemon was really strong.

“Good,” I stuttered out with a nod.

Tate’s face was luminous and made me smile even as I cringed at the taste. I washed it down with a turkey sandwich. When I reached for a second Tate bar, Sam shrugged and tried one too. He hid his disgust rather well and spat it into a napkin, then gawked at me. Luckily, the football highlights we’d been watching snagged his interest, and I didn’t need to explain my willing acceptance of Tate’s exploratory cooking.

Come Saturday morning, we helped Sam and Momma get everything set up for the cookout. He said we could stay, but Cody’s party was at the same time and wouldn’t include parents, so …

“Didn’t you say it wouldn’t be so damn hot in a few weeks? You lied to me, Big Country,” Tate complained.

We’d snagged loungers at the far end of Cody’s pool. Sienna sat at the foot of mine, scrolling through her phone.

“Speaking of hot, someone’s gonna be in hot water if they don’t tell their momma about the concert,” Sienna said.

“What concert?” Tate asked

I nudged Sienna with my foot. She swayed dramatically as if she might fall, then giggled. “Thanks a lot, loudmouth,” I growled. To Tate, I said, “This thing with band. In the spring, we’re doin’ a performance in Birmingham at the civic center.”

“What? That’s awesome,” he said.

“Eh—”

“It is,” Sienna cut me off. “Listen to your stepbrother.”

Stepbrother . We glanced at each other from behind our shades, hiding the ways that word scraped across our evolving relationship. At least, for me anyway.

“Does this catch your eye?” Sienna leaned back and extended her phone toward me, oblivious to—or ignoring—the quiet tension.

She had some post on her screen with a confusing painting that might have included body parts, or maybe it was a pipe organ. Before I could answer, a group of girls in their bikinis sauntered past.

“Hi, Wren,” they chimed together like backup singers.

I tipped my chin to them, still unsure how to deal with the attention, and then one spoke up and said “hi” to Tate. The girls squealed and scurried toward the pool when he said hello back, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that either.

Jealous?

That question was too deep for a day like today.

I leaned back, giving Sienna an expression that screamed eye roll since she couldn’t see my actual eye roll behind my dark shades. “No, it doesn’t. It makes my head hurt.” She giggled, and I turned to Tate to cleanse my brain of all things artsy or girls. “Technically, it is cooler,” I said to him.

“By one fucking degree?”

“Still cooler.”

“You ever get snow down here?”

“Sometimes.” A thought hit me hard, and I could barely breathe. “Do you miss it? New York. Your home.” Would he leave? If he hated the country that bad, would he?

Tate shrugged. “Some things.”

“Like what?”

He didn’t answer. The three of us fell into silence as everyone else partied on. A little later, the sliding glass doors opened and out poured a bunch of Cody’s football teammates, including Alex. He scanned the deck and, when he saw us, gave an up nod.

“Ugh. I think he might actually ask me out this year,” Sienna said.

“You don’t like him?” Tate asked. “I thought that crush was mutual.”

Sienna shrugged. “Meh. I dunno. Some days. But I’m not looking to be tied down. I will not be a teen pregnancy statistic.”

“Good for you,” Tate said and cheersed his bottle of water with hers. Sienna probably wasn’t aware of the fact both of Tate’s parents had increased that statistic, but he hadn’t taken offense.

Sienna hopped up and swiveled to face us. “Okay, I’ve crashed this moody-boy section long enough.”

“You ain’t gotta leave,” I said.

She huffed and glanced between Tate and me. “Yeah, I think I do.” She air-kissed in my direction, then skipped off. Everyone liked Sienna, and a fair share had crushes on her because she was cute and outgoing. She, of course, wasn’t keen on anyone who wouldn’t appreciate her drive and who could stay the hell out of her way.

“Worried I might leave you?” Tate said when we were as alone as we could be on the patio. “You asked if I missed New York. Is that because you think I want to leave here? Leave you?”

There wasn’t a smile in his voice or on his lips. He wasn’t picking at me or trying to get a rise out of me. Something deeper hinted between the lines of those words. After our talk at Parlo, when we’d both shared a bit of our pasts or pain, I got the feeling Tate’s life in New York was a lot worse than he’d made it out to be. There had been a forced indifference that hadn’t gone unnoticed. When I’d said we had being fucked-up in common, I wasn’t wrong.

“Maybe,” I said, then took a flying leap and went for it. “Yeah.” I wasn’t used to being so free with my inner workings, but Tate had a way of making me feel okay about showing him those soft places. The vulnerable places I guarded the most.

“I don’t miss anything enough to make me want to leave.”

You . He hadn’t added that on the end, but I would swear the word hung between us. Without access to his expressive eyes hidden behind his own dark shades, I watched his mouth part on a silent inhale. He tongued one corner, then swallowed at the same time I did. Air trapped in my throat, and my head grew fuzzy. The need to touch his lips with mine grew daily, but the fear of messing it up did as well. He’d had a boyfriend, someone who he did everything with. How would he react as I fumbled my way through my first kiss?

“Another?” He gestured at my bottle of hard lemonade as he stood.

I had no idea if it was empty, but I nodded anyway. Yeah, more would probably help knock the edge off my worries.

“I’ll be right back.” He took a step, then stopped. “Breathe, Wren.”

Because he told me to, I could. With my chin down, facing my bottle, I hid behind the safety of my sunglasses and tracked his progress toward Cody’s house and through the sliding door. There were about half as many people here as the last party, which was fine with me.

Sienna stood with a small group of girls. Alex, Michael, and Cal talked with Cody and Raul, who was the starting center on the team. And where there was Michael, there was Jamie. Like a dark storm cloud, he stood decked out in black when everyone else had on bright colors and shorts. Another guy—Asher, I believed—talked to him while Michael split his attention between the pair and his teammates.

I’d grown up with all of them. Football made us closer than we probably would’ve been otherwise, but I could honestly say I’d never really looked at them before. Always too caught up in my own head, hiding, I’d buried my head in the sand so others couldn’t see my scars or the pieces of me I had always thought of as weak spots.

Having a stepbrother dumped on my front door forced me to dig my head out, to take a look around and reevaluate my new reality. Hiding was easy; putting myself out here was hard. Only, doing that with Tate next to me didn’t actually seem as bad as I’d made it out to be in my imagination.

The growing warmth spreading through my limbs from this new awakening Tate sparked inside me was drenched with cold dread as the Wolf Pack stepped onto the patio from the side of the house.

My first instinct was to shrink, to find a way to meld with the lounger and become invisible. In the end, that wasn’t needed. The Wolf Pack bumped fists with Cody and a few others, totally not glancing this far on the deck, and then Tate shoved his way through the tight ring of everyone. I didn’t think he was being aggressive about it, just trying to slip between any available space, but maybe he had. One of them must’ve said something to Tate because he stopped and turned around.

I sat up and downed the rest of my drink, rage filling me faster than the 5 percent alcohol content. All of a sudden, I no longer cared about the Wolf Pack noticing me. Maybe they wouldn’t say anything mean to him, but history proved otherwise. Dicks, always. Bullies. Every school had them, and as usual, everyone backed down when they showed up as a group.

Not today.

Not when it came to Tate.

The spiked drink wasn’t enough for a buzz, but the empty bottle was enough for a weapon. I got to my feet and prowled closer. Halfway there, Spencer, the inciter, shoved Tate. All of them were on the football team and bulkier than him. Assholes.

I lunged and steadied Tate before I stared them down. “What the fuck, Spencer?”

“Back off, World War.”

Tate growled and jerked forward, but I gripped his forearm to keep him next to me.

“Oh, right.” Rory tapped Spencer’s shoulder. “They’re brothers.”

Spencer glanced between me and Tate. “Thought this was your sister, World War.”

“Stop calling him that,” Tate growled.

Spencer snorted. “Fuck you, pussy.”

“Come on, guys. Everyone just calm down,” I tried, but this was escalating too quickly for reason to win.

“Your sister’s got a loud mouth,” Spencer barked at me.

“What? Like it’s a secret you want this?” Tate grabbed himself and glanced around wide-eyed. “My bad. Figured you were out since you have so many fuckboys dogging that tip.” He grinned, looking all kinds of evil.

“Shut the fuck up!” Spencer stepped toward Tate with his fist in full swing.

Now, I’d never been in a fight before, never even close, but I threw a punch that caught Spencer on the chin. It was almost like the cello. I moved, my body felt it, but I wasn’t in control anymore.

Jamie snickered and said, “Oh, shit.”

“Fuckin’ morons,” Michael growled and pulled Jamie behind him.

“What’s going on?” someone shouted.

“Fight. Fight,” others chanted, but it all faded to background noise.

The area was full of people, but my vision narrowed to the three angry Wolf Pack members still standing. Spencer was on the ground, shaking his head, but I had no time to think about that. They shot out after us. One grabbed Tate by the shirt and got clocked with the bottle in Tate’s hand. Davey hit the wooden deck beside his downed teammate.

Shouts were all around us, Rory’s hands were on my throat. Tate jumped at him like a slinky panther. He pounded into Rory’s ribs with his fists until he let me go, backed up, and fell to a knee. The last one went for Tate, but I circled an arm around his throat and bodily pulled him backward.

“Calm the fuck down, Cameron,” I growled.

Cameron had the better sense, apparently, and knew he didn’t have a chance with his buddies on the ground.

“Okay, okay! Jesus, Wren,” Cameron choked out.

I let him go with a shove.

Fury gripped my face, dragging my mouth into a snarl. Someone touched my arm, but when I swung around, ready for more, it was Tate.

“You good?” he asked.

I toed Spencer in the hip to push him over, then nodded.

The deck was silent. Phones were out and recording, which made the enormity of what happened settle around me.

“Fuck.”

“Come on.” Tate pushed my shoulder until I spun around, and we barreled into the house.

“Hell, yeah,” someone said while others piped up with their own comments.

“Served ’em right.”

“I fuckin’ hate those guys.”

Jesus, what did I just do?