Page 23 of My Fault

It took him a few seconds to respond. I hated him dillydallying.

Of course I do. It’s not the same without you. But I’ve got to go. I’ll call later, OK? I love you.

A thousand butterflies flicked around in my stomach when I read that. I texted him goodbye and set my phone aside.

I couldn’t wait to talk to him, hear his voice. I couldn’t figure out what on earth to do to keep from missing him every second of the day.

I heard voices coming over to the garden. I turned quickly, grabbed my dress, and threw it over my head.

It was Nick with three other guys.

Shit.

I’d seen them all the day before at the party. One was tan, almost as tall as Nick, with golden-blond hair and blue eyes. One was shorter in comparison with a black eye. That didn’t surprise me. I’d seen Nick in action and could assume his friends were just as violent and reckless. The last one really caught my eye, probably because he was the first one to walk straight toward me. His hair was dark brown and his eyes black as night. He was very, very intimidating, especially with the tattoos covering his arms.

“Hey, good-looking…did you just climb out of my fantasies and show up here?” he asked, lying in the deck chair next to me.

Nick flopped down on the other, grinning.

“Excuse me?” I asked, sitting up.

He laughed and looked at Nick.

“You were right, she’s a live one,” he said, making me uncomfortable.

He was disgusting. The other two guys jumped in the pool and splashed water everywhere. The water made my dress cling to my body.

“Careful, assholes!” Nick shouted, grabbing my towel and using it to dry off.

“You guys can keep splashing in this direction,” goon number three said, gawking at my breasts, now clearly visible through my soaked dress. “You’re one hell of a catch for a fifteen-year-old.”

“I’m seventeen, and if you keep looking at me like that, I’ll take a certain part of your anatomy and do serious damage to it,” I said, pulling the dress away from my torso.

Nicholas thew the towel back to me, and I covered up.

“Drop it, dude,” he said. “Otherwise I’m gonna have to throw her in the water to get her to shut up, and I’d rather just stay here where I am.”

“Excuse me?” I said, chuckling. Nick was in his bathing suit, and I had a spectacular view of his bare chest and his tattoos.

He took off his Ray-Bans and stared at me with his blue eyes. They looked remarkable under the sun, and for a few moments, I was thrown off.

“You don’t think I forgot you hitting me last night, do you?” I looked down at my knuckles, which still ached. His jaw wasn’t even slightly bruised.

“Are you threatening me?” I asked. He was getting the better of me.

“Nick, I love this chick. She needs to come out with us more often,” the tattooed guy said before he got up and dove into the pool.

“Listen, Freckles, you can’t just talk to me however you like,” he warned me. “See those guys? They respect me, you know why? Because they know I could put them on their ass at the drop of a hat. So be careful how you talk to me, give me my distance, and everything will be fine.”

As he spoke, I thought to myself how I could best respond.

“Funny how you think you’re the one who can threaten me when I could rat you out to your dad whenever I felt like it,” I said.

He clenched his teeth. I smiled. Noah one, Nick zero.

“You don’t want to play this game with me, Noah, believe me.”

Needing to do something with my hands, I bent over to grab some suntan lotion. “Then you’d better stop hoping I treat you with a respect you’re light-years away from deserving. You don’t want me to spill the beans about last night? Then drop the little remarks and tell your boyfriends to leave me alone.”