The Bad Boys of Summer (8 page)

A
few days
. That was how long Slade Jarvis had been back in my life, and already, I was so sick of sulking over him.

So, he was going to run away again—get on a plane and never look back. So what? What difference did it make, really? He’d done the same damn thing seven years ago, and if I hadn’t shown up, he’d still be there in the city with his big-shot job and his ego the size of Texas. That was where he wanted to be, obviously. That was where he belonged.

Let him run.
That was okay by me. Or at least it would be, once I got some perspective again.

It didn’t matter that Slade was an asshole who couldn’t face reality—at least, not in the grand scheme of things. What mattered most now was that Kellan, who was already vulnerable, now thought his male role model had raped his sister. No doubt that was why he’d taken off this time and hadn’t come back. As much of a prick as Slade was, he wasn’t that, and I needed to set the record straight. Maybe then, Kellan would come home. Maybe then, he’d come to his senses.

The trouble was that I’d been trying to call him ever since I’d hung up with Slade, and he wasn’t picking up.
Sure, you’d phone our stepfather, but not me. Jerk.

God, I was so worried about him. And I was furious with our stepfather. His little coping mechanism—the insane, damning story he’d made up to reconcile what he’d seen that day—had sent my little brother off the deep end. He was the reason for Kellan’s downward spiral, not Slade taking off, even if those two events did go hand-in-hand. I didn’t care what Kellan had done, how mouthy he’d been—he was a teenager, and he was vulnerable. Dad never should have opened his big mouth.

If that was what it took for my stepfather to make it through the day, fine, but he should’ve kept Kellan out of it, no matter how angry my brother had made him.

Jesus Christ, why does everyone even care so much? Our family had been together less than a year when it happened, and it’s not like we weren’t adults. Nobody was underage. Why the hell is everyone so judgmental?

I was just slamming down my cell phone after getting Kellan’s voice mail for the millionth time when someone knocked—hard—on my door.

For one brief, beautiful instant, hope gripped me. Was that Kellan? Was he avoiding my calls because he was on his way? God, I hoped so.

I leapt for the door, standing on tip-toe to peer through the peephole at who I hoped was my younger brother. Then my heart sank.

It was Slade. The exact person I
didn’t
want to see.

“Come on, Iris,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “Open the door.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Slade?” I called to him, folding my arms. “You’re not going to get one last fuck out of me before you take off on us again, if that’s what you’re after.”

“It’s not. I swear.” He sounded tired.
Really
tired. Almost as tired as his father had over the phone. “We just… I need to talk to you, okay? There’s some things I need to say.”

“And I have a little brother to save,” I hissed, “so you’d better walk away now, Slade, before you miss your flight.”

“There’s no flight,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I frowned. No flight? Slade wasn’t leaving? Tentatively, I put my hand on the deadbolt for the door.

This is a mistake,
I thought, hesitating even as Slade knocked again.
Slade hasn’t changed. Not in seven years, and not now. It’s a ploy to hurt you again, to use you for his own gain. That’s all you’ve ever been to him—just another toy he can pick up and toss to the side whenever it suits him.

“What about what you told me before—how it was a mistake coming back here? How I meant nothing to you, how what we did…” I swallowed the rest of the words before he could hear my voice crack. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “I’m getting kind of sick of you breaking my heart, Slade. Not to mention my trust.”

“Iris…” He trailed off and I heard something heavy thump against the door. When I looked out the peephole again, I could see Slade had his back to me, his head in his hands. “What I have to say to you won’t take long, but I’m not gonna do it out here. It’s not the way it should be done. So either you open this door now, or you open it later, and I’ll still be sitting here waiting to come in. You have to leave your apartment sometime. It’s your choice.”

Choice,
I thought with a sneer.
Now
there’s
a word I’m getting tired of.

Still, I knew Slade’s persistence. I knew he was serious. He wouldn’t move one inch from my door until I opened it for him. I had half a mind to let him wait out there for days.

No. This ends now. No more waiting. No more wondering and wishing and pining over him for seven goddamn years.
I slid the deadbolt and turned the lock.
Let’s get this over with.

I opened the door and looked up into Slade’s face as he turned to me. What I saw in his eyes wasn’t at all what I’d expected, and that gave me pause. There was no arrogance. No mocking look. No “gotcha.” He looked… somber. Almost like Kellan did whenever he came off of a binge and would realize what he’d done.

I stepped aside and wordlessly let him in. I still wasn’t sure what his angle was, and I didn’t want to give him an inch if there was a risk he’d take a mile. I needed to defend myself, especially my heart. Nobody was going to do it for me. I needed to guard those walls.

Slade sat down on the couch and rubbed his face, staring off into the distance for what seemed like forever. I sat down across from him, putting the coffee table between us, and waited for him to speak. When he did, his voice was quavering.

“My mom died when I was young. I know you know that, but I don’t know if my dad ever told you how.” It was a strange way to apologize, but I shook my head. Beggars couldn’t be choosers after all. Slade clasped his hands and started again. “We got into a car accident coming home from a wedding. I was twelve and in the backseat, and Mom and Dad were up front. It was late, and I was asleep—apparently, that’s what saved me. Why I walked away with barely even a scratch.” He snorted, like there was something terribly unfair about that.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I never actually saw the impact. I woke up to the aftermath—the crying, the shattered glass. We’d been T-boned at an otherwise deserted intersection. The other car, a bunch of teens on a joy ride, hit us on my dad’s side—like this.” He demonstrated with his hands. “Pushed us off the road and into a shallow ditch. Our car ended up on its side and they spun out into the middle of the three-way stop. It was a pretty desolate area of town. No lights. No businesses nearby. And after the impact, my father couldn’t find his cell phone.”

I swallowed hard, watching Slade’s expression morph as he told the story. With every word, the sadness in his eyes grew deeper and deeper, until it was a yawning pit that threatened to swallow us both whole. He paused for a long time, lips parted, but no words coming out. He didn’t meet my gaze, just stared at the coffee table like his mind had projected the images of that night right onto it—like he was watching the worst night of his life on a movie screen.

“Dad was mostly fine. His legs were bruised all to hell and there were shards of glass in his arm, a few in his face, but nothing major. Mom, on the other hand, had one stuck right in her neck. It wasn’t big, but it penetrated deep—right into her carotid.” Once again, Slade demonstrated with his hands. My stomach knotted.
Jesus.
“Call it what you want. Freak accident. Lucky shot. It’s rare, but it’s not unheard of. I’ve seen it one other time, girl got her femoral artery opened up, almost died and…” His gaze grew distant.

“Anyway… She was having trouble talking and breathing, so my dad did a very stupid thing, but one that almost anyone would do. He pulled the glass out.” Slade’s shoulders slumped. “You remember Steve Irwin, right? The Crocodile Hunter?” I nodded faintly. “It wasn’t the barb through the chest that killed him, y’know. It was the fact he pulled it out. If he’d left it in, all that blood would’ve stayed where it was supposed to. Would’ve kept the artery plugged up. My dad didn’t know that, and at the time, neither did I. So when he pulled that shard of glass out of Mom’s neck, her jugular opened up and sprayed everywhere.” His eyes glazed. “I remember that first arc—how high it flew. Spattered all over the ceiling, all over Dad, straight across my face. I was screaming, hysterical. ‘Help her, Daddy! Help her!’ I knew enough to know you had to put pressure on a wound like that, but my father…”

Slade looked up at me finally, helplessness etched into his face. It was like he was that twelve-year-old boy watching his mother die all over again. “All my father had to do was stick his finger in her artery. Just slide it in and keep her from pumping her life out. But he couldn’t do that. He was panicked. Afraid. He was less than a foot from her, and he just… watched her die. While I begged him to do something about it. My mother’s death, Iris, was completely preventable. And it’s what made me want to become a doctor.”

I sat back in my chair, bringing my knees to my chest. Holy shit. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Slade had been through—just trying to brought tears to my eyes. Quickly, I blinked them away, but if Slade noticed he didn’t make mention of it. He only said, “I was so… angry. All the time. I blamed him for not saving her. For not knowing
how
to save her.” He was shaking now, muscles clenched, bunched so tight I was afraid they might rip through his shirt. “And I carried that around inside until the anger turned to hate, this sense of… betrayal. When your mom came into the picture, I used it as another excuse to hate my father, to want to punish him for the pain I thought he’d caused me. That’s why I did what I did to you, Iris. That’s why I’ve done so many other shitty things to so many different people. I was punishing everyone around me for the agony I was in, even though I’ve known… known for a long time now… that none of them were deserving of it. Not even my dad.”

Slade looked at me, the corners of his eyes pinched, his brow furrowed. “That’s something I’ve always regretted, you know? What I did to you. The hell I put you through. By the time I realized what an asshole I was, though, it was too late. I’d already given myself a reputation. Already pushed everyone who cared about me miles away. So I started thinking, you know, it’s better this way. Better they aren’t here. Better they’re not within arm’s reach, where I’d just fuck things up and hurt them. And better, too, that they couldn’t hurt me like Mom did. I never wanted to feel that way again. And if that meant being a lonely, miserable piece of shit, well…” He shrugged. “Small price to pay, I guess, for not losing someone, or worse, for failing them like I did with Mom. And with you.”

“You didn’t fail your mom, Slade,” I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief. “You were a kid. Nobody could blame you for not knowing how to save her.”

“What about you?” he answered, his eyes wet, his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. “I failed you, didn’t I, Iris? I failed you
twice.
And maybe that’s worse, because I wasn’t a kid when I did that. I was a grown-ass man, both times.”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, unsure of what to say. I understood why Slade was the way he was now, and I knew people made awful, terrible mistakes when they were hurting. I’d made a few of my own. That didn’t exactly erase what he’d put me through, though. It didn’t change how bad he’d hurt me, or give me back the last seven years I’d spent trying to wipe out his memory.

When I didn’t answer, Slade stood, hands raised. “I get it. I do. I just came to tell you I know what I did was wrong, and that I’m sorry, and that you won’t hear from me again, Iris. I won’t fuck up your life any more than I already have.”

“No,” I said, standing up too. “Don’t do that, Slade. Don’t you walk away from me again—not after everything we’ve been through. Kellan’s still out there, and he thinks the person he looked up to most in all the world turned his back on the whole family, so it’s okay for him to do the same. I can’t let you set that example for him again. I won’t.”

“So that’s it, then?” Slade asked. “That’s why you want me to stay—to make sure Kellan gets back on track?”

I looked up at him, shaking my head. “No. I want you to stay because you need roots, Slade. You need people who care about you. Who love you. You need to let this go, and you need to heal, and that starts with healing the people around you.”

“I can’t take back all the things I said and did,” he murmured. “I want to, but I can’t. The damage I’ve done is permanent. It’s gonna stick around forever.”

I grabbed my stepbrother’s hands and squeezed them tightly, drawing them to me so he could feel my warmth, the truth in my words. “Not if you stay.”

Slade looked down at me for a long time, his soft lips parted, his fingers entwined with mine. Slowly, he let go of one of my hands and brought his palm to my cheek, cupping my face, gazing into my eyes.

“Are you one of those people, Iris?” he asked me. “Someone who could care about me—maybe love me—despite all I’ve done?”

My pulse pounded in my ears. After everything Slade had done, I should have said no. I should have been cruel. I should have told him that there was no way in hell someone like him would ever earn the forgiveness of someone like me. I’d never open up to him the way I had before, not now, not ever.

But that was a lie. The truth was that I’d always believed in this part of him. I’d always imagined that Slade was so much more than the devil-may-care façade he wanted us all to see. And now, there was proof that
that
Slade existed—that he’d just been buried under heaps of misery and shame.

Slade needed to be welcomed with open arms. He needed to be accepted. He needed to be loved. That was something we both needed.

We needed to heal.

I leaned into my stepbrother’s touch. His palm against my cheek felt so warm, so right. “I could be,” I whispered to him, “if you’ll let me.”

Slade didn’t answer with words. Instead, he slipped his hand around to the back of my head, grasping my hair tight. I gasped, my head tilting back so that I was staring straight up into his eyes. He searched my gaze for a moment, his breath sweet and heady in my nose, like incense or the bouquet of a fine wine. I closed my eyes and breathed him in. Slade was intoxicating.