The Hierarchy of Needs (The Portland Rebels #2) (2 page)

Jamie raised her bottle in a toast. “I was the only Matthews child to ever end up there.”

Krissy’s mouth gaped open. “A lot?”

“Once, in tenth grade. We were having a test in history, but I had a meet the night before and didn’t have time to study. So I stole the exams off my teacher’s desk and threw them out the window when he wasn’t looking.”

“And you got caught.”

“Oh, she got caught, all right,” Dean interjected. “And ended up being carted into the South Portland High Slammer, just like the rest of us.”

He gave her an appreciative smile, one that said
Good job, Matthews
. Jamie couldn’t stop herself from grinning back.

Mikey’s hands flew to his chest. “
I
never got detention. I just hung out with them afterward.”

Connor chuckled. “This isn’t confession, Mikey.”

“I know.” He frowned and stared at the sand. “Just was making that part clear.”

“What did
you
do?” Krissy asked Dean.

“More like, what didn’t he do?” Connor said. “Detention was Dean’s second home.”

“It was yours too, for a while,” Dean threw back, then turned to Krissy. “We set off fire alarms and didn’t do our homework. We’re the bad boys your mother warned you about. Connor even did some time.”

“A few hours in the county jail doesn’t count as ‘doing time’,” Connor grumbled. “And it was your fault, anyway.”

Krissy’s eyes widened even further. “How’d you end up in jail?”

Dean drew up one knee and leaned back against the lifeguard stand. “We made a mess of the sheriff’s lawn with my truck. Connor took the rap for it, though.”

“Why’d you get in so much trouble?” she asked. “You didn’t like school?”

Man, this girl asked a lot of questions. Dean didn’t seem to mind, though. He merely shrugged.

“School didn’t matter to me. I had a job at my dad’s garage lined up right after. But don’t knock detention. It’s where I learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”

“I’m not familiar with that.”

“It’s this theory on human motivation. Our detention teacher read it to us from a book one day. Most useful thing I learned in all of high school.”

Connor rolled his eyes, muttering, “Here we go.”

“Shut it.” Dean nestled his bottle in the sand and pressed his fingertips together, making a triangle out of his hands. “It goes like this. There’s a pyramid, and all our basic needs make up the bottom—food, water, air, bodily functions…” He grinned, winking at Krissy. “Sex.”

Her eyes darted away, clearly embarrassed. Jamie felt a flash of relief.

“Safety is next. Things that make you feel secure like employment, money, family, health. Then there’s belonging, which—” He pointed a finger. “—is not the sappy shit you girls call love. It’s having people you can rely on, who you know will be there for you.”

“We don’t need love to survive?” Krissy asked.

“Not romantic love.”

Jamie’s stomach twisted, although why she wasn’t exactly sure. She was no more capable of romance than Dean was. And candy hearts and roses weren’t what she wanted with him, anyway.

“The esteem level is all about respect, confidence and achievement,” he went on. “Last is self-actualization, where you’ve become the most complete person possible. Maslow said few people get to that stage, and that’s where the problem is. We strive for something our whole lives, trying to become this perfect version of ourselves, but the reason the pyramid is smallest on top is because almost no one gets there, and if we stopped trying so hard, we’d all be happier.”

Connor shook his head, laughing. “I’m not sure that’s what Maslow was saying.”

“It’s the truth,” Dean argued. “Life would be a lot easier if people weren’t reaching for some unattainable future all the time.”

Jamie took a heavy pull of her beer and stared out at the waves. If giving up on the impossible was the key to happiness, she should’ve been the happiest person around.

Swimming had been her ticket to college. She’d broken a record in the 100-yard freestyle as a junior and qualified for the state championships every year, but what she’d really wanted was to get into fashion.

She’d always liked to draw and play around with clothes. All her notebooks were filled with doodles of outfits, ones she eventually made into a portfolio. She applied in secret to Parsons and F.I.T. down in New York City, sending them her best work, but the rejection letters that arrived a few months later proved she didn’t make the cut.

Resigned, she packed away her artwork, dusted herself off and accepted a swimming scholarship, limiting her dabbling with fashion to the magazines she read and what she wore. A liberal studies degree four years later didn’t prepare her for much, and since it turned out competitive swimming wasn’t an option either—she was good, but she wasn’t
Olympics
good—becoming a coach was the obvious answer.

There. Perfectly simple life. Maslow would’ve been proud.

Krissy cocked her head to the side and looked at Dean. “That sounds like the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up as he tried to pinch away his smile, but he ended up grinning anyway, especially when Mikey erupted into laughter and crawled around to sit next to her.

“You’re awesome,” he said. Krissy’s blush was as bright as the flames.

Dean leaned over and murmured in Jamie’s ear, “Dork love.”

His breath was hot, his mouth close. A shudder coursed down her spine.

It’s just how he is.

It doesn’t mean anything.

Connor’s phone rang, breaking the spell. One look at his face and it was obvious who was calling.

“Wifey’s on the line,” Dean teased.

Connor gave him the finger and stepped away. “Hey baby,” he said into the phone.

Jamie smiled. She’d been the one who set him up with her friend Gabriella back in June. A summer-time visitor who’d spent her vacations with her late grandmother, Gabriella was like the sister Jamie never had. She’d returned to M.I.T. to finish her last semester of grad school, but she and Connor were bridging the distance. He was no longer the angry, rebellious kid Jamie had grown up with, doing the nine-to-five at a local web development firm and smiling all the time now.

It was a testament to Jamie’s matchmaking skills. Too bad she hadn’t been so successful with herself.

Dean drained what was left in his bottle and reached for another, throwing an arm around her when he sat back. It wasn’t a big surprise—he got touchy-feely when he drank—but his sudden nearness made her shiver.

“Cold?” he asked.

“A little.”

The lie didn’t bother her as much once he’d pulled her more tightly against him. Dean was thick, stocky. Six feet of muscle with a bit of cushion on top, like a giant teddy bear with the arms of a rugby player.

She settled into his warmth, ignoring the quiet
mayday
that shouted from her mind. Getting comfortable wasn’t a good idea. She’d seen him casually wrap an arm around plenty of other girls in the exact same way, but whatever. It felt too good to be like this. Sand. Beer. Fire. Dean.

Connor returned, his phone still pressed to his ear. “I’ll hop on Skype as soon as I get home. Ten minutes.” He turned away and uttered a soft “Love you.”

Dean covered his mouth with a fist. The word
whipped
came out around a cough.

Connor gave him the finger again, but wore a grin the size of China when he waved goodnight and trudged back to where his motorcycle was parked by the dunes. Dean nudged Jamie’s shoulder and jutted his chin toward Mikey and Krissy, who’d started whispering across from them.

“You two need some privacy?” he asked.

Krissy threw Jamie an uncertain glance. “We were going to go for a walk.”

Jamie twisted her lips to the side in hesitation. She was supposed to be entertaining Krissy, but that didn’t mean babysitting her. The girl lived in Manhattan, after all. And Mikey was about as dangerous as a kitten.

“Sure. You remember how to get back to the house?” When she nodded, Jamie waved her on. “Go ahead. I’ll meet you there later.”

They unfolded themselves from the sand. Mikey crossed his arms over his stomach, then shoved his hands into his back pockets as they walked off toward the shoreline.

Then it was just Jamie and Dean, alone.

Chapter Two

“How’s work going?” she asked.

Conversation. It was a good thing to focus on, and not how good he felt next to her. Or his arm draped loosely over her shoulder, and the tattoo covering every inch of it.

Jamie never had a thing for ink, but she’d always liked Dean’s. His were more like art, different from the ugly, garish markings she’d seen on other guys. He’d added to the simple tribal band he’d had drawn around his bicep in high school. Now the length of his arm was adorned with a pattern of swirling lines and jagged edges, all enmeshed with a thin strand of barbed wire. It posed a sharp contrast to his fair skin, lit up like gold from the flames.

He had more tattoos under his clothes—Jamie had seen snippets of them over the years, but never up close. She wanted to drag up the edges of his shirt and study them. To see if the artist she’d once known was still there, hiding on the canvas of his skin.

“Work is the same as it always is. Trying to send the customers away happy. Making sure we get new ones.” He frowned. “Avoiding fights with my dad.”

He took another sip of his beer. It left behind a slick trail on the curve of his lower lip.

She wasn’t staring at it. She wasn’t.

“You two not getting along?”

Dean had worked in his father’s garage since they finished high school. He never went to college, although Jamie didn’t think that was what he’d wanted. It was a subject they danced carefully around.

“We’re fine. I’m just not working on cars that much anymore. I spend more time doing paperwork than anything else.” He lifted his arm, encouraging her to sit up. “Looks like you’re running low.”

He reached for a fresh beer and handed it to her. The move effectively ended that line of conversation.

Jamie knocked back what was left in her bottle before cracking open the next one, hazarding a glance at the twenty-four-pack’s cardboard casing as she swallowed. A dozen empty ones were already inside it. She wondered how many he’d had.

“What about you?” he asked. “How are things going?”

His words were polite. Restrained. As if they hadn’t spent the summer hanging out together. But they hadn’t been alone like this in a long time. Maybe he was trying to distract himself with conversation too.

Or maybe it was her wretched, horny imagination.

“Awesome,” she said dryly. “My brothers are here. Making me crazy.”

“Wedding stuff?”

“Not really,” she said, although it had put her on overload lately. Constant calls to the house from the country club’s catering manager. Her mother showing off the portfolio of the fabulous photographer she’d hired to come up from Boston.

But it wasn’t so much that as it was Sean, Brendan and Owen, and the reminder of their accomplishments: Dartmouth. Yale School of Medicine. Graduations celebrated with Latin honors and champagne.

They were thriving, flourishing, while she was…stuck.

“Something happens when we’re all home,” she said, not wanting to uncover that particular wound. “We revert back to children.”

“You playing tricks on them again?”

Jamie grinned. “A bit, yeah.”

“Siblings. I’d say I understand, but—” He shrugged. Threw her a lazy grin. Dean was an only child. And his parents had split long ago.

“Be glad. I wouldn’t wish three brilliant older brothers on anyone.”

“Yeah,” he said with a hard glance at the fire. “Family is totally overrated.”

The edge of sarcasm in his voice was as stiff as the set of his jaw. Lately, Dean looked tired. There was a weight on him now, a heaviness she hadn’t seen in the cocky teenager she’d met in the back row of detention.

He was handsome even then, sexy in a way most sixteen-year-old boys weren’t. He was a rebel too—tattoo hidden under his sleeve, no interest in school and a smirk that made even the teachers blush. Seeing him walk into her Fundamentals of Art class the next semester had been a hell of a shock, almost as surprising as the handful of photographs he’d pushed across the battered table and asked if she thought they were any good.

They were better than good. They were amazing.

She’d showed him her drawings in return, her hands shaking with the kind of nerves usually reserved for a swim meet. Relief was too weak an emotion to describe how she felt when he paged through them, handed them back and said they were awesome.

Aside from their teacher, Dean was the only person Jamie ever shared them with.

Her artwork wasn’t something she wanted to risk with too many people. She told her teammates and parents she was taking the class for the easy A, and she’d never breathed a word of it to her brothers. Good thing too. Her rejection letters would’ve tipped the scales even farther in their direction.

“They’ll be out of your hair in a few days,” he said. “And then life will go back to normal.”

“Normal. Swim lessons.” She stuck out her tongue. “Fall.”

Dean laughed. “You got something against fall?”

She lifted her bottle and waved it toward the water. “I’d rather be here. At the beach. Eternal summer.”

“But fall means Halloween. Your favorite.”

Jamie’s face went hot, fire licking the pleased flush on her cheeks. “You remember that?”

Halloween was the holiday she enjoyed the most—a day where she could glam it up however she wanted. It was a detail she was surprised he recalled.

“Oh, I remember,” he said. “You showed up in detention dressed as an angel. Kinda hard to forget.”

Something changed in his expression. His eyes went darker. Flashed with heat. He crossed his arms, and Jamie’s gaze skirted to the thick gathering of muscle at his shoulders, where his collarbone made a rugged line along the V-neck of his shirt. She’d kissed that spot once. Licked and sucked until he’d grunted and a bruise rose up on his skin.

She had to talk. Say something. Anything to stop herself from doing something stupid, like stare at his lips. At the stubble lining his jaw.

Like wanting to kiss him.

“You ever take pictures anymore?” she asked.

It was another subject they cautiously avoided. He’d given up photography the same time she’d stopped drawing, but she’d never known why. She hadn’t seen him with a camera in his hand in years.

Dean blew out a breath through his nostrils. “Nah. It was just a kid’s hobby.”

“You were good at it,” she offered.

“You were good at drawing. What happened to that?”

Touché.

“I guess that was a kid’s hobby too.”

He gazed at her again, and the weight of his stare drew her in. The firelight was gleaming bright enough that she could absorb the rich, vivid green of his eyes. Speckled with gold, rimmed in brown and tipped with a layer of fine, blond lashes, they’d always reminded her of the swathe of ocean over marshland at low tide.

She couldn’t help but remember the way they’d stayed trained on her when he slipped his hand into her panties and turned her into a shuddering mess beneath him.

“What?” he asked, his voice soft.

“Nothing.”

She wasn’t about to say that it was in moments like these when heat seemed to spark in the air between them that she wished they could pick up where they’d left off. That she’d always wondered what it would be like to take him in her mouth. If his eyes would stay on hers or drift closed in pleasure.

What it would feel like when he slid deep inside her.

“How come there’s no girl climbing all over you tonight?” she asked. “You lose your touch?”

She wasn’t sure why she was asking.

She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

He shook his head. “Just wanted to be around friends tonight.”

Right. They were friends. The fact that he was single for the moment didn’t change anything.

An uncomfortable buzz started up in Jamie’s head. It was the two beers she’d chugged down in less than a half hour that was making her think like this.

She put her bottle down and pulled the elastic from her hair. Shaking her curls free, she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying to will away the beginnings of a headache, as well as the craving for Dean that would never stay quiet.

A tug to her hair made her eyes spring open, a gasp catching in her throat.

She glanced over her shoulder. Dean had captured a ringlet between his thumb and forefinger. One downward shift and the curl went straight, bouncing back into place when he released it.

He smirked. His eyes flashed. Jamie’s skin blazed hot and cold.

Did he know what he was doing? Did he remember this was what set things off a million years ago?

Did he want to do it again?

No, this was drunk Dean. Flirtatious Dean, with no one around to flirt with but her. Uncertainty slithered into a hollow place inside her, a reminder that their teasing in recent years had never once gone past playful banter into something more. She wasn’t sure she wanted to test the strength of that ice and risk plummeting into the rejection that could be lying beneath it.

Her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. She hopped to her feet. The world swayed a little. “I dare you to run into the water with me.”

Dean snorted. “No way. It’s gotta be freezing out there.”

“We’re not going surfing, you pansy. Just your feet.” She bent down to roll her jeans up to her calves, hair falling over her face as she looked up at him. “Come on, you grew up here. You should be used to the temperature of the Atlantic by now.”

He didn’t budge. Jamie stood up to her full height, her hands on her hips in a challenge.

“You’ve gone soft, Trescott. Just like that belly of yours.”

His eyes narrowed. “Oh, you are so dead.”

He launched up from the sand, kicking off his shoes as Jamie sprinted toward the waves. She could hear his footsteps getting closer, and she ran faster, skidding to a stop when she reached the first lick of the ocean. She threw a leg out to trip him.

Pranks worked better when she wasn’t tipsy. She lost her balance and fell ass-down into the water.

Dean’s triumphant grin eclipsed the moonlight above him. “Ha! That’s what you get.”

Jamie grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and yanked him down into the water with her. He cursed when he landed on top of her, water splashing everywhere.

“Gotchya,” she yelled to the stars.

Dean rolled to his side, laughing. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

“Yup, that’s why you like me.”

“True.”

His face grew serious, eyes darting from hers down to her lips, then he cupped her cheek in one big hand. Cold saltwater dripped off his fingers and trickled down her neck. Jamie wasn’t sure what was happening until he closed the distance between them and kissed her.

Shock hit her like a frigid wave, quickly dissipating as she melted into his kiss. His mouth felt the same as it did years ago—full bottom lip, top soft and yielding. Each time he came back for more, his kisses got rougher, more desperate. Teeth raking. Breath rasping.

She couldn’t make herself care why or how this was happening. She just wanted to feel.

Jamie moaned and kissed him back, one wet hand clutching his shirt, dragging him closer. He licked her bottom lip, asking permission.

As if he needed it.

She granted his request with a swipe of her tongue over his. His mouth was hot, his stubble a delicious sharp bite on her chin. Dean groaned and folded his body over hers, pushing her down into the water. She slipped her fingers through his belt loops and pulled him down, clawing. Needing. He grunted when their hips slid together. He was hard already, and she bucked up to feel more of him, wanting to touch, to taste. He ground against her and captured her bottom lip between his teeth, a tiny punishment. She gasped for air, breaking the kiss to whisper his name.

Dean stilled. Completely.

“Jamie. Fuck.” His forehead dropped down to meet the space between her neck and shoulder. “Ah, shit. What am I doing?”

Everything inside her froze. She released her grip on his jeans.

“I’ve been drinking. I don’t know what—” He came up on his knees and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Disappointment choked her, cutting off her air, but she threw on a smile.

“No worries,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the way her voice cracked. She picked herself up from the water, her clothes a weight almost as heavy as the sinking feeling in her gut. “I’m sopping wet. I’m gonna head home.”

She started to walk, her body numb, eyes focused on the spot where her sandals sat in the sand.

“Jamie, wait.”

She turned around, hope a nasty stab in her heart. Dean’s shirt was matted to his chest. His arms hung down, limp by his sides. His hair was sticking out in crazy angles.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “We still good?”

Funny how those words sucked just as much the second time around.

Jamie nodded, forcing another wide grin. “Sure. It was the booze talking, just like last time.”

“Right,” he agreed, eyes solemn. “Just like last time.”

She had to believe that, rather than think something was actually happening here. She couldn’t make that mistake again.

She snatched her shoes from the ground and headed home.