Wait (The Fast Series) (11 page)

“You ready for this?” His voice is a throaty whisper.

The answer is more than anything in my entire life. Hopefully I can survive long enough before my heart explodes. Our lips touch and I’m lost. This is the kiss I’ve been waiting for. The kind of kiss I knew existed. Soft, tender and as I sink into his arms he parts my lips and kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before.

A firework goes off.

Wait; make that the dryer goes off. Tucker pulls away and I hold onto the counter for support, breathless and wobbly.

“So, you ready to hook-up with me, no feelings involved?” he asks. No more throaty whisper, his voice returning to its normal tone. The kiss that left me weak left him un-phased.

No
.

I can’t. Not after a kiss like that, not ever. He’s right. I’ll never be able to hook-up with “no feelings.” Obviously he can, obviously everyone in the whole flipping camp can. But I can’t. I’m so angry. I’m so hurt. I have so many feelings.

“Fuck you,” I say to him.

Tucker backs away his eyes staring into mine,
told you so
, they’re saying to me. He dips his head expressively, turns and walks out the door.

I’m ready to lose it, collecting my clothes from the dryer, shoving them recklessly into my bag handfuls at a time. No, screw this. On top of everything else right now I do not need wrinkled clothes. I dump the bag on the counter and fold everything neatly before slamming the clothes into the bag. You know what…everyone else has it all wrong. I’m the one who has it all right. Feelings and love, it is worth waiting for. Even though I feel something for Tucker, if he doesn’t feel it back then he’s not worth my time.

I stomp back to the cabin thinking of ways to erase that kiss from my mind. They need to invent a laser where you can just zap a memory from your head.
Oh please
, even if I had a laser I wouldn’t erase the memory of that kiss. It might be the only good one I ever get. I’ll probably never be kissed like that again. Oh God, I’m feeling very dramatic right now. I miss Ashley.

From the bottom step I see light coming from our cabin window. Cassie’s home already? She promised no more Sawyer sleepovers. Does that mean he’ll still be over for other stuff? Not tonight. I’ve been through enough crap tonight. This is the last thing I want to deal with right now.

Annoyed I drag myself up the stairs, balancing my laundry bag against my hip. Loud voices coming through the open door cause me to freeze where I am and listen to their heated argument.

“But that’s just it Mark. I didn’t know then. I didn’t know until now,” Cassie hollers.

Cassie’s fighting with Mark?

“Very convenient Cassie, you had all the time in the world to say something and you wait until now. And I know you’re only saying it because I’m with someone now.”

“Oh, you’re
with
her now? I didn’t know you were together. What you’re in love with her now, what happened to me?”

“I never said I was in love with you.” Mark yells. “All I did was try and kiss you, once. That’s all.”

I gasp and cover my mouth, horrified. Do I go in there or do I get someone?

“Kiss me now Mark. Try and kiss me right now. I won’t say no.” Cassie’s anger turns to pleading.

“Cassie you’re drunk. Go to bed, get some sleep and in the morning we can talk.”

“No,” Cassie screams and I hear something smash against the floor. “I’m not drunk. I can’t believe you’re choosing Courtney over me. I would never do that to you.”

“You’ve been hooking up with my roommate since the night we got here. You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me this summer. I’m your brother remember?”

Oh my God, I wish I had a cell phone that worked. I need to call the police.

“I’m sorry, Mark, what do you want me to say? I’m telling you I’m in love with you. Don’t go to her tonight, stay here with me.”

“No, Cassie. You had your chance, anything between us is over.”

“Fine, you want me to beg. I’m begging you, please, stay here, kiss me.” Her desperate voice cracks.

The room goes quiet. I hold my breath,
don’t kiss her, please, don’t kiss her
. It feels like forever before someone finally speaks.

“I’m sorry Cassie.” The door flies open. I’m perfectly still as Mark rushes past me, not even noticing I’m standing there, and overheard their entire argument.

I need a plan before going inside. How do I handle this? We’ll take my car and I’ll take Cassie somewhere safe tonight and we can go report this in the morning. We can call her parents and they can all get some much needed family counseling.

I don’t get a chance to help her. Cassie bursts through the door, flying down the stairs two at a time.
Shoot
. I shout for her to stop, and chase after her a few steps. It’s no use. She’s gone. My mouth hangs open in disbelief at what just occurred.

I walk into our cabin and step over the broken travel clock putting my bag down on the bed. Where could she have gone? After Mark? To get help? I bend down to clean up the broken pieces on the floor.

Worst night ever, worst weekend ever, and this is only the second weekend here.

CHAPTER NINE

Tessa

The sound of muffled crying wakes me up. All night I waited for her to come back, finally giving in to sleep in the early hours of the morning. I’m out of bed and over to Cassie instantly. She’s curled up in a ball weeping.

“Are you okay?” I put my hand on her shoulder.

“Tessa, I’ll tell you everything, just not right now, okay?” Cassie finishes sniffling. “Right now, I need to sleep. We can talk later.”

“It’s going to be okay.” I assure her stroking the hair away from her face. It’s light outside. No more clock, but it has to be around six or seven o’clock. “I’ll go out and get us breakfast. Then we can figure everything out.”

By the time I’m dressed Cassie has drifted off to sleep. I grab my purse, and keys, taking off down the steps. The damp ground softens under my sneakers. This place is a muggy hot mess. Through the trees I see someone else walking. A fishing pole slung over his left shoulder.
That son of a bitch
. I stomp over to confront him.

“I’m calling the cops and reporting you.” I step in front of him, blocking the way. I’m not sure if what they’re doing is actually illegal but it should be.

“Excuse me, you’re what?” Mark takes the pole from his shoulder and rests it in the dirt.

“I heard everything last night. Your
sister
,” I emphasize, pointing an accusing finger in his face, “is a mess. She came in this morning hysterical crying.”

Mark flexes his jaw. “My
sister
is not my
sister
. She made it up, made us pretend. She wanted to get rid of me and be free to have ‘fun’ this summer.” He’s enraged, hands shaking violently. “She was probably crying because she made a drunken fool of herself and then made things worse by going to the hut with Sawyer last night.”

I absorb this new information. There’s no way to process all of this at once. “She’s not your sister?”

“Nope,” he puffs angrily. “We’re not related at all.”

I arch my eyebrows. “And you guys are …?”

“She’s my… We are…” Mark’s eyelid begins twitching. “We’re nothing.” He swings the pole back in place on his shoulder, taking off in a different direction.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t feel like fishing anymore.”

“Don’t you think you should go talk to her?”

“No. She didn’t mean anything that was said. She proved that with Sawyer last night,” Mark exclaims violently, pebbles flying up under his feet as he goes storming away.

I exhale, it wasn’t good, but at least they aren’t related. It sure does explain a lot about the way they were acting. If Cassie really is in love with Mark, then what happened? Why is she with Sawyer?

Cassie

The first thing I see when I open my eyes is the Pez dispenser. The thing I used to lure Mark up to my room. “I have something for you,” I’d said to him after I had few beers prying him away from Courtney and dragging him back to the cabin. Once we got back to the cabin Pez was the last thing on my mind.

Every confusing emotion I felt over the past year surfaced all at once. Suddenly it wasn’t confusing anymore. I’m in love with him. I don’t know what I expected when I told him, but I didn’t expect the reaction he gave me. I thought he loved me too, but some of the things he said were cruel. I smack my face back down into my pillow.

I guess I showed him. He wasn’t the only one to go to the hut anymore. Now I had too. Right in front of him I approached Sawyer who eagerly accepted my offer. I stared back at Mark as Sawyer and I walked away. I knew Mark wouldn’t let me go. He would stop me and tell me he was sorry. Mark always watched out for me. This time he didn’t. He let me go.

The hut was worse than I imagined it would be. Filthy. Nasty. Dark. Disgusting. An old mattress sat on the floor in the corner of the foul smelling room. To do something as major as this with someone who means so little to me. It was all wrong. There was no way I’d be able to go through with it. “I can’t do this,” I told him after we kissed. Sawyer let out an angry grunt. “Then why did you say it? What’s everyone going to think if we walk right back out?”

I led him on and understood his reaction. That’s why I wound up agreeing to stay in the hut with him for an appropriate amount of time. I refused to do anything, but allowed for it to look like I did.

We both agreed to keep what
didn’t
happen in the hut to ourselves, giving no details to anyone who asked. Sawyer was furious or maybe he was just really disappointed, but needless to say, it’s safe to assume our fling is over.

I saw Tessa standing there last night when I left and am pretty sure she heard everything. What she must be thinking. It’s time to tell her the truth about Mark.

Tessa returns to our cabin with fresh bagels for the two of us. I haven’t even left my bed. As we chew away I come clean and tell her the whole sordid story, including the secret details of nothing happening in the hut with Sawyer.

“Are you sure you really like Mark in that way?” Tessa asks when I finish the long story.

“Yeah, why?” Isn’t she listening?

“He kind of has a point. You didn’t have any interest in him until you saw him with someone else. The whole brother thing, asking him to pretend to be your brother right after he tries to kiss you, it sounds kind of cruel.”

I snort out a puff of air. “Tessa, he was the one who was cruel. You said you heard him yelling at me last night.”

“Some of the things you said, I don’t know, seem mean. You forgot his birthday, you told him you didn’t want to go fishing, introduced him as your brother. The first night I met you guys, you forced him to kiss me. What was he supposed to do? He tried, you turned him down.”

I cringe at the truth. When nothing happened between us in the beginning it stung. When I found out he was going away to school, it hurt a little more, because I knew that meant we couldn’t be together. We couldn’t have a romantic relationship if he was gonna be leaving. Maybe I had been masking all these feelings by being mean. Basically, hurting him to avoid being hurt
by
him.

“I’m sure I really like him,” I say confidently and feel the need to elaborate. “He’s so different from other guys. He’s the kind of guy who’s not threatened because I like to do un-girly things. He’s the guy you can spend all day with fishing, hiking, whatever. He’s always up for everything. And then he can go home, take a shower and come right back and hang out watching silly movies with me all night.
Or day
. Sometimes when I have to work early at the bakery, he’ll come over and pretend it’s night and watch a movie with me in the afternoon so I can go to bed early. When we’re together we have so much fun.” I laugh as a few of the crazy things we’ve done float around in my head. “Do you know that the donut shops by us offer a free donut day? Well, on free donut day last year we cut school and drove around that day getting free donuts from all the different shops. We went to like at least ten different ones. We literally drove around all day and ate a butt load of free donuts. It was so ridiculous. I mean my dad owns a bakery.” I’m laughing so hard telling the story I have to pause for a second to wipe a tear away. “And before we went home we went to a dollar store and bought fake moustaches. Then we went back into the first place and asked for more free donuts.”

“Did the people behind the counter catch on?” Tessa asks judging me like I’m a hard core criminal.

“Tessa, are you for real sometimes? We were wearing moustaches made out of cheap fur and laughing our asses off. Of course they knew we were joking.”

“Oh, so they didn’t give you the donuts?”

“No, they did. They didn’t give a shit, we’re talking about two donuts,” I laugh. “See, this is why I love Mark because he gets it. He knows how to have fun and be silly. No one else would probably think that’s funny, but to us it was.” My laughter dwindles. “I should have realized all this before we came here and made a mess out of everything. Now I went and made everything so much worse last night. I’m so embarrassed.”

“So, what are you going to do?” Tessa lies back on the bed with her knees up.

“No freaking clue. Any suggestions?” I finish up the last of my bagel.

“I passed a tan and laundry on my way to get the bagels, we can go do your laundry and get a tan.”

I laugh with a mouthful of bagel. “How are you even my friend right now and being this nice to me? I’m a horrible person.”

“No, you’re not horrible, just all screwed up like everyone else is. You need to do your laundry and I need a tan, so let’s go.”

Tessa helps me pack up my laundry. We sneak out unseen and escape in Tessa’s car from camp. I’m a mixture of sad and depressed and in desperate need of a donut since telling Tessa that story.

Speeding along the winding road a noise sounds through Tessa’s car speakers and with a push of a button the music turns off and a man’s voice fills the car.