He didn’t care too much for her either. He cared about her. Which made him even more alluring, because our goal was mutual—protecting the person I fiercely loved.
But at the same time, bitterness ate away at me every time I watched the complete and utter waste that was their relationship. When I witnessed how her eyes drifted to Vicious when he was around. How Dean and I looked at each other from across the room. I wanted to grab my sister by the shoulders and shake her. Tell her to pull her shit together and go with the guy who made her heart swell. But I was in no position to ask her for anything, considering my parents ripped our family from our home in Fairfax, Virginia, and moved us all the way to California so I could have better health care. Since I had friends and a social life and she had nothing—precisely because of that decision. So, I let her have them both. Dean’s body and Vicious’s heart.
“If you don’t let me go,” my teeth chattered, and not just for impact, “I will get a lung infection. Dean.” His name was a warning, and this time he let me push him with my palms, swimming away from me and watching me climb to the edge of the pool, my heavy, soaked clothes pulling me down.
I didn’t turn around to look at him. Was too afraid he’d see my eyes, doped on euphoria, tainted by lust. And my face, rosy in contrast to the rest of my quivering, blue self.
I saw him in my periphery swimming to the edge, bracing his forearms on the wet tiles, his chin propped on his balled hands.
“This shit is toxic. We need to stop it before it goes any further,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.
“Any further than what?” I stripped out of my hoodie and tossed the heavy fabric onto a nearby sun lounger. “Than kissing and dry-humping my sister to oblivion and back while hitting on me?” My voice was trembling.
“Rosie,” he said. A high-pitched laugh escaped me. Rosie, my ass. He was with my sister. True, I pushed him to be with her, but it didn’t make me any less bitter. “Don’t twist this against me. You told me to be with her. You fucking told me to touch her, too. What do you want me to do? Ignore her ass?”
I hated that he had a point, and I hated that something so logical made me feel so illogical.
“This,” I pointed between us from where I was standing on the edge of the pool, “is not going to happen. You’re dating Emilia, Dean. We can’t ever be together.”
“Says who?” he challenged.
“Says me. And society. And logic. And culture. And damn, every love film and romance book I’ve ever consumed.”
“Mmm.” A playful grin found his luscious lips again. “That can’t be right.”
“It is,” I fired. “Juliet didn’t have an older sister named Julie that Romeo sampled before he decided she was the one.”
“Juliet never went head-to-head with her fucking feelings,” he yelled, banging his fist on the tiles. “Since when are you such a pussy?” Dean jumped out of the pool so fast, it looked like an optical illusion. He got in my face, snarling. “Since when do you give a damn about what people think? I pegged you all wrong. If you walk away from this, I’m going to give this thing with Millie a shot.”
It sounded like a threat.
“What have you been doing all along?” I snorted. It wasn’t his fault. By the time he noticed me, she wanted to date him, and he couldn’t back down. Besides, he made her life so much better. Gone were the days where her locker was stuffed with garbage and people muttered ‘white trash’ when she passed in the hallway.
“Waiting on you,” he answered, and we both let out a sigh as rain started knocking lightly on our standing figures.
“Well.” I smiled sweetly, and it took every ounce of energy in me to show him my teeth and dimples. “You have the green light to fall in love with my sister. As I said, nothing will ever happen between us.”
Five seconds later, Millie appeared at the pool, wheeling her bike along. We told her that I fell into the pool and that he jumped in to save me. My cheeks were flushed and the pool wasn’t that deep and I was a great swimmer. But Millie’s eyes were elsewhere—so was her heart—and I had a feeling that even if she caught us with our pants down it wouldn’t matter.
I never made it to my doctor’s appointment that day.
But I did catch pneumonia that granted me a trip to the ER and a four-day hospital stay. I’d missed two important exams and had to spend hours in a percussion vest.
And that following Thursday, when I got back home after avoiding Dean and Emilia, a book was waiting on my pillow, along with a note. The Bronze Horseman in paperback. The yellow Post-It note said:
Fuck society.
Fuck logic.
Fuck culture.
Fuck your illness.
And you know what? Fuck you.
Here’s a book about how shit like ours can work. Read it.
—Dean.
But the next day, I tucked it into the slit in Dean’s locker with a note.
Make her happy. I will kill you if you ever hurt her.
Fiction is magical. Reality is painful.
—Rosie.
We never spoke of this again until Millie ran away.
But I did buy my own copy of The Bronze Horseman.
Reading it.
Memorizing it.
Reciting it.
Never, ever forgetting it.
Eleven years ago
In the end, Millie and I made a pretty decent couple. Before she pissed all over it, that is.
I didn’t put a name on what we were or weren’t. Was it love? Probably not, but I cared for her and enjoyed her company. Only thing was, I enjoyed her sister’s company more. But it was becoming less and less of a problem, since Baby LeBlanc took a step back, and even though she never explicitly said anything, I knew she was avoiding me. She made things simpler.
But Vicious didn’t.
Notorious for making things messy, he did what he was expected to do—he ruined.
Vicious tried to get back at me for dating Emilia LeBlanc in many ways. Sadly for the fucker, I wasn’t a little pushover like his fanboys. We got into fights—physical and verbal—every other week over the subject, but I knew breaking up with Millie would leave her exposed to him, and I didn’t want him touching her. He bullied, taunted, and hated her. He had enough time to ask her out. Now she wanted to be with me, and Rosie pushed me straight into her arms.
And more than I wanted to please Millie, I wanted to please Rosie. Really fucking bad.
Eventually, Vicious did manage to get back at me in a way that cracked through my shield. Turns out that shit was thick, but not unbreakable after all.
He kissed Rosie.
He threw a party at his place, and we were cooling down from almost beating the hell out of one another. That wasn’t out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary was the way he made me taste my own medicine for the very first time. And let me tell you, it was nasty.