“He’s my dad. Of course he loves me.”
“Of course. That’s why you need to paint the gym to get him to notice you.”
Asshole. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“So you aren’t a poor little rich girl?”
There’s a twinge in my chest. “We both know you’ll be gone next year. I’ll never see you again, and you’ll never see me, so let’s just stay out of each other’s way for the next week, okay?”
“Sure you wouldn’t rather learn a thing or two from me?” he asks, mocking.
“If I want to know how to make enemies and alienate people, I’ll call you.”
He blinks, and I think for a minute that I may have actually struck a nerve. Then his eyes harden. “I’ll stay out of your way,” he says, his voice so cold it makes me shiver even as the sun beats its heavy blanket on my bare shoulders. It’s not the worst encounter I’ve ever had with a stepsibling, but it’s the first time I think I started it. Apparently I’m not above lashing out first, if the boy in question is smart and handsome enough.
Though he isn’t really a boy, this one. His first year at Emerson College. Business school. No wonder Daddy loves him. He probably thinks he’s found his true heir, because his wild daughter isn’t going to take over the family empire. That will never be me, but I was right about one thing. Christopher will be gone next year. They always are.
I manage to avoid him the rest of the day, napping after brunch and ignoring him at dinner.
Our cabins are on the same floor, below the galley and above the master bedroom where our parents sleep. Thankfully he keeps his word and leaves me alone, even stepping aside to let me pass when I head back to the observation deck at midnight. I suck in a breath to make extra sure no part of my body touches his.
Wind whips at my hair, salty and cool, as I step out of the hold.
I grasp the cold metal railing and let it ground me. Why does Christopher bother me so much? In my pocket there are a couple of joints and a lighter. I light myself something to calm down, because I would rather not know the answer to that question.
In a practiced move I swing my leg over the railing and pull myself up. This is my favorite place to sit, from the time I was six years old and my nanny would fall asleep in the room next door. I can pretend the yacht isn’t here, pretend it’s just me and the ocean, rocking and rocking. The movement bounces me softly, my ass against the metal bar.
Weed makes it better, more like a meditation. The more drags I take, the more it feels like the whole world is rocking, and maybe I’m the only one sitting still.
“Do you have a death wish?”
The question comes out of the darkness behind me, and I jump, almost slipping off the rail. I manage to catch myself, clutching the metal bar with one hand and the joint with another. Survival and sanity, the two most important things in life. “Do you always hide in the shadows?”
“Whenever possible.”
I snort, which is a friendlier sound than I want to make with him. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
He takes a step forward and holds out his hand. “You’re making me nervous.”
“That’s kind of my standard operating procedure,” I say, ignoring his hand and taking another drag. “You get good grades. I get into trouble.”
“So the death wish thing…”
“Pretty accurate,” I say, wishing he would go belowdecks. And wishing he wouldn’t. There’s something complicated about him, the way he makes me want opposite things at the same time. “I don’t want to die, but I want to live. People call that having a death wish.”
With clear reluctance he pulls his hand back and settles his arms on the railing a few feet away from my ass. His eyes are trained on the dark horizon, but I can tell he’s still watching me. “This is what living means? Falling into the ocean with no one around to rescue you?”
I point at the choppy water. “The captain dropped anchor before dinner. We aren’t even moving. What do you think is going to happen?”
“Head trauma. Hypothermia. Drowning.”
“For your information I’ve been coming up here by myself for a decade. No one ever comes with me. Haven’t fallen overboard once.”
“Then statistically speaking, you’re overdue.”
“Wow, you really are my dad’s heir.” Part of me is glad to have company on one of my nightly reveries. The other part of me feels the distinct intrusion of having a stranger in my space.
“What?”
“Go back down and play with your calculator.”
There’s a pained pause. “I can’t. Not when I know you’re up here, getting high and hanging off a two-hundred-foot yacht. If something happened to you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” The sea takes that moment to bump bump bump me, my ass a full two inches off the rail with every pull of the yacht. I’m holding on tight so I don’t go flying, not forward or backward, my perch secure.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather paint a mythical creature on the observation deck?”
“I know you’re making fun of me right now, but no. I don’t have enough paint for that.”
“Can you just sit on a deck chair like a normal person?”
“Do I look normal to you? Don’t answer that.”
There’s a flash of white teeth. That’s how I know he’s smiling even though the rest of his face is in shadow. The smile is there one second and gone the next, as temporary as his presence in my life but strangely momentous. “I’m sorry I called you a poor little rich girl.”
“Are you just saying that so I’ll get off the railing?”
“Is it working?”
“No, but I appreciate the effort.”
And strangely that was true. Not many people have ever cared enough to follow me up to the deck at midnight, to make sure I didn’t fall into the ocean. Definitely not one of the stepsiblings, who would probably have given me a little push to get rid of the competition for the inheritance.
It makes me want to prove myself to him, to convince him that I’m worth saving even if he apparently already thinks so. “Medusa wasn’t for attention. I mean, she was, but not because I wanted Daddy to pay for a new science lab.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“This girl got roofied at a party.”
He sucks in a breath. “Harper.”
“It wasn’t me.” I glance sideways to see his black eyes staring at me, so hard and fierce it almost seems possible that he can go back in time and rip the balls off a frat boy. What would he say if he knew my past? “It wasn’t me, I swear. I wasn’t even friends with her.”
After a searching look, he turns back to the ocean. “A girl got roofied.”
“Everyone knew about it, like the next day. One of the football players slipped it in her drink, and then the football team, I mean the entire football team, took advantage of her.”
“Christ.”
“They suspended the guy who brought the roofie to the party, one of the players, but not the one who gave it to her—the quarterback. And not the rest of the team. A big game was coming up. You can’t play a game without all your players.”