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smirk
he had used on me all the time. He was so confidant, so self-assured, and he had
never turned down an opportunity to pick at me.

 
    But I… I loved it.

 
    It was stupid and I knew it. I don’t know why I let him get away with it
– it’s not like I couldn’t stand my ground against him. But for some
reason… I reveled in his antagonistic attention. I didn’t let him walk all over
me by any means, and I’d challenge him if he got out of line, but something
about the weird, stupid stepsibling tension between us enticed me.

 
    Was that why? I dwelled on
the thought, thinking back to all those memories. Did I just want his attention?

 
    I was a good girl. Good girls don’t crush on their stepbrothers. But
there was an undeniable attraction to him, and I’d never been willing to fully
admit it to myself. I could talk about it objectively now, keeping the thoughts
compartmentalized. I could think of it like it was someone else, with that kind
of detachment, but that’s not quite accurate enough.

 
    It was as if reminiscing on something that was irrevocable fact within a dream, but flawed fiction in reality.

 
    The complexity of how I felt towards Sawyer…it defied logic. I had dated
boys. I’d even dated some decent boys,
highly attractive boys that treated me with complete respect. But the boys I’d
dated, even the pricks among them, just never compelled me the way that he did.
There was no balance between the two
– always either one or the other. This boyfriend would put me on a
pedestal and treat me like a princess; that boyfriend would consider me a
conquest trophy at best, or just make-out material at worst.

 
    Sawyer challenged me. Continuously. At the same time I knew that, when
it really came down to it, he was on my side.

 
    He had always supported me against our parents when they were being
unreasonable. Every time that Mom or Chet had made some heavy-handed, unreasonable
request of me – or the countless times I was accused of sneaking boys
home (I never did, although everyone knew that Sawyer snuck girls in and out
non-stop), he was right there to have my back. As much as I hated to admit it,
he was in my corner as soon as he
heard about Paris, which meant that that part
of him hadn’t changed either.

 
    I sighed heavily, glancing up at the mural of the stars across my
ceiling. Seeing him again after all these years…I had expected that when
– if – I laid eyes on the
bastard, I’d want to throttle him for becoming such a large part of my life and
then doing what every important man did to me: they always just walked away.

 
    But the truth dawned on me, finally: I had to actively try to hate him, even with his stupid
smirk and his entire abandonment thing. All those confusing teenage feelings
came rushing back. I’d always attributed it to stupid hormones and puberty, but
goddamn, that wasn’t it.

 
    Sawyer had been handsome before.

 
    Now, he was stupidly attractive.

 
    I wasn’t sure how I could much I could bear a summer alone with the
cocky, sculpted jackass now. It had been easy to let the past be the past and
just forget the whole mess, but then he had to come back and make life a living
hell again. Now, I was going to have to figure my feelings out while trapped with the guy. And there was no way I was going to let him have that
kind of power over me, not after he’d betrayed me before.

 
    But that didn’t resolve the looming crisis. With a couple of months
living together alone, there were really only two options immediately visible,
and I had no idea which one would be more appealing.

 
    Either I’d want to kill Sawyer, or…

 
    No. I wasn’t willing to admit it to myself.

 
    I couldn’t bear to dwell on how much I wanted to fuck him.

 

 
 
    ( Return to Table of Contents )

 
 
 
    Chapter 4 – Sawyer

 
    New Orleans, Five Years Ago

 
 
 
    You could say, if you were feeling
poetic, that the first day