Rival

And what Tate wants, Tate gets. Jared was whipped worse than cream when it came to that girl.

I walked back down the track to the driveway leading in to it. My silver GTO sat along the side of the road, and I dug in my jeans for my keys with one hand while I ran the back of my hand across my forehead with the other.

It was early June, and everything was already so miserable. The heat wasn’t bad, but the damn humidity made it worse. My mom had wanted me to come to New Orleans for the summer, and I gave her a big, fat hell-to-the-no.

Yeah, I love sweating my balls off while her new husband tries to teach me shrimping in the Gulf.

Nope.

I loved my mom, but the idea of having the house to myself all summer while my dad stayed at his apartment in Chicago was, no doubt, a much better prospect.

My hand tingled with a vibration, and I looked down at my phone.

Speak of the devil.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked my dad as I came up on the side of my car.

“Madoc. Glad you answered. Are you home?” He sounded unusually concerned.

“No. I was about to head there soon, though. Why?”

My dad was hardly ever around. He kept an apartment in Chicago. since his big legal cases kept him working long hours. While often absent, he was easy to get along with.

I liked him. Didn’t love him, though.

My stepmom had been AWOL for a year. Traveling, visiting friends. I hated her.

And I had a stepsister . . . somewhere.

The only person I loved at home was Addie, our housekeeper. She made sure I ate my vegetables, and she signed my permission slips for school. She was my family.

“Addie called this morning,” he explained. “Fallon showed up today.” My breath lodged in my throat, and I nearly dropped my phone.

Fallon?

Putting my palm down on the hood of my car, I put my head down and tried to stop grinding my teeth.

My stepsister was home. Why? Why now?

“So?” I spat out. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Addie packed you a bag.” He ignored my question. “I talked to Jared’s mom, and you’re going to stay with them for a few weeks until my schedule frees up. I’ll come home then and get this sorted out.”

Excuse me? It felt like the phone would crack under my fingers as I clenched it.

“What? Why?” I yelled, breathing hard. “Why can’t I stay at my own house?”

Since when did she get the run of things? So she was home. Big deal! Send her on her way then. Why did I have to be sent away?

“You know why,” my dad answered, his deep tone threatening. “Don’t go home, Madoc.”

And he hung up.

I stayed planted where I stood, studying the reflection of the trees on the hood of my car. I had been told to go to Jared’s house, where Addie would bring me clothes, and not to go home until further notice.

And why?

I shut my eyes and shook my head. I knew why.

My stepsister was home, and our parents knew everything. Everything that happened two years ago.

But it wasn’t her home. It never was. It’s been my home for eighteen years. She lived there for a while after our parents got married and then disappeared a couple of years ago.

I’d woken up one morning, and she was gone. No good-bye, no note, and no communication since then. The parents knew where she was but not me. I wasn’t allowed to know her whereabouts.

Not that I f**king cared anyway.

But I damn well wanted to be in my own house for the summer.

• • •

Two hours later I was sitting in Jared’s living room with his half brother, Jax, biding my time until their mom stopped watching us like a hawk. The more I sat, the more anxious I got to go find some distractions. Jared had a ton of liquor up in his room that I’d brought over from my house, and it was time to start my Saturday night warm-up. Jax was slouched on the couch playing video games, and Jared had left to get tattooed.

“This is not how you handle it, Jason,” I heard Katherine Trent whisper-yell from the kitchen.

My eyebrows shot up. Jason? That was my father’s name.

She crossed the doorway as she paced, talking on the phone.

She calls my dad Jason? Not weird, I guess. That’s his name. It just seemed weird. Not many people got away with calling my father by his first name. It was usually “Mr. Caruthers” or “sir.”

Getting up, I inched into the dining room, which sat right off the kitchen.

“This is your son,” I heard her say. “You need to come home and deal with this.” I stuck my hands in my pockets and leaned back against the wall right by the door leading to the kitchen. She was quiet for a while except for the sounds of dishes clattering. She must’ve been unloading the dishwasher.

“No,” she answered. “One week. Tops. I love Madoc, but this is your family, and they need you. You’re not getting off the hook. I already have two teenage boys. You know what they do when I try to impose a curfew? They laugh at me.” I fought between smiling out of amusement and clenching my fists in irritation.

“I’m here,” she continued. “I want to help, but he needs you!” Her whispers were futile. It was impossible to try to order my father around and be quiet about it.

I shot a look to Jax and noticed that he’d stopped his video game and was watching me with a quirked eyebrow.

Shaking his head, he joked, “I haven’t obeyed a curfew in my entire life. She’s cute about it, though. I love that woman.”

Jax was Jared’s half-brother. They had the same father but different mothers, and Jax had spent most of his life either with their sadistic dad or in foster homes. Late last fall, my father had helped Katherine get Jax out of foster care and into her home. Jared and Jax’s father was in jail, and everyone wanted the brothers together.

Especially the brothers.

And now that Jared, who’d been my best friend all through high school, had found his soul mate and love of his life, he wasn’t around as much as he used to be. So Jax and I had grown closer.

“Come on.” I jerked my chin at him. “I’m grabbing a bottle from Jared’s room, and then we’re going out.”

• • •

“I want to see your biggest balls,” I ordered in the deepest voice I could muster. My eyes were narrowed, and I had to press my teeth together to not laugh.

Tate’s back straightened, and she slowly spun around with her chin down and eyes up. It reminded me of how my mother looked at me when I had pissed in the pool as a kid.

“Wow, I haven’t heard that one before.” She widened her eyes at me. “Well, sir, we have some quite heavy ones, but they all take two fingers and a thumb. Are you that skilled?” She had an expression on her face like we were talking about homework, but I could see the smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

“I’m so skilled,” I teased, my tongue suddenly too big for my mouth. “You’d be jealous of what I could do to that ball.”

She rolled her eyes and approached the counter. Tate had been working at the bowling alley since last fall. It was almost a court-ordered requirement that she get a job. Well, not quite. It probably would’ve been court-ordered if Jared had pressed charges. This five-foot-seven, one-hundred-twenty-pound bit of nothing had taken a crowbar to her boyfriend’s car in one of her famous violent fits. It was pretty nasty and pretty awesome. The video was on YouTube and had practically started a feminist movement. People did their own renditions of it and even put it to music. They titled it Who’s the Boss Now?, since Jared’s car was a Mustang Boss 302.

It was all a misunderstanding, though, and Tate paid for the damages. She grew up. Jared and I grew up. And we were all friends.

Of course, they were sleeping together. I got no such perks.

“Madoc, have you been drinking?” Tate put her palms on the counter and looked at me like a mom.

“What a stupid question.”

Of course I’ve been drinking. It’s like she didn’t even know me.

Jerking her head up, she looked over to the lanes behind me, and I was afraid her big blue eyes would actually fall out of her head.

“You got Jax drunk, too!” she accused, clearly pissed now.

I twisted around to see what she was looking at, stumbling when my foot got caught in the legs of the stool next to me. I let a holler rip from my throat.

“Whooooo!” I shouted, holding up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the air when I saw what Tate saw.

A crowd of people was gathered in front of one lane, laughing and watching Jax run and do slip and slides down a bowling path. “Hell, yeah!”

The bottle was torn out of my fingers, and I turned to see Tate stuff it under the counter, pressing her angry lips together and scowling.

“Why is the whiskey gone?!” I imitated Captain Jack Sparrow and pounded my fist on the counter.

Tate stomped down the aisle toward the door leading out to the lanes. “You’re in deep shit when I get over this counter,” she whisper-yelled at me.

“You love me. You know you do!” I laughed and sprinted away through the maze of tables and chairs around the concession stand to where Jax played. A couple of other guys had joined in and flew down the lanes, much to the delight of the Saturday night crowd. At this hour, there weren’t too many families out and about, and the only people not entertained were the single dudes who spent their older years lamenting their beer bellies and how lucky they were to escape marriage. They just watched and shook their heads.

“Fallon’s home. Don’t go home.”

I swallowed down the whiskey that kept creeping back up and threw my head back. “Woohoo!” I bellowed, before pounding down the light-colored hardwood floor, leaping onto the lane on my belly and sliding down the alleyway.

My heart pounded, and excitement bubbled in my chest. Holy shit! These lanes were crazy slippery, and I just laughed, not caring that Tate was pissed at me or that Jared’s fist would leave a permanent mark on my face for messing around at his girlfriend’s work. All I cared about was what got me from one moment to the next.

I can’t go home.

The crowd cheered and yelled behind me, some of them jumping up and down. The only way I could tell was because I felt the vibrations under me. And when I rolled to a stop, my legs dangling into the next lane, I just lay there, wondering. Not about Fallon. Not even about whether I was too drunk to drive home at this point.

I wondered out loud, “How the hell am I going to get up?”

These lanes were slippery. Duh. Couldn’t stand up, or I’d slip. Shit.

“Madoc! Get up!” I could hear Tate’s bark from somewhere near me.

Madoc. Get up. The sun’s up. You have to leave.

“Madoc. Get. Up!” Tate shouted again.

I snapped to. “It’s okay,” I grunted. “I’m sorry, Tate. You know I love you, right?” I jerked to a sitting position with a hiccup. Then I looked up to see her walking on the median between the lanes.

Like a boss.

She put her hands on her hips, a stern set to her eyebrows. “Madoc, I work here.”

I winced, not liking the disappointment in her voice. I always craved Tate’s respect.

“Sorry, babe.” I tried standing up, but I only slipped again, a deep ache settling on the side of my ass. “I already said sorry, didn’t I?”

She squatted down and wrapped her arms around one of mine, hauling me up. “What’s wrong with you? You never drink unless you’re at a party.”

I lodged one foot in the gutter and wobbled until Tate pulled me closer to her and I was able to set the other foot on the median.

“Nothing’s wrong with me.” I gave a half-smile. “I’m a joker, Tate. I’m . . .” I waved my hand in the air. “Just a . . . joke—a joker,” I rushed to add.