Deception (13 page)

“Anna?”
I said, hoping I was close enough for her to be able to hear me.

Relief washed over me when I heard her voice inside my head.
“Is everything okay?”

“I need your help. I accidently told Chelsea we can hear people’s thoughts.”

“Oh. How’d she handle it?”

All the colour had drained from her face.
“She’s in shock. Can you come fix this?”

“Coming.”

The door suddenly opened. “Hi, girls,” Anna said with a smile on her face. “I was wondering where you two got to.” She closed the door and casually walked over to Chelsea.

A moment later, Chelsea was no longer stunned by the knowledge that her thoughts were never private where we were concerned.
“Thanks,”
I said to Anna.

“You’re welcome,”
she said. “Come on, let’s get you two to the party.”

“Yay!” Chelsea’s blue eyes once again gleamed with excitement. “Oh, thanks for the dress, Anna. It’s perfect.” She twirled around.

Anna laughed. “I’m glad you like it.”

We followed Anna out of the sitting room and into the hall. I could barely hear any music and wondered if I had been wrong about the DJ until Anna opened the door. The thumping beat blasted into the hallway. The room was soundproof. And if not for my super hearing, I probably wouldn’t have heard a thing from the hall.

“Wow,” Chelsea mouthed as she peered through the doorway. And “wow” was right. Lights flashed from the ceiling, music pumped from everywhere, the bartender was twirling two bottles in the air as he showed off his cocktail-making skills, and people were everywhere. I’d never met or probably even heard about most of them.

As soon as we were through the door, Anna ducked off to the left, leaving us standing alone. The people surrounding us all stopped what they were doing to have a look at the two unknowns who’d walked into the room. Most of them were trying to decide which one of us was Aiden’s girlfriend, and they couldn’t wait to see Georgia’s reaction. After two years together, I was hardly his new girlfriend, but they had all only just found out about me.

I smiled politely, and Chelsea grinned and gave a little wave. I grabbed her hand and dragged her to where I could feel Aiden was. When I saw his smiling face, I immediately felt at ease.

He put down his drink and took a step towards us. His green eyes were almost glowing under the iridescent lights. The corners of his lips lifted into a smile. He took both my hands in his and stepped back to get a good look at me before pulling me into a hug. “You look beautiful,” he whispered in my ear, then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks.” I hoped the blood rushing to my cheeks wouldn’t show up too much under the lighting. “You don’t look half bad yourself, either.” Who was I kidding? I was doing my best to stop myself from kidnapping him from the party so I could have my way with him.

Aiden released me from his embrace, keeping hold of one of my hands and slipping his other behind my back. When his hand touched my bare skin, I swore I heard a growl come from his direction.

I was so distracted with how hot Aiden looked that I’d completely forgotten about Chelsea. I turned to my left, expecting to see her standing there, looking all peed off, but she was happily talking to some guy she’d obviously just met.

Aiden ushered me towards the group of guys he was with before we came in. “Everyone, this is Jade. Jade, this is Connor, Jake, Sam, and Zac,” he said, pointing to each of the boys.

“Hi.” I gave a quick wave.

“So this is the girl that broke poor little Georgia’s heart,” Sam said. They were all thinking it, and I just wished nobody had said it.

“Who wants another drink?” Aiden asked, thankfully trying to change the subject. I desperately didn’t want to be talking about Aiden’s ex all night.

They all agreed that having another drink was, by far, a better topic. But apparently, there was a rule that everyone had to go to the bar to get their own drink.

“Why’s that?” I asked Aiden quietly.

“Well, Nathan did this really cool thing on everyone when they first came in. You see, it’s still illegal for under-eighteens to drink alcohol, and if anything happens to them, then Anna and Dave are in deep shit. So they’ve made everyone wear a wrist band that let’s the bartender know if he can serve the real deal to them or if he has to make it a mock.”

“Okay, but what’s so cool about that?”

“You see, Nathan did this thing to the minds of the under-eighteens where while they’re in this room, they’ll believe they are getting the real deal, but as soon as they leave, they’ll feel completely fine, like they haven’t had a drop of alcohol.”

“Holy crap! He can really do that?”

“Yep. It’s kind of like how a hypnotist can make their audience do crazy things, but this is on a much grander scale.”

I nodded as I thought about what a great idea that was. I looked down at my bare wrist.
“Has someone done that to me?”

Aiden laughed out loud.
“No. Besides the fact you’re turning eighteen in a couple of weeks, we,”
he said, pointing between the two of us,
“aren’t actually able to get drunk.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Whenever we drink alcohol, we only feel a mild effect, and within minutes, our brain would’ve recovered.”

“Oh.”
I’d never actually tested that one out—unless I counted the one time when I was thirteen when I was over at Chelsea’s house, and we thought it would be cool if we snuck some of her parents’ alcohol from the cupboard. We each took a sip and spat it out before we could swallow it, because it tasted so disgusting.

This time, Chels would have the real thing. But I guess it wouldn’t be her first since that disastrous night, because she’d turned eighteen while we were in Thailand. What a crappy friend I was for not being there for her special day. Well, I was sure going to try to make up for it.

“Chels?” I tried to politely interrupt her conversation.

“Yeah?” she replied, smiling from ear to ear.

“Did you want to come get a drink with us?” I asked.

“Nah. You go ahead. I’ll get one later,” she said, then turned her attention back to Oliver. I guess I didn’t have to worry about her having a good time. That girl was born to do this. She had been the life of every party back in Australia, so I shouldn’t have expected anything different just because we were on another continent.

Aiden and I slowly made our way to the bar, being stopped a handful of times by old friends from high school wanting to tell him how awesome the party was and promising to catch up later.

“What do you want to drink?” Aiden asked me.

I shrugged. “I dunno. Surprise me.”

An arm that wasn’t attached to Aiden wrapped around my waist as Aiden ordered my drink. “You look amazing,” the voice whispered into my ear. “My sister’s going to be so jealous.”

Lucas.

“Is she here?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t, but feeling that she was.

“Yep,” he said, confirming my suspicion.

Lucas tapped Aiden on the shoulder. “Get me one of those, too,” he said, pointing to the drink the bartender was making, which I thought was my drink.

Aiden laughed. “Isn’t that a bit girly?”

“Don’t knock them till you’ve tried it,” Lucas said without an ounce of embarrassment in his voice.

Once we all had our drinks, we turned to leave, but I stopped dead in my tracks. Georgia was standing there, wearing a dress that may as well have been a boob tube pulled down to just cover her arse. Two girls dressed similarly to Georgia flanked her, and all three were giving me one hell of a scornful look.

“Aiden,” Georgia said with such lust in her voice that I almost gagged. She glanced at me with disgust, then returned her attention to Aiden. She stepped closer to him and whispered, “Happy birthday.” She leaned forward as if to give him a kiss on his cheek, but stopped just short of doing so.

Her eyes widened, and I knew exactly what was happening. They were having a conversation that we weren’t privy to. But by the look on Georgia’s face, I didn’t have to worry about the details of it.

I half expected Lucas to say something about it, but he probably didn’t want to bring any attention to what we could do. And I was pretty sure
that
conversation between the twins wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall when they were alone.

She stepped back, looked me up and down with daggers in her eyes, turned her back to us, and strutted away with her skanky friends.

“What happened there?” Lucas asked, voicing my own curiosity.

“I just told her if her lips came any closer, she’d better hope Jade’s father wasn’t somewhere watching because the last time someone tried to steal me away from her, he almost had her run down.”

Lucas laughed. It was still hard to believe that they were even related, let alone twins. But I was definitely glad they were nothing alike.

The next hour or so went by without so much of a glimpse from Georgia. I could feel she was still somewhere in the room, but what Aiden had said about my father must have scared her enough to not want to take any chances. I guessed there had to be one thing that having a psychopathic father was useful for.

The music turned down slightly, and Kai’s voice came over the speakers. “I hope everyone’s having an awesome time.” He paused while some of the crowd cheered in response. “But it’s now time for the birthday boy to open his presents. So, can you all please pretend you give a damn while he opens them. Then we can get back to the party.”

Almost everyone thought he was just being funny and didn’t know he was being serious. People rarely wanted to stop and watch the birthday boy or girl open gifts, but according to almost everyone around me, it was the necessary evil of going to a birthday party.

Hand in hand, Aiden and I made our way over to the seating area, where all the presents were stacked on top of the coffee table in front of the red lounge. We sat down, and Dave began handing Aiden his presents.

Lucas sat down beside me, and Chelsea sat on the other side of him.
“You can thank me later for rescuing your friend,”
he said.

“What?”

“That guy she was with—”

“Oliver?”

“Yeah, Olli isn’t the best person for her to be hanging out with.”
When I scrunched up my face in confusion, Lucas added,
“Over the last year, he’s got himself a bit of a reputation around here. You know, use them then lose them.”

“Oh. What’s he still doing here, then?”

“He’s not.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, it’s the least I can do after what happened to her last…”
He hung his head. He was probably remembering how Ben’s death had gone down. I don’t think that was a day any of us would ever be able to forget.

I took a deep breath as I tried to block out the painful memory and focus on having a great time.

Aiden had opened most of the presents on the table and ended up with a heap of things he already had or didn’t really need. No one ever knew what to get a guy who already had everything. And that was the dilemma that had been eating away at me until around midday that day, before I finally worked out what I would get him.

Dave picked up another boxed present and handed it to Aiden.

His whole body stiffened when he opened the card. “What is it?” I asked, leaning over to see what had him so upset.

“It’s nothing,” he said, trying to close the card before I could see it.

“Aiden?” An uneasy feeling came over me. “Don’t give me that ‘it’s nothing’ crap. Tell me what was on the card.”

“It was probably some chick he’s trying to hide from his new girlfriend,” some dumb-arse said, trying to be funny.

“Please?” I knew it wasn’t anything like that, but whatever it was, I knew it wasn’t good.

Aiden clasped my hand.
“Let’s go someplace private to talk. I think it’s something from your father.”

I inhaled sharply as fear surged through my body.

Aiden stood, pulling me up with him. “You’ll have to excuse us. I’ve got something special I want to give to my gorgeous girl,” he lied.
“Everyone, I need you to meet us in the lounge room. Lucas, can you bring Chelsea up with you?”

“Sure,”
Lucas said.

The next gens stayed where they were while Aiden and I made our way out of the room. I suspected they were waiting for the party to get going again so no one was suspicious as to why so many of us had disappeared all at once.

As soon as we were in the hall and nobody was in sight, Aiden transported the two of us to the lounge room.

Chapter 12

He placed the box wrapped in blue paper on the coffee table, then pulled me into his arms. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said as Lucas and Chelsea appeared in the room.

“Somehow, I don’t think I’m that lucky.” I buried my head in his chest and took comfort in the fact that at that moment, I was safe, and the possibility Aiden was wrong.

Anna, Dave, and Kai soon followed.

“Have you opened it up yet?” Kai asked, coming over to look at it.

Aiden shook his head. “Not yet. We were waiting until everyone was here.”

As if on cue, Nathan appeared beside the door. “Are you sure it’s from him?”

“I’m not one hundred percent, because it hasn’t been signed off with DD this time,” Aiden said.

Dave walked over to the box. “Did you want me to open it?” he asked me.

“Uh huh,” I barely managed to say.

Dave sat down on the couch in front of the box. He began to carefully unwrap the package. Who knew, maybe there was a bomb inside. It was Adam’s style—shock and fear. And a bomb would be pretty good at achieving both of those goals.

Under the blue wrapping paper was a plain white box. Dave took a deep breath, then opened the lid. “Holy crap!” He pushed the box to the other side of the table.