Reckless Heat: A Hostile Operations Team Prequel (3 page)

“
W
ell
, that looked intense,” Julie says as she comes over and sits on my bed with a Coke in her hand.

I take a sip of the Coke she poured over ice for me and nod. After Matt left, I listened to the sound of the car pipes until they faded away, then turned and went into the house. Julie was inside fixing drinks. Sarah had run into her room to play with her dolls.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “And where’s Mama?”

Today was usually her early day home from work.

“She got called back into the salon. Customer emergency or something.”

I roll my eyes. “Do you mean Mrs. Hinch needs her roots touched up before her church ladies’ social tonight?”

Julie laughs. “I don’t know what it was, but Aunt Norma called and asked if I could watch Sarah since you weren’t home yet.”

Julie lives a block over from us, and I guess Mama decided not to wait for me to get home. I’m not all that late, but I should have called. The truth is that I didn’t think of it. I’d have texted, but Mama doesn’t have a cell phone yet. I bought my own with money I earned working as a waitress because no way would Mama buy me one when she didn’t have one herself. It wasn’t a fancy phone, and I’m always careful since it’s pay-as-you-go, but at least I have one.

Still, thank goodness Jules was home or I’d be in trouble.

“Okay, I answered your question,” Julie says. “Now tell me what that was all about.”

I sigh. “He’s leaving. You were right.”

Julie reaches out and squeezes my arm. “I’m sorry. When Jack told me, I didn’t believe it either. Wow. I thought Matt was going to LSU. But West Point… didn’t see that one coming.”

“Me neither.”

I still can’t quite wrap my head around it. Since his mother died, Matt told me—when he talked about it—that he wanted to help people. I assumed he wanted to be a doctor. Search for a cure for cancer.

But the Army? I don’t understand. It’s people like me who join the Army—people who need money for college and don’t have it—not people like Matt who can choose any college he wants and never pay a dime.

I’m still coming to terms with this, still trying to figure out what it means for Matt and me. As if there
is
a Matt and me.

There never will be now.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and work on breathing. “He said we’ll always be friends, that he’ll stay in touch with me.”

Julie sighs. “Well, that’s something anyway. And he probably will. The two of you have been friends forever.”

“I don’t want to be friends.” I clutch my fist to my chest where it hurts so badly. “I want him to feel what I feel, Jules. I want him to ache for me, to need me…”

My throat hurts. I can’t tell anyone else this. But Jules understands.

“I know, Evie.”

I close my eyes and roll my head around on my neck, easing the tension. “Three more weeks. He leaves right after graduation.”

I still have another year to go before I graduate. I mean, I’ve always known I’ll spend my senior year at Rochambeau High without Matt Girard—but I thought he’d be at LSU, close enough to come home on weekends. Close enough to visit if Mama lets me borrow the car sometimes.

He would realize someday what I already know—that we’re meant to be together. I’ve always been certain of it and I’m willing to be patient.

But how is he going to do that if we never see each other anymore? What if he meets someone else? What if he forgets me?

I have to do something before I lose him forever. But I don’t know what…

“
T
here’s a party tonight
,” Julie says. “Out at Rochambeau Lake.”

I look up to find her standing over me, grinning gleefully. Her hair is pink today. She changes it about as often as other people change socks, so I don’t even remark on it.

It’s Friday and it’s our lunch break. I didn’t feel like eating in the cafeteria, so I grabbed my sack lunch and brought it outside where I could sit beneath one of the trees and think.

I want to be alone, but that’s not really possible in high school, is it?

“So?” I say. I’m not in a party mood. Matt’s leaving in two weeks and I don’t know how to tell him what I feel. What I know about us deep inside.

“Soooo,” Julie says, plopping down beside me and opening a pack of M&M’s. “Everyone will be there. Including Matt Girard, dumbass.”

“How does that help me? The place will be packed.” Which means that talking to Matt will be impossible. He’s popular, and he’s always the center of attention, especially with girls. Getting him alone at a thing like that? Not happening.

Not to mention, what the hell would I say? I love you, please love me too?

I shudder at the thought. Julie holds out the candy and I take a couple.

“So what if it is? Wear something sexy and talk to him. Get his attention. You don’t have long left, babes.”

We talked about this the other day. About what I need to do to let Matt know I want more from him. Be sexy was about all we came up with.

That and ask him to sleep with me. Be my first. I threw it out there as a last-ditch kind of solution, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

Ask Matt to be my first. Ask him to initiate me, to take my virginity.

Oh, I like that thought a lot—but yeah, it scares the hell out of me too. How do I ask the guy who’s been my best friend, who I played with in the mud when we were kids, to do something so outside the norm of our relationship?

Then again, if I don’t ask him, how will he ever figure out that we’re meant to be together?

Yeah, it’s a real conundrum. Let things go on as they have been and wait anxiously to hear from him when he’s away, or cross the line of our friendship and ask him outright to strip me naked and do all the things I’ve imagined doing with him?

It’s easy to figure out which of those choices makes my stomach twist into knots. I’m not saving myself out of some misguided idea that I have to remain pure until marriage. No, I’m saving myself for Matt. Always have been.

It isn’t that I haven’t tried to be with another guy. But when he slips a hand under my shirt and starts fondling my breasts, all I want is to get away. It doesn’t feel right. It feels, well, disgusting.

“Come on, Eves. You can ride with Jack and me.”

I look at her like she’s lost her mind. “Ride with you and Jack? What about after, when he wants to take you parking?”

Parking
being the euphemism for finding a field somewhere and fucking in the backseat. For once, I wish I was comfortable with that idea, that I’d done it before so it wasn’t such a scary thought to approach Matt.

Julie shrugs. “We’ll drop you back home first. No biggie.”

I chew my lip. But how can I say no? It’s one more chance to be near Matt, one more chance to talk to him. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get the courage to ask him to take me somewhere we can be alone.

“Okay, I’ll go.”

Julie bounces up and down. “Yay! Now come over to my house first. We’ll get dressed together. I’ll make sure you look your best. Matt won’t know what hit him.”

I
wasn’t planning
to go to the lake tonight, but the old man isn’t home and I don’t need to stay in that big lonely house and twiddle my thumbs while waiting for the next two weeks to go by.

All I have to do is keep out of trouble, but partying at the lake isn’t going to be trouble. Yeah, there’s drinking and pot smoking, but drinking isn’t illegal—well, it is at my age but not as illegal as pot smoking, which I definitely won’t do. No way am I fucking around with my appointment to the military academy.

I take my Vette and arrive around nine. The party is in the pavilion and the surrounding picnic areas. The Rochambeau PD can chase us out if there are complaints, but the park’s open after dark. So long as we don’t cause trouble, they won’t have any reason to intervene.

The drinking is on the down low, of course. If the PD show up, they won’t find any obvious alcohol—no beer cans or bottles. If they start handing out Breathalyzers, however, a lot of people will be screwed.

The trick is in not causing enough trouble to make that a reality.

I get out of my Vette and lock it, then head up to the pavilion. Jeanine spots me and sashays over with a big smile.

“Hey, Matt. Didn’t think you were coming.”

“Yet here I am.”

She slips an arm around my neck and arches herself into me. I should put a stop to her blatant show of possession, but I don’t much care at the moment. If she’s willing to put out, that’s good enough for me tonight.

I give her a quick kiss and set her away from me as I continue over to where some of the guys are standing around, drinking from cups with lids and straws. They look like simple gas station or fast-food-restaurant drinks, but I know there’s whiskey mixed in there.

“Need a drink, bud?” Jimmy Thibodeaux asks.

Jimmy isn’t one of my favorite people, but he’s all right. Sort of cracked in the head sometimes, but still a good old boy.

“Whatcha got?”

“Old Charter and Coke.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Someone mixes a drink and hands it to me. I take a sip. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe, considering how fucked up my father is, I should learn a lesson about drinking. But I’m seventeen, in control of myself. My father is fifty-three and a drunk.

I know the fancy word for it:
dipsomania
. So much more genteel than
alcoholism
. My father is a dipsomaniac, like a character in a William Faulkner novel. It fits, really, considering the house and the clichéd Southerness of my family.

But that doesn’t mean I have a problem. I can sip this drink, get happy for a while, and then not worry about it again for a week. Next weekend is graduation, and I’m so getting trashed then. My last taste of freedom for a long time.

“Holy shit, who is that?” Jimmy asks, and I swing my head to look as two girls join some others at the edge of the pavilion.

I recognize Julie Breaux right away because she’s in profile to me. Beside her, a tall girl in a skintight denim mini, sandals, and a red tank top has her back to me. Her hair is down to her ass, thick, dark, and curled at the ends.

Her ass looks amazing in that skirt, and her legs are so long they make my throat dry.

“I don’t know,” I say, taking a sip of my drink and starting toward the girls who are standing together off to one side of the pavilion. There are four or five of them, but I want to know who the one with her back to me is.

Julie nudges the girl as I approach, and she turns. I feel like someone knocked me in the head with a bat. I should have fucking known.

It’s Evie—but Evie as I’ve tried so desperately not to see her. This is Evie as a
girl
. No, a woman—a beautiful woman with curves and a mouth I want to kiss.

Holy hell, Evie Baker isn’t a tomboy anymore. I know that, of course. She was in my car just last week when we went out to the bayou. But she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, not a frigging mini with her mile-long legs showing.

She has on makeup tonight, which isn’t typical Evie. Red lips, long lashes, and the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen. Her lips part and I keep walking. I hope like hell the shock doesn’t show on my face.

“Hey,” I say. “Didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Hey.” She dips her gaze down to the ground for a second. Then she shrugs. “Sounded like fun.”

When she meets my gaze again, my heart thumps. A feeling I don’t quite recognize starts to swell in my chest. It’s kind of like when I take some girl out and she wants to fuck and I want it too. That moment of blissful happiness where I know I’m getting laid and I want the release because it’s pretty much the sweetest thing in my life, at least while it lasts.

Only this feeling is worse. Stronger. More desperate, because this is Evie and it isn’t going to happen. Not with me—and not with anyone. I remember the look on Jimmy’s face, and I know there is no way in hell I’m letting him get his hands on her.

I take her hand and she gasps in surprise. But I don’t care as I tug her away from the girls and over to my car.

“Get in. I’m taking you home.”

“What?” she asks. “No.” She jerks her hand from mine and faces me, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.

Jesus.

“You shouldn’t be here, Evie.”

“And you should? What’s the difference, Matt? I’ve been out here before, and you haven’t said a damned thing about it.”

She has been, but she didn’t look like… well, this. Exciting and gorgeous and so damned appealing that every guy who sees her is getting a hard-on.

“It’s almost graduation. These fuckers are crazy.”

It isn’t a good reason, but it’s all I have. They
are
crazy. About to taste freedom and impatient to start the rest of their lives.

She nods to the cup in my hand. “And you aren’t? You can’t drive when you’ve been drinking.”

I didn’t even realize I’m still holding the cup. I throw it onto the grass. “I’m not drunk. I had one sip before you showed up.”

“I’m not leaving, Matt. I just got here—and besides, why do you care? You’re leaving Rochambeau. You won’t even care what I’m doing then.”

“I’ll care,” I say, my throat tight. “I’ll always care.”

M
y heart is pounding
. My skin is on fire. And my breathing is short and fast. I’m not scared. I’m excited.

Matt is looking at me like he’s never seen me before. He’s wearing jeans, flip-flops, and a faded tee that says Rochambeau Bulls on it. His eyes flash with heat, and his jaw clenches. He throws the cup away and stares me down with his chest rising and falling almost as fast as mine is.

His nostrils flare as if he’s working to control himself. I have no idea what’s going on with him, but it’s like there is this electricity in the air between us.

“You aren’t my boyfriend,” I say. The words aren’t easy to get out, especially since I have to say a word aloud that I’ve prayed for in secret.

Boyfriend
.

I
want
Matt to be my boyfriend. I want Matt in my life, and I want more than he’s ever given me before.

I went to Julie’s house to get ready like she wanted, and I gave her free rein. It isn’t that I don’t wear makeup or curl my hair—but I’m not as bold as she is. I don’t work for fifteen minutes on the perfect cat eye or mascara my lashes into infinity. I don’t spend time lining my lips and slicking on lipstick the way she does.

Maybe I should, because Matt is looking at me like he’s never seen me before. It kind of pisses me off at the same time it thrills me.

“No, I’m your big brother,” he says, and the anger welling inside me boils into a giant wave.

I take a step toward him, poking my finger in his chest. I’ve never done that before—or not since we grew up—and it feels good.

“You are
not
my brother, Matt. We aren’t related at all. I’m just like all the other girls in school—”

His brows lower and he looks suddenly furious. “You are fucking
not
like the other girls—”

“I am! I like guys and I want a boyfriend of my own—I want some guy to want me, to take me on dates, to hold my hand and drive me in his car—”

“That’s not all they want, Evie. You want romance and all that bullshit—guys want sex.”

I lift my chin. My heart thumps. There is so much in that statement I can address. But there is only one thing I’m going to. “Maybe that’s what I want too.”

He takes a step closer then, his brows lowering even more. He looks pissed, and something about it thrills me more than it should.

“You’re a virgin, Evie,” he growls beneath his breath. “You need to save yourself for the right guy. A guy who cares about you and doesn’t just want to get laid. A guy who’ll treat you right.”

Honestly, as fascinating as his anger is, it’s also irritating. What a hypocrite. I know what he’s been up to, what he’s done with the girls he’s taken out. Matt Girard is no virgin.

“Like you treat Jeanine and Tiffany and Bella and all the others, right?”

He grabs me again, and this time he jerks me over to the passenger door and yanks it open. He’s going to try to shove me in the car by force, but I’m having none of it.

If anyone is watching us, and I’m sure they are, they have to be as confused as I am. We must look like a couple having a fight. Yet we aren’t a couple. We’re friends.

I jerk free of his grip—not easy since Matt is bigger than I am and stronger—and stumble back a step.

“Don’t you dare, Matt. Don’t you fucking dare!”

His chest heaves as he stares at me. I have no idea what he might do next, but he turns and slaps his hand on top of the Vette explosively, swearing in Cajun French, which I do not speak, and English. I take a step back, awed and surprised by the force of his anger.

When he’s through cussing, he slams the door and rakes a hand through his hair.

“Fine. Fucking fine—but don’t you come crying to me when it all goes wrong, you got that? I tried.”

I don’t know what will happen next, what I should say, but I don’t get the chance to figure it out. Matt strides away and leaves me standing beside his car. My heart hammers and tears prick at my eyes.

“Asshole,” I hiss. And then I turn and go rejoin Jules and my friends.