Twisted Minds (8 page)

“And I also made chicken and rice casserole,” she continued, scanning the bottle of Pedialyte and typing something into the register. “It’s probably in the back of the fridge.”

Kira pushed her thick hair out of her face, and for a second I simply watched her, admiring the soft features of her face. Even if I didn’t know her, it would’ve blown my mind walking into a small store like this and seeing a girl like her behind the counter. She looked out of place in this town because of how stunning she was.

A girl as attractive as her should be doing modeling in New York, or acting in L.A. She was wasting away in a town like this.

“Why do you work here?” I asked, resting an elbow on the edge of the counter. I knew the question was unexpected from the way her brows immediately knitted together.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Her tone was haughty as she paused.

Exactly what it sounded like.

“Why do you work here when you don’t need the money,” I clarified. “Your parents both make good money; they own a home; you have your own car. It doesn’t make sense to me why you would work in a place like this.”

Kira’s face scrunched up; her eyes got all squinty like there was dirt in them, and her face turned red like a tomato. She kind of looked constipated. Maybe she needed some Pedialyte, too.

“I work,” she began, her voice rising with each word, “because my parents taught me better. I work because it teaches me that I need to work hard in this world to have money and get somewhere in life. I don’t have the luxury of having parents who are millionaires, like some people.” She shot me a snooty look. “I work because I’m not lazy, or entitled, or above having a job. I work so that assholes like you don’t have to.”

Ouch. I’d hit a nerve when all I’d been doing was trying to make conversation and trying to figure out why she wasn’t doing more with her life.

“You take things the wrong way,” I said with a laugh.

“You say things the wrong way.” She slammed the bottle down on the counter with too much force. Luckily it was wasn’t made of glass, or I’m pretty sure it would’ve broken.

“Alright, alright.” I held my hands up in front of me in surrender. “It seems pretty clear that you-”

“That’ll be $16.27,” she cut me off, her tone scathing, as she bagged the bottles and handed it over to me.

Shaking my head a little, I pulled out my wallet and handed my card to her. There was absolute silence as I paid for my stuff and she handed my card back to me. If trying to sleep with Kira was going to be this damn hard, then it was probably never going to happen.

“Kira,” I said, noticing that a lady with two kids was standing behind me, waiting rather patiently. I leaned in across the counter, getting a little closer. “I wasn’t trying to piss you off; all I’ve been thinking about since I walked into this goddamn store was how fucking incredible your ass looks in those jeans.”

Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes darted to the woman behind me. I didn’t give a fuck if some random woman heard me. If Kira was going to think the worst of me, then she might as well hear the whole truth.

“Beyond fucking your brains out, there’s not a whole lot else I’m thinking about right now,” I told her, relishing the look of shock and embarrassment on her face. “And that’s pretty much the only thing that’s been in my head since the moment I laid eyes on that juicy ass of yours in your lacy panties.”

That was a lie. I’d been thinking about fucking her since I’d seen her getting undressed at her window, but she didn’t need to know that right now.

Kira gaped at me as though she was at a loss for words.

“Thanks for the help,” I told her smoothly. “I’ll see you at home.”

With that, I turned and strolled out of the store. As I stepped outside, the sunlight hit me, but it was weak in comparison to Kira and the light she exuded.

Hurrying to my car, I tried not to think about her, but it was practically impossible.

Nine

People Change

Finn’s hangover eventually wore off as the day went on.

By the time Kira and his parents got home from work, he was almost back to his usual self, which was nice because I was bored out of my damn mind. I was glad I was only here for a short amount of time because I had already run out of things to do.

When Kira walked into the house, we were both lounging on the living room couches in silence. The silence was mainly for Finn’s benefit, since he’d been complaining about a nasty headache. Kira greeted her brother, shot me a contemptuous look and stormed up the stairs in a huff. Clearly, I’d gotten to her at the store.

“She’s mad because I asked her if there was a
Daniel
here,” I told Finn.

He was laying on the couch across from me with his arm draped dramatically over his face as though he was in great suffering. What a pansy.

He lifted his arm up away from his face just enough for me to glimpse one hazel eye. “She gets mad if I tell her she’s looking a little thick.”

I snorted in response.

A few minutes later, his parents walked through the front door together, in mid-conversation. Theresa had a bunch of mail in her hand, while Joe was holding a bottle of wine.

Apparently, Joe picked his wife up from work on his way home, which even I had to admit was kind of sweet. My parents definitely needed to take a page out of their book. In fact, it’d probably benefit them if they read the entire thing.

“Finn, I’m making pork fried rice for dinner,” Theresa said when she noticed us loitering around her living room, probably looking as pathetic as we felt. “Prep the vegetables for me while I get changed.”

“Sure,” Finn mumbled in response, rising to his feet and shuffling towards the kitchen like a zombie.

“Here, Nate.” Joe was extending the bottle of wine toward me. “This is from the winery I work at. Give it a try, let me know what you think.”

“Thanks, Joe,” I said, studying the black and white label that read
Great Lakes Chardonnay
.

“I’ll be right down.” With that, he followed his wife upstairs, leaving me with the bottle.

When I ambled into the kitchen, Finn had an onion, a red pepper, a leafy green herb, and a bunch of other shit sitting on the counter. He began peeling the onion as I slid a drawer open and pulled out a corkscrew. It was one of the very few things I had bothered to memorize the location of in the kitchen.

Once I had poured myself a glass of wine and settled into a chair at the kitchen table, I decided it was about time I interrogated Finn about Cass. I’d given him all day to recover from his hangover without bringing her up, but the longer I let the topic slide, the more it ate me up.

After all, he knew what she was capable of and he had still disappeared with her for well over forty minutes, ample time for him to get sucked off and even get a screw in.

“You know you’re a complete moron for wandering off with Cass last night, right?” I asked point blank, watching him expertly dice the onion he’d just peeled. “Last time I checked, you were the smarter out of the two of us.”

I watched him, envious of his knife skills. Only I would be envious of someone’s ability to chop up an onion. Mainly because I lacked the ability to even peel one.

Finn paused, the only sign that he was carefully thinking about what to say next. “I was drunk, Nate.” He resumed chopping, his jaw tense. “I let my feelings take over.”

Feelings were stupid. They made you weak to the charms of women like Cass.

“The night I got here, you were going on about what a whore she was and how you wanted to be more like me and sleep around,” I reminded him, taking a generous sip of my wine. “What happened to that attitude?”

He sighed, sliding the onion into a bowl and moving onto the red pepper. “It’s not that easy to forget about someone you spent so many years with.”

I wanted to strangle him for being so soft.

“You
know
what she did.” I looked at him pointedly when he glanced my way. “So how can you be with her after something like that?”

Finn’s grip on the knife tightened, and I knew my words were getting to him. “Don’t people deserve second chances? People can change.”

Not Cass. Not that manipulative snake.

“They sure can.” Theresa’s voice broke into our conversation. “Anyone can change for the right reasons.”

“Especially when they really love you,” Joe said, appearing behind his wife.

The two of them strolled into the kitchen, and Theresa ushered Finn away from the chopping board. Finn used the opportunity to pull a can of Budweiser out of the fridge. Obviously, putting pressure on him about Cass could only be resolved with a beer.

“Yeah, well, Cass isn’t exactly a saint,” I muttered bitterly, taking a sip of my wine as Joe sat down across from me.

“We’ve known Cassidy since she was fourteen,” Joe said, retrieving a wine glass and joining me at the table. “She’s been an important part of our lives for many years.”

It took a lot of self-control not to blurt out what she had done to Finn. From the warning in Finn’s eyes, I knew he didn’t want me to tell his parents the real reason they’d broken up. Maybe they simply thought they had both drifted apart. I didn’t know why Finn insisted on protecting her. He was a fool in love, and it made me sick.

“And she’s the big sister I never had.” Kira appeared in the doorway, dressed way too nice for a pork fried rice dinner at home.

Her hair was pulled tight up in a top knot bun, making her features stand out. Her eyes and lips appeared larger, and those incredible cheekbones looked even more angular than usual. She’d opted for faded blue jeans, but her long-sleeved white top was what made her outfit dressier; cinched at the waist and then flaring out just above her hips. Her butt looked way too big to fit into those jeans, but somehow she had managed to squeeze into it.

Trying not to stare too hard at her, I took a sip of my wine instead, distracting myself from the body I wanted to bang the shit out of.

“Are you going out?” Theresa asked, giving Kira a once over before she continued to slice the pepper.

“Yeah.” Kira nodded. “I’m meeting some friends for dinner at
Pranzi
. Greg’s picking me up.”

Greg. The suicidal douchebag.

The wine suddenly tasted bitter in my mouth. Considering Kira had told me she more or less couldn’t stand the guy, I wondered why she was even bothering to hang out with him.

“
Pranzi
?” I asked, keeping my tone casual.

“It’s an Italian restaurant in town,” Kira answered, tossing her head as she answered me.

There was a victorious hint to her tone that I didn’t like, as though she felt like she had won some sort of unspoken game between us by going to dinner with Greg.

Like hell she had. If Greg was the best she could do, then she could go right ahead and
pranzi
around town with him. Trying not to let it get to me was hard at first, especially since I’d basically told her I wanted to fuck her. Normally, women were in my bed within the hour of me declaring my intentions, yet here was Kira acting like I’d never said a word to her.

“Greg Reynolds?” Finn asked from behind me. “I heard he gets girls drunk and tries to sleep with them. I’m not sure I like you hanging out with him.”

For a moment, Kira gaped at her brother as though she didn’t know how to respond to his comment. Then her eyes narrowed, falling on me. “I’m not sure where you heard that, but he’d certainly not the only one notorious for drinking and sleeping around with women.”

We all pretty much knew she was referring to me. No one responded. I drank more wine.

“Isn’t he the guy who works at the gas station?” Joe asked, pouring himself a glass of the chardonnay. “Seems nice enough.”

“If you say so, Dad,” Finn said, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced.

“Maybe he’s changed,” Kira echoed Finn’s words, crossing her arms across her chest as she glared at her brother. “People can do that, you know?”

“Sure,” Finn retorted, even though minutes ago he’d more or less said the same thing about Cass.

In the case of his little sister, it was a little different. He couldn’t help but play the clichéd role of the overprotective big brother.

There were a couple of quick honks, and Kira glanced over her shoulder as though she could somehow see who was making the source of the noise.

“That’s Greg. I gotta go.”

“Okay, love you,” Theresa said, blowing her a kiss. “Let us know if you need a ride home.” She had chopped up all the vegetables in record time since she’d taken over the kitchen, and was now in the process of pouring coconut oil into a hot frying pan.

“Have fun,” Joe told her. “Do not make babies with Greg. You can do better.”

“Or I’ll break his face,” Finn threatened, his tone surprisingly menacing.

Kira waved at us, rolling her eyes in Finn’s direction as she headed out. I tried to ignore the slimy feeling in my stomach, but it slithered around the rest of the night as I sat and ate dinner with the remaining Walshs.

Joe and I finished the bottle of wine together, and Finn had a few more beers before everyone retired to bed at eleven. For some reason, I had a feeling Finn was trying to avoid getting into a conversation with me again about Cass.

I was almost tempted to storm into his room and tell him not to do anything with her he would regret, but I decided against it, instead withdrawing to my room to write in my journal.

For a long moment I stared down at the paper, my pen poised like a guillotine as I tried to figure out what I wanted to say. Normally, I didn’t keep such detailed entries, but I was already onto the second page about her.

She acts like she’s too good for me, which is ridiculous because I should be the one acting like I’m too good for her. That’s the game I usually play, and it works. Women want to be with a man who is better than them. It makes them feel special, like they have accomplished something important.

I paused.

But I’m not better than her. She’s the one who’s too good for me.

For some reason, that last sentence left me feeling a little winded. The words floated around in my vision. She was too good for me.

My phone vibrated just then, and I reached for it, thankful that something had snapped me out of my thoughts. Expecting my mother to be the one hassling me, I was surprised and even more disappointed to find it was Cass instead.

How’s your end of the bet going?

I grimaced. It was like she was standing outside the window spying on me as I poured my feelings into the journal.

Excellent

That’s funny. I heard she’s on a date with Greg Reynolds

I frowned at the screen before typing back a response.

Fuck off

For a second, I thought she’d listened to me, until my phone vibrated with another message from her.

I told you she’d never go for someone like you. Not all women want a guy who’s been around

This time, I didn’t bother replying. It was obvious she was just trying to get a rise out of me, and I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it. Cass indulged in making people feel like shit and taking advantage of that feeling. That was probably the scariest thing about her—the fact that she didn’t really have a reason for messing around with people other than for entertainment.

As I put my phone away, I heard the distinct sound of high heels making their way up the hall. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I rose from the bed and hurried out of the room just as Kira was approaching her room.

The light from my room cast a glow across her startled face. She hadn’t been expecting to see me.

“Nate?” Confusion trickled into her voice. She forgot to put on her ice queen routine.

“How was your date with Greg?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe and folding my arms across my chest.

Maybe Cass’ messages had gotten to me, but a part of me was eager to know how her night had gone. That part of me was also hoping that her night hadn’t turned out well. What could I say? I was an ass.

Kira’s expression was taut; her lips pinched. The ice queen I was accustomed to suddenly materialized.

“It was great. We had fun.” Her tone was flat as she spoke, which made me think she wasn’t being entirely honest with me.

“Oh, yeah?” I knew I was going too much out of my way to find out details about her night, but I didn’t really care at this point. “I thought he was a stalker who you couldn’t stand to be around.”

The Walsh siblings were a little messed up. They claimed they couldn’t stand to be around someone, but then went out of their way to spend time with them. At least I was a little more consistent than that.

Kira remained silent, but her eyes darkened just like the shadows in the hall. Trying to gauge her wan expression in the insufficient lighting was difficult. What was that look for? It was more than her annoyance at my questions.