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  “Your father better not hurt my mother,” she said, trying to change the subject. She didn’t want to think about what they had gotten into the last time they were together.

  “Nice change, and no, he won’t. My dad adores your mom, and there won’t be any broken hearts unless she’s the one doing the breaking.” He ran his finger down her arm, and goosebumps erupted all over her flesh.

  This was not good. She didn’t like Nate. He was the biggest asshole she had ever known, and yet her body responded to him. She didn’t know how that was even possible. Treacherous body!

  Chapter Two

  Nate didn’t know what happened to his careful planning, or why his dick was starting to harden, and all of his promises were out of the fucking window. He was not supposed to find Shawna attractive, nor was he meant to try to goad her into a reaction.

  “Put your hands away,” she said, stepping down until she was a little shorter than he was. “Not going to happen, and you need to stop bringing it up before someone else hears you.”

  “You won’t be the first girl I’ve screwed.”

  She rolled her eyes, and he found her enthralling. It was like he’d never noticed her before, and now he couldn’t get enough. She wasn’t like any of the other girls he’d been with. Shawna wasn’t trying to impress him, or gain his attention. She wasn’t even trying to cause any trouble at school. Nothing had changed, apart from his weird obsession when it came to staring at her. Yeah, he didn’t know where that had come from, only that it had happened.

  “And I bet I won’t be your last. I saw Amanda all over you. You’ll have a new girl by the end of the week.” She patted his chest, and before she could pull away, he locked his fingers around her wrist, stopping her from pulling away from him. “Let go.”

  “No. You don’t want me to let go. I bet you’re already soaking wet for me.” He couldn’t help it. Staring into her brown eyes, he watched as they dilated, and with just a glance down at her body, he saw that her nipples were rock hard.

  He was a guy, a teenager, and all he thought about was sex, and more sex. Right now, he’d gladly bend her over the stairs and screw her brains out. All day in school, he’d noticed her, and each time he remembered the cry of her release, the way her nails sank into his back as he filled her.

  Stepping closer, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. Resting his hand on the base of her back, he inhaled her subtle perfume.

  She pressed her hands against his chest. “You really need to let me go.”

  “Or maybe I should do what I’ve been thinking about all day.” Moving her toward the wall, he slammed his lips down on hers, and did what he’d been wanting to do. He pressed his dick against her soft stomach, and caught her hands, holding them up above her head. Biting at her lip, he plundered her mouth and tasted her once again.

  “Nate, Shawna, we’re ready,” Belle said, calling them.

  He pulled away from her, and watched as she licked her lips. Running his thumb across that lip, he smiled. “You and I both know this is not over, not yet.”

  Stepping away from her, he made his way toward the sound of Belle and his father. Taking a seat at the table near his father, he watched as Shawna entered, and sat opposite him. She avoided his gaze, and he didn’t mind. For now he needed to get his shit together. This wasn’t what he wanted to deal with right now.

  “Hi, Shawna, I guess we sort of sprung this on you the other night,” he said.

  Nate watched as she turned toward his father and shrugged. “I knew she was dating just not…you.”

  “How do you and Shawna know each other?” Belle asked.

  “We have several classes together,” Shawna said. “We’re not in the same circles.”

  “I’m on the football team.”

  “He’s a jock, and I’m a nerd. They don’t mesh.” She looked at him.

  “Not all the time but they make movies about opposites all the time.”

  Shawna nodded. “Yeah, and that’s in fantasy land. So, what do you do, Daniel?” She went back to looking at his father.

  “I’m a lawyer. A partner in a law firm.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s the youngest man to ever make partner,” Belle said.

  “What about Nate’s mother?” Shawna asked.

  “Shawna, stop that.”

  Nate watched as she shrugged. “I’m just making sure you’re being taken care of. You’ve been hurt before.”

  Nate didn’t know where her father was, and he didn’t know the real story behind their parents’ meeting.

  “I know this is difficult, but I want you to know that I will never try to replace your father, Shawna. I won’t make life uncomfortable when he comes to visit, or anything like that.”

  Shawna frowned. “Why would you make my life uncomfortable? If Dillon ever visits, he’ll be coming here.”

  This time, Nate was curious.

  “I asked your mother to move in with me, and she said yes.”

  Okay, this was going from dinner to moving in. Nate didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Oh,” Shawna said. “Mom?”

  “I’m so happy, Shawna. Honestly, I really am.”

  “This is what you want?” Shawna asked.

  “Yes. We had talked about it a couple of weeks ago, but we wanted you two to meet first, and then we wanted to make sure you could get along, and we can see that you both do.”

  This was moving really, really fast.

  Nate stared across the table at Shawna, and she looked so damn pale. They were about to end up together, living in the same home.

  “What about this place, Mom?”

  “It is already on the market, and there has been an offer. I’ve handled everything while you’ve been at school.”

  “What do you say, son?” Daniel asked.

  “Congratulations.” Nate held up his soda can. There was nothing else to say. Glancing across the table, he saw Shawna staring at her mother.

  “Congrats, so, erm, what exactly is going to happen now? Clearly, you both have an idea, or don’t you?” Shawna asked.

  Nate looked toward his father to find him smiling. This was interesting. He’d never seen his father look so happy.

  “We do,” Belle said. “Do you want to tell them?”

  “This place has already had an offer, and I want Belle to move in with me. She has already started decorating your room. We decided to make these plans while you were both in school to make this process much easier.”

  “Oh,” Shawna said, and glanced over at him. “We’re going to be one big happy family.”

  He saw she meant the complete opposite. The rest of the dinner went by with conversation being changed to something a great deal safer. Belle talked about her day, and his dad talked about his. Nate wasn’t really interested.

  His gaze was focused on the beautiful girl opposite him. Fuck, he had already fucked Shawna, and he wanted to do it again, and now she was going to be living in the same house as him.

  Later that night, after they said their goodbyes, and he was sitting in his father’s car. He glanced at his cell phone when his dad started to call.

  “I’m serious about Belle, son.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. I love her, and I want to make her happy. This is the real deal.”

  “Does she know about Mom?” Nate looked toward his dad to see him grip the steering wheel tightly.

  “She knows that I’ve had a difficult time with her.”

  His mother was a pain in the ass, flaky, and mean. There was not a nice bone in her body. From drugs to alcohol, his mother had caused his father problems. His father coming from wealth, she had done everything she could to abuse her position.

  She didn’t give a shit about the pair of them, and Nate never missed her. There had been times throughout his life where she came to them, pretending to care. It was all a scheme to get money out of his father. The moment she got the mone
y she wanted, she was gone. There had been times that she had left Nate at fairgrounds, malls, and other places. It had been a stranger who came to his help and alerted his father.

  “She’ll come out to cause trouble. She always does,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t do anything about her coming back. Belle knows the truth, and I have no intention of hurting her or her daughter. Shawna seems nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do I get the sense that the two of you are not actually friends?” he asked.

  Nate sighed. “No, we’re not friends, and we’ve never been in the same circles. It’s nothing personal to her. I’m a jock, and she’s not.”

  “She’s pretty though.”

  He knew that, and rubbed at his eyes. “I wish you had warned me about your plans.” He would have been able to keep his hands to himself, wouldn’t he?

  Shawna close to him, it would be a piece of cake, right?

  * * *

  The following week at school, Shawna was sitting outside at lunch. Her friends had just left, and she was finishing up her sandwich when Nate sat down opposite her.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, glancing around. “I thought everything had to be super duper quiet.”

  He rolled his eyes, but the smile playing across his lips sent tingles through her body. She pressed her thighs together, and purposefully looked away. This was a mistake.

  “It does, but how are we going to keep our new family quiet? I have friends. You have friends. It’ll come out.”

  “Then I’ll leave it to you. I have no interest in bragging about it.” She shrugged. “Our parents could have been, I don’t know, more upfront about this.”

  “Would you have stopped her?” Nate asked.

  Shawna thought about it, and shook her head. “Nah. You should have seen and heard how happy she was when you guys left. She was like a kid in a candy store or something. Really happy, and full of excitement. I’ve not seen her behave like that since before my dad left.”

  “I wouldn’t either. My dad, he’s smitten.”

  Silence fell between them, and Shawna glanced behind him to see several of their classmates looking at them.

  “I think it’s time you go. We can’t do this,” she said.

  Even for a weekend, she had seen another side of him. That was a onetime deal though.

  He looked behind him, and she saw his shoulders slump. “Do you ever think this divide is necessary?”

  “You mean the whole jock and loser divide?” He nodded. “This has been happening for all time, Nate. Whenever there is a jock, there is a nerd, and then there’s your goths, and then there’s your techno people, and you know, every other group.” She could point around the entire high school to pick out individual groups of people. “If we break those rules, then there will be chaos.”

  He laughed, and she liked the sound. Picking up a slice of cucumber from her sandwich, she took a bite.

  “We’ll get through the next couple of months,” she said. “College is months away, and by this time next year, our living together will seem like such a lame ass problem. Will I have my own bathroom?”

  “Yeah, you’ll have your own bathroom.”

  “Oh, goodie. I’m happy. The last thing I’d want to do is bump into one of your cheerleader friends.”

  “Wouldn’t happen, babe. I don’t bring them back to my place.”

  “‘Babe’, now that has to stop. I don’t accept that word.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “You didn’t have a problem with me calling you that when I was fucking you.”

  She paused with the cucumber in front of her mouth. “We need to stop that as well.”

  “Stop what?” he asked.

  “Talking about what happened. It was a mistake. You know it. I know it, and I don’t want my mom freaking out if she ever finds out.”

  “You want to pretend that nothing happened?”

  “Nothing did happen.”

  He smirked, and she just wanted to slap him. This wasn’t helping. “We’re going to be living under the same room. Lots of places to try to hide. You can try to do that all you want, but I’m not going to pretend that something didn’t happen.”

  “Yo, Nate, what the fuck, man?” Buster interrupted him.

  Shawna was more than happy with that. She forced a smile to her lips. “Ah, saved by the jock.” She winked at Nate, and watched as he shot her a glare.

  “This isn’t over.”

  “I doubt it is.”

  She watched as he moved away, and when she was finally free, she blew out a breath. Her mother trusted her, and sleeping with Nate had been a really stupid idea. She didn’t know what she was thinking, and what was worse, of all the people her mother could date and fall for, why did it have to be Nate’s father?

  “Did my four eyes deceive me or was that Nate Hot Stuff Bridges talking to you?” her best friend, Chloe, asked, taking a seat.

  “I thought you were ill?” she asked. Chloe hadn’t been at school all day.

  “I was, but now I’m feeling like a million times better. I was just so ill this morning, vomiting.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Are you pregnant?” Shawna asked.

  “Nope. You need to have sex for that, and last time I checked, I’m a virgin.”

  Shawna forced the smile to stay on her lips. She hadn’t told any of her friends about what happened, and she had no intention of ever letting them know. Being with Nate hadn’t been embarrassing to her. The biggest problem was what everyone else thought. She glanced over at his friends, and saw Amanda hanging off Nate. Looking away, she smiled at Chloe. His friends would make her life miserable, not to mention, when he moved on, she would be a laughing stock.

  He’d pass her over, and everyone would know her as his chubby fascination or something.

  Not going to happen. She was just going to forget that it happened.

  “So, why was Nate here?” Chloe asked, taking a bite of her French fry. “Yum.”

  Shawna rolled her eyes, and finished as much of the sandwich as she had left that she could manage.

  “I don’t know. He did a lot of talking, and I didn’t exactly get it all. What are your plans this weekend?”

  “My parents are coming home, and you know they demand family time so that is exactly what I’m going to do. Family time. How is your mom?”

  “She’s doing fine. My dad called me the other day, and I was forced to talk to him.” Shawna shuddered. “Never, ever going to get that image out of my mind.”

  “Were you even aware of your parents struggling?” Chloe asked.

  “No. I think that is what makes it so difficult, you know? They argued, of course they did, but it was about stupid stuff. It wasn’t unusual for them to argue, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, my parents argue all the time. At least, I think they do when they’re home.”

  How was she going to handle moving into Nate’s house? It had just been on the tip of her tongue to invite Chloe around whenever she needed the company. Would she be allowed to do that in Nate’s home?

  Why was she even taking the time to think it over? Of course she would be able to do that. Why not?

  Later that day, after walking home, she got stuck into making dinner for when her mother would arrive, and sat at the dining room table to do her homework. She worked through the homework that was the easiest, and then moved onto the much harder stuff.

  “Hey, honey,” her mother said when she opened the front door.

  “Hey, Mom.” Shawna closed her books, and moved them to the side before heading into the kitchen to finish serving their food. She piled the plates high with tetrazzini from the leftover chicken in the fridge. Placing it on the table, she grabbed a soda for herself and the wine bottle for her mother, pouring her a glass. By the time she got back to the table, her mother was sitting down.

  “How was your day?”

  “Good, good, you?”

  They made small talk about what
they had been doing with their day. She took her fork, and had a bite of the pasta dish. She had used spaghetti, and she loved it. “Mom, when do you think we’ll be moving?”

  “Within a couple of weeks.”

  “It seems so fast.”

  Belle paused in eating. “Do you want me to put a stop to it? I can if you’re not sure.”

  Shawna stared into her mother’s eyes, and then wished she hadn’t done so. She shook her head. “No, of course not. You like Daniel. I was just curious about how this was going to work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, example. Chloe’s parents are back, and you know they can be a little much. I was going to invite her over, but then I didn’t know if we’d be here or at Nate’s, and then I didn’t know if I’d even be allowed my own friends.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Sorry.”

  “No, no, of course. Yes, you’ll be allowed friends over, and nothing is going to change. That I promise you. All that is happening is we’re moving in together. I love him, Shawna, and I really want this to work. Not just for me, but for you also.”

  “Can I ask another question?”

  “Nothing has changed, Shawna. You can ask me anything.”

  “Why didn’t you and Dad have any other children? I know you wanted them.”

  Belle sighed. “Your father didn’t want any more, and I didn’t want to press for something that would change our lives.” She reached out, stroking her head. “I love you, Shawna, and you’ve been more than enough for me.”

  Staring into her mother’s eyes, she saw the pain, and promised herself that she would never settle for a man who wanted entirely different things out of life.

  Chapter Three

  “Where do you want this?” Nate asked two weeks later. When his father had said that Belle would be moving in soon, Nate had figured it would be a couple of months, not a couple of weeks. He had wanted time to figure out how he was going to keep his hands to himself. At school, whenever he saw her, his arousal went into overdrive, and right now it was freaking him the fuck out.

  Shawna rarely looked in his direction, and he was more than happy with that.