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“What is it?” I asked immediately.
“I need help putting on sunblock. I don’t want to get too dark,” Colette worried, grabbing a bottle of SPF 100 off a shelf and handing it to me. Colette was obsessed with white, and that fascination extended to protecting her skin from the slightest rays of sun. She was a nutcase.
“Maybe you should get a little sun,” I mumbled. “It’s good for you, isn’t it?”
She was starting to resemble a wax figure.
Colette smirked at me. “Worried about my health, Beck?”
“Don’t call me that,” I ground out. She’d never stop, she knew it annoyed me too much, but I had to lodge my protest. As long as I protested, I could survive hearing my mom’s nickname on Colette’s lips.
“Whatever, come on and put some cream on my back.” She sat and pulled her long, white-blonde bleached hair to the side, revealing the low cut of her swimsuit.
Revulsion lurched through me. She wanted me to touch her? I’d rather die.
“Ask someone else to do it.” I dropped the bottle of sunblock.
“Your father isn’t here, and I don’t trust anyone else. Hurry up, it’s no big deal.” She cast me a calculating look. “Don’t tell me you’ve never touched a woman’s back before, Beck. Or a girl atschool’s? I’d have thought a mature boy like you would already be fooling around with cheerleaders, or ice bunnies, or whatever they call those easy girls who follow the team.”
“I’m not dating anyone. Soren doesn’t allow it,” I reminded her.
My father had very particular rules about dating. He believed that given our status and wealth, casual dating was off the table. There were too many gold diggers out here, just out to climb the ladder by being associated with us. He managed to say it with a straight face while wearing a wedding ring put on him by Colette, the consummate gold digger.
It was so hot in the pool house I was nearly suffocating. I knew Colette well enough to know that she wouldn’t give up until she got what she wanted. Relenting and steeling myself to touch her gross, bare back, I squirted a load of sunblock on my hand and rubbed it on.
“I mean…you have fooled around with girls, haven’t you, Beck? It’s only normal for boys your age.”
I wished she’d shut the fuck up and stop making me feel sick with her probing questions.
“I mean, I’ve seen the sheets in the morning lately when you have exciting dreams.”
I stopped, horror coating my every nerve. The lotion was half rubbed in, and I didn’t care to finish the job.
I wanted out of there.
She twisted around. Her tepid blue eyes rose to mine. There was something predatory about her smile. I suddenly realized that she’d brought me in here and asked this favor on purposeto bring about this conversation. The very thought sent anxiety racing through me.
Sure, I had wet dreams. What fifteen-year-old boy didn’t? Thanks to my father’s paranoia, I’d gotten the least action out of all my friends. I was popular with girls at school, but I never acted on it. My father had threatened to send me to an all-boys boarding school in Switzerland if I endangered the Anderson reputation in town.
I didn’t want to leave Hade Harbor. Asher and Marcus weren’t just friends; at this point, they were my family, too. The ones I’d chosen. I never wanted to leave them. Besides, Hade Harbor and Cliff Point were the only places I had memories of my mom. I wanted to stay at all costs.
I couldn’t believe my stepmom was gross enough to bring up sex like it was a normal topic of conversation for us.
“It’s okay. I’m not blaming you,” she cut through my disgust. “It’s natural, like I said. Boys your age get all sorts of urges and impulses. It’s normal to want to explore them. Can you get some cream here, too?” She ran her fingers across one shoulder. “My nails are too long.”
“Seriously?” I complained.
“Beck, you can’t leave here until you do.”
I squirted more sunblock on my hand and slapped it on her shoulders. My skin was crawling off my body by now at Colette’s inappropriate birds and bees talk, or whatever it was she was gearing up for.
I finished by hastily smearing the cream across her collarbones. “It’s done. Can I go?”
She smiled, and there was nothing nice or comforting about it. Her manicured nails slid under the straps of her bathing suit, and she slipped them off her shoulders. The swimsuit pooled at her waist. I averted my eyes, horror freezing me in place.
“Just one more area to do, and then you’re done.”
I made it to the rosebushes behind the property before my stomach rebelled. I fell onto my bare knees in the soil and vomited, over and over again, until all I was bringing up was bile. Hate poured through my veins. Hate and soul-deep revulsion. I wanted to cut my hands off. Severing them at the wrists would be the only way to sooth my horror.
