“Oh no, we’re not together.” Nate starts to pull me away.
“Jade! You come too!” Ella says, holding up an Italian Riviera hat that’s bigger than she is.
Nate tugs at my elbow while Ella grins at me with a missing front tooth. All my willpower evaporates, and I gently shrug Nate off and head inside the tent. “The monster does as its queen commands,” I say, twirling my wrist as I bow.
“Is that okay, Uncle Pickle?” Ella calls out to Dylan, where he’s hovering outside the tent, watching me.
“Yeah, is it,Uncle Pickle?” I repeat with a smirk.
His cheeks flush—with embarrassment or amusement, I can’t tell. “Anything for you, bella,” he says to Ella. “Even bad photos taken with a piece of shit camera,” he adds under his breath. He tugs out a wad of cash from the back pocket of his jeans and hands a twenty to the stallholder. “Don’t worry, Officer, we promise not to break the law,” he throws at Nate without looking at him.
Nate stands huffing with his hands on his hips, but when I stick a paper mustache above my lips, smiling at him and then at Dylan, Nate lurches forward. He strides over to the costume table, snatches up a Riviera hat, and flops it on his head.
Ella drapes an Italian flag around her shoulders like a giant cape, and I steal a glance at Dylan while Nate fumbles with one of the fake mustaches. Instead of digging through the costume table, Dylan picks up a gladiator breastplate off the floor and clips it over his T-shirt before slipping a gladiator helmet over his tangle of dirty-blond hair. He tugs down the helmet that should look goofy, but on him, it looks…sexy. I turn away as an image slides into my head of Dylan wearing that breastplate with nothing on underneath, the ridges of his tattooed chest pressing hard against the frame. I flick the unwanted image back out.
For the next few minutes, we pose for hilariously dumb photographs, like the four of us “holding up” the Leaning Tower of Pisa from one side and lifting cardboard signs in the air that say things like “Ciao, Bella!” The entire time, burning tension radiates off Nate’s body like a heat signature, especially when Dylan shifts behind me at one point, standing so close that his warm, minty breath fans over the shell of my ear.
The second the teenage photographer drops his camera, Nate tosses down his hat, rips off his mustache, and asks me if we can go.
“I want copies,” Dylan calls out to the stall guy, overplaying his excitement. He’s obviously trying to piss Nate off, and I don’t get the intense hostility between these two. I definitely want copies, so I head over and give the guy my email address before turning back to spot Nate and Dylan in a terse exchange. Dylan’s grip tightens on Ella as Nate says something to him with venom in his eyes.What the actual hell?
I barely have enough time to remove my mustache and say goodbye before Nate drags me away from this side of the fair and back across the road to the street food.
“Could he have stood any closer to you?” he spits.
“He wasn’t standingthatclose,” I reply, even though the feeling of Dylan’s firm thighs brushing against the curves of my butt is probably never leaving my memory. Besides, I may have come here with Nate, but he’s not my boyfriend. I can stand next to whomever I want.
Nate turns to face me, clutching my upper arms to hold me in place. “You don’t seem togetwhat I’m saying, Jade. I know you’re friends with that guy’s sister, but this is not a man you want to get close to, okay? He’s fucking dangerous.”
“Nate,” I hiss, glancing around to make sure none of the townspeople are hearing this. “Who says I’m getting close to him? And you seem to forget that I’m here on a date withyou.Why the big freak out?”
His whole face is a storm cloud. “Because Iknowthat guy, and he’s a player and a scumbag. If you get together with him, I guarantee that you will regret it, and then you will come crying to me for help. And I’m not going through that shit again.”
I switch from being horrified at the assumption that Nate thinks I’m going to jump into bed with my best friend’s brother to being confused as hell about what he’s going on about.
“What shit? And what do you meanagain?” I say in a lowered voice. Whatever it is must be bad for Nate to get this riled up.
His brow scrunches, and he glances around before pulling me behind one of the food trucks to where no one’s within earshot. “Dylan King killed my cousin, Miranda,” he says, a flash of pain hitting his eyes.
My lips fall open. “What?”
Every inch of him tightens. “I was a little kid when it all happened, but Miranda and I were pretty close… We saw each other most Sundays for family lunch. I remember when she told me that she had a new boyfriend, and I’ll never forget how happy she looked. She brought Dylan to Sunday lunch, but she and her stepdad had a huge fight about it, and she didn’t come back for weeks. Miranda stopped going to basketball and debate, and her grades slipped because that asshole got her hooked on opiates.
“Then, out of the blue, she turned up looking all skinny and sad, with these sunken, empty eyes because Dylan broke up with her. To be honest, I was ecstatic.I thought that would be the end of it, and I’d finally get my cousin back. But that turned out to be the last family lunch she ever came to. Then, one day, the phone rang in the middle of the night.” His forehead drops as his voice splinters, and I reach to fold my fingers around his forearm. “Miranda was found dead in some random house outside town. She’d OD’d on a whole cocktail of opiates.” Nate thumb-points over his shoulder. “Drugs thatfuckergot her hooked on in the first place. Dylan didn’t even take an ounce of responsibility for what happened to her. Honestly, he’s lucky I don’t shove my fist so far down his throat that he chokes on his own shit. I get why he came back for the funeral, but Idon’tget why the fuck he’s still in town. I can’t even look at him.”
“Oh, Nate.” My voice comes out as a soft whisper. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He glues his gaze to the dirt beneath our shoes, and I step forward to wrap my arms around his shoulders, sensing him stiffen before he finally relaxes into me.
As we stand there hugging, it’s not Nate but a different person who clouds my thoughts, haunting them.
I’ve been so nice and carefree with Dylan these past few days, not knowing any of this. Yes, he’s my best friend’s brother. Yes, he just lost his parents in a horrible accident.
But if Nate is right, what Dylan did to that girl is unforgivable. No wonder Hayley has never brought any of this up. She probably didn’t want me to know.
I squeeze Nate a little tighter and turn my head into his shoulder. If what I just heard is true, Dylan King is bad news, and the sooner he leaves Still Springs, the better.
CHAPTERNINE
