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The smile returned to Dean’s face. Damn, he loved winning. “You know my mom gives me a curfew even when it’s summer and even when I’m just in the backyard, so that isn’t an issue.”
She rotated her head and lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “You better make my s’mores right this time. The marshmallow has to be on fire before it’s actually done.”
He rolled his eyes and laid back on his towel beside her. “Don’t worry, I know what to do.”
Several minutes of silence stretched between them with only buzzing from a random passing dragonfly or bee to break the quiet. Before he was actually ready to move, Jillian stood and grabbed the clothes she’d worn to cover her swimsuit and began pulling them on.
“I need to go home and shower and at least pretend that I care what boring function my parents are going to tonight.” She neatly folded the towel that he would throw directly in the dirty clothes bin as soon as he crossed the threshold of his house and twisted and tugged until her hair was in something that looked way too good to belong on a girl who just spent the past two hours swimming in a pond. “They’re leaving around seven-thirty so I can just come around eight. Henry and Frieda don’t care and they’ll never breathe a word to my parents.”
With a grumble he managed to keep contained in his brain, Dean rose to his feet, slung his towel over his shoulder, and shoved hers under his arm. “I’ll wait for you by Fredrock. You don’t need to walk all the way to my house by yourself. And you know my dad will insist on driving you home.”
She took a few steps away, then turned back to him and bit her bottom lip and raised her hand, curling her fingers in a small goodbye. She opened her mouth and closed it, then cleared her throat before speaking. “See you then.”
He was almost certain he caught a glimpse of red on her cheeks he didn’t think came from the sun.
Weird. Girls were just plain weird. The uneasy roll of his stomach made him wonder if weird was contagious.
***
Jillian
Thirteen Years Ago
“I’m perfectly capable of walking to your house by myself. You didn’t have to stand there like some creeper watching me from the time I walked out the back door.” Jillian crossed her arms and huffed as she stomped past where Dean was waiting by Fredrock, exactly as promised.
Dean shoved his hands in the front pockets of his denim shorts. “Even if I didn’t want to make sure you were okay, my mom would’ve skinned me alive if I didn’t. She harps on us all the time to be considerate and gentlemanly. Whatever the hell that means.”
The corners of her stomach tickled from the butterfly wings a sudden bout of nerves created in her belly. Nerves? With Dean? She tried to ignore that and focus on her rapidly fading irritation with him. “Your mother is a saint to put up with you alone, much less all four of you.”
“Hey,” he nudged her shoulder as they crested the small hill that brought his home into view, “I’m supposed to be your best friend. As in you have my back through thick or thin.”
Jillian threw him a suspicious look in the slowly fading light of the late summer evening. “I thought you said you were making a bonfire.”
With all the exaggerated drama only Dean could affect, he rolled his eyes and threw his hands up toward the sky before dropping them against his thighs. “I am going to make a fire.” He pointed to a mound in the distance. “See, I have a stack of logs and branches ready to go.”
She frowned as they closed in on the pile of wood. “Why didn’t your dad already get it going? Or Wyatt or Tanner?”
He dipped his chin and zeroed in a lethal laser gaze. “Seriously? I mean…seriously? Jillybean, you’ve known me for seven years. Do you really think I need my dad or any of my brothers to build a fire for me?”
Jillian lifted one shoulder and surveyed the wooden structure in the center of a two foot tall ring of stone that reminded her of pictures she’d seen of teepees. She plopped down on one of the dozen Adirondack chairs situated around the pit. “I don’t know what it takes. The fireplaces at my house are all gas, so my dad just pushes a button and they light up.”
She bit back the giggle that threatened to spill out as he gathered some small twigs and two weird looking rocks, mumbling the entire time about the glass castle, his nickname for the cold, unwelcoming house she grew up in. She turned her head and gave a little sigh as she drank in the sprawling two story brick structure Dean called home. It was spacious, only slightly smaller than hers, but even from the outside it held a warmth she’d never experienced at her own place.
Glass castle was, sadly, a completely accurate nickname. Untouchable, uninviting, unfeeling.
A bright spark caught the corner of her eye and she whipped her head back around to face him. “What in the world are you doing?”
Dean looked up at her with a blatantly confused expression. “I’m starting a fire.” He enunciated each word clearly and slowly. “What part of this doesn’t make sense, Jillybean?” He lowered his head and returned to striking one stone against the other.
“Don’t you need like a lighter or a match or something?” She fidgeted with the hem of her shorts romper, too afraid to blink for fear Dean’s little experiment would wind up in him getting hurt. Freaking show off.
He grinned the same carefree, mischievous grin that most certainly always signaled trouble. “Watch and be amazed.” He hit the rocks off each other a dozen more times and a spark caught onto the small pile of ground up something, causing it to smoke. He grabbed a few twigs from the pile and, with more care than she’d ever seen Dean Carlisle exhibit, stuck them in the middle of the gray column rising gracefully from what looked like nothing more than dirt and he gently blew into the billowing cloud. A flame appeared on the branches so quickly it seemed like magic.
Jillian’s mouth fell open as he situated the fiery stick in the middle of the upright logs and repeated his actions two more times. Within minutes the small flickering grew into a small inferno. This boy somehow managed to create all this completely on his own.
Her awe quickly dissolved into irritation as she lifted her eyes and caught him standing beside the growing fire he’d built, hands on his hips and an arrogant smirk plastered across his face. “Proud of yourself there, Sparky?”
One thick, dark brow lifted and he looked down at her. “Um, Sparky?”
