Wild Reckless Read online

  “Did Owen really commit an armed robbery?” I ask, and Willow takes a deep breath, never really saying anything, but letting her silence answer for her. “And he stole a car?”

  I wait while Willow’s brow pinches, her lips pursing in thought. “I only know what I heard, Kens. I…I’ve never been very close to him. But, yeah…that’s what I heard.”

  “And the gun…” I start, and her eyes widen quickly, then just as fast relax again. She’s trying to keep her emotions in check, trying to make this not a big deal for me.

  “Will, did Owen really put a loaded gun to his head? Did he really do that?” I ask, my stomach feeling punched, inside and out, at the thought of Owen doing any of those things—mostly the last.

  “Again, Kens…I only know what I’ve heard. I’ve heard the same things you’ve heard. But I wasn’t there. I don’t know for sure. But I bet…” she starts, pausing for a deep breath as we turn down the street to my house. “I bet if you asked him, he’d tell you the truth.”

  When we pull into my driveway, there’s an older-looking Volvo station wagon sitting near the back door of the house, nobody inside.

  “Company?” Willow asks.

  “I’ve never seen that car before in my life,” I say, my gut feeling sick.

  “Want me to, I don’t know...wait? Or come in with you? You know, in case it’s…” She’s worried it’s my dad.

  “Dean wouldn’t drive such a thing,” I say, my mouth relishing at calling my father by his given name, forgoing any relationship he has with me.

  We both step out of her car and move closer to the Volvo, when my mom and Owen step through the back door of the house, my mom holding a set of keys on her index finger.

  “Happy birthday, Kensington. I was thinking maybe we put that license of yours to use,” my mom says, and I look to Owen, who’s smiling and shrugging behind her, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat turned backward.

  “Shut up, it’s your birthday?” Willow asks, shoving my shoulder once, kind of hard.

  “Not until Saturday,” I say, my eyes focused only on Owen’s, on the sweetness of them, the love in them.

  “On Halloween? That’s awesome. Oh my god, we should totally have a party. I mean, like…an appropriate party,” Willow says, putting on a fake voice of responsibility for my mom.

  “You can all come here. I’m off that day, and I’ll make a big dinner. We can carve pumpkins,” my mom says, stopping right in front of me and pulling my hand up in hers, transferring the keys. “What do you think, Kens? Sound good?”

  I smile and nod. “That sounds great,” I say, looking at the small music note key ring in my hand, the lone Volvo key hooked on it. “Thanks, Mom.”

  I reach for my mom, hugging her tightly, my eyes still finding Owen behind her.

  “Thank Owen, too. I couldn’t have done this without him,” she says, confirming what I’d already figured out on my own. “I didn’t want to get ripped off, since I don’t know a thing about cars. He went to the dealer with me, made sure everything was working right.”

  Stepping by my mom, I move closer to Owen, my throat closing up with all of the things I want to say to this boy that I…I love, my god do I love with so much of myself. I’m so afraid of everything, of what people say, of what Cal said, but I also don’t care because standing here in front of me, looking at me like he is, I know in my heart that Owen is good.

  Owen is good.

  In front of my mother, in front of my new best friend, I stand on the tips of my toes and kiss him lightly, pulling my face away from his before anyone notices, before anyone sees. And I whisper.

  “I see you,” I say.

  Owen’s eyes…they respond.

  Chapter 15

  I honestly think Gaby is trying to make me hate my own birthday. There’s no other reason for her to do what she did.

  A Facebook message would have been simple—an email, simpler. A text, something I could easily ignore, delete without reading. What Gaby’s done is far more about Gaby than about my birthday. This package—the one I’ve been sitting on my bed with, staring at, since about seven this morning—is a Trojan horse.

  The knock on the door was faint, but I heard it. I was awake, listening for the sound of Owen’s truck, waiting for him to be awake too. Instead, the only other person awake at this hour near my home was whoever left this package on my doorstep.

  I know it was Gaby.

  There was no return address, only my name and house number. More than suspicious—it was obvious. Yet, I brought it inside with me anyhow. I tried not to open it. But I’ve never been good at ignoring impulses. The pull—it was just too much. I had to know what was inside.

  Digging my nails into the taped sides, I pulled the flap of the cardboard free, then pulled out the layers of tissue paper hiding my gift. I recognized the dress as soon as I saw the blue fabric of the sleeve. I’ve coveted Gaby’s blue Alexander McQueen dress since the day her mother bought it for her. She let me wear it to one of my performances, and it was the one that caught the attention of recruiters from Tisch and Julliard. She never let me borrow it again—and now, part of me thinks she was jealous of the attention I received when I wore it.

  Gaby was always in it for our school dances our junior year. And now, sitting here, looking at it resting in crumpled tissue paper—in a non-descript brown box, borrowed from something else—I can’t help but wonder if she wore it for my father.

  “I’m going to burn you,” I say to myself, to the dress, a small smile inching up my lips.

  There’s a letter in the box—a letter I have no intention of reading. I don’t even bother to tear the small seal on the envelope; instead I stuff the letter into the crinkles of the tissue paper surrounding the dress.

  The incessant faint knock that’s happening at my door again feels different this time, and I welcome being pulled away from Gaby’s sad attempt to erase the damage she did to our friendship. I toss the box to the floor, leap to my feet, and patter down the stairs quickly, opening the door to a rush of cool air and faint flakes of snow falling behind Owen.

  “Looks like it’s a white birthday for you,” he says, his hands held behind his back awkwardly. I step up on my toes and kiss his cold lips, then tug him into my house by the collar of his shirt. “So pushy,” he teases.

  “What’s behind your back,” I say, pulling on his elbow now.

  “Wow, you are like…all about the presents, aren’t you?” he says, his playful smile curling one end of his mouth as he unwraps his neck from his scarf.

  “Maybe,” I smirk. “Now, gimme, gimme, gimme!”

  I pull the bag from his hand and rush to the kitchen with it, Owen trailing behind me, his feet dragging and his hand running along his chin. “I was kind of hoping you would open it later,” he says, his brow pulled in as he looks from me to the front door and back again. “I saw Willow pulling up out front, and now just feels weird…”

  He trails off, his shoulders slumped, and his spirit deflated. He’s embarrassed, and as much as I’m dying to crack open the bag with his gift, the fact that giving it to me alone is important to him means a hell of a lot more.

  “Okay, I’ll put it in my room. Won’t peek; I promise!” I say, crossing my heart and zipping past Owen in my socks, gliding along the floor and up the stairs. When I get to my room, the box with the blue dress immediately confronts me, and its presence pisses me off. I kick it under my bed, and then pull my comforter down on the side, completely hiding it from my view.

  The doorbell rings loudly as I set Owen’s gift in its rightful spot atop my pillow. I race back downstairs, trying to reach the door before Willow has a chance to push the bell again, but I’m too slow.

  “Jesus Christ, you’re impatient,” I say, flinging the door open to a shivering group of four.

  “It’s cold. My hand slipped,” Willow says, somehow still managing to pop a bubble between her lips despite the rapidly dropping temperature on my porch.

  “My mo
m was sleeping in,” I explain, before my mother cuts me off and finishes for me.

  “She was. She’s up now,” my mom says through an irritated yawn. “Who wants pancakes?”

  “Oh, do you have more of that bacon?” Owen says, surprisingly not shy. I’m a little less upset about the bacon-sharing with my mother now that I know their early morning meeting was all about getting me a set of wheels for my birthday.

  “You got it. I’ll grill up the rest of it,” my mom says, winking at Owen. My belly grows warm seeing her accept him so completely.

  Willow, Jess, Elise, and Ryan start slipping out of their coats and hats and gloves in my front room, leaving a pile of winter clothing gathered around our front door, and this scene makes me even happier. I love their mess.

  “We’re still carving pumpkins, right? We have to carve pumpkins! I brought my tools and everything,” Elise says, and I can’t help but quirk an eyebrow at her odd pumpkin fascination.

  “It’s her favorite holiday. And she’s kind of a bad-ass pumpkin carver,” Ryan says, shrugging.

  “All right then, pumpkins it is!” I say, looking over Elise’s shoulder, out the window that is growing frostier by the second.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that snow. It’s not real snow. It’s supposed to stop in an hour or two and clear out until next week,” Elise says, very insistent that weather does not detour us from our pumpkin mission.

  “It’s just going to be freezing-ass cold. Awesome time to walk around a field and pick up wet pumpkins,” Jess says, rubbing his eyes as he passes me and heads straight for the pot of coffee brewing on the counter. “Can we stop this mid-cycle so I can get a cup now?”

  “Seriously? Can’t wait the full minute it takes to drip?” Owen says, sliding into the stool next to the counter, pulling me to him so I’m standing between his long legs.

  “I’m not pretty without caffeine, yo,” Jess says, causing Ryan and Owen to bust out laughing.

  “Dude, don’t talk like a gangster. You can’t pull it off,” Ryan says.

  “It’s the lack of caffeine. It makes me say crazy shit,” Jess says, pulling the pot from the machine the moment it stops dripping, filling his cup and blowing forcefully into his mug, working to cool the liquid fast.

  “You talk to anyone about this addiction of yours?” Owen says, smirking at Jess as his jittery hands work to tilt the cup up for his first, sloppy gulp.

  “Like you should talk about addiction,” Jess mumbles, his eyebrows shooting up as soon as he fully realizes the words that left his lips. Owen’s arms grow rigid around me, and I know without looking his expression is cold. “I’m sorry man. That was crappy to say. I’m tired and grumpy. Totally uncalled for,” Jess says, pulling one hand away from his mug and reaching to shake Owen’s hand. Jess’s face looks honest and regretful, but I hope Owen can see it too.

  While it only takes him a few seconds to accept Jess’s apology and shake his hand, those few seconds feel long and ominous. And even after he tells Jess that it’s “no big deal,” his arms remain tight and his body on guard. I know that it was a very big deal, and that one tiny sentence is going to sit on his conscience for most of the morning.

  We all devour our breakfast, soaking our pancakes in butter and syrup and stuffing our cheeks until we’re all equally sick from the sweetness of the syrup and the richness of bacon. As Elise promised, the small snow flurries have disappeared by the time we’re done helping my mom load the dishwasher, and soon we’re all pulling on the mountain of winter clothing we left in the pile by the door.

  “Make sure you get one for me,” my mom says, handing me a hundred dollar bill, urging me to pay for everyone’s pumpkin. My father was always stingy with money, never wanting to pay for things with my friends. He wouldn’t even buy Gaby and Morgan’s museum tickets the times we went in the city. Just one more thing I think about differently now.

  “I’m driving,” Willow announces as we all pile onto the porch in our heavy boots and coats.

  “I’m out. Who’s with me?” Owen says, and Ryan is the first to raise his hand, stepping next to his friend.

  “Hey!” Willow protests.

  “Will, your driving scares the shit out of me in the summer. If I have a second option when there’s a chance for snow, I’m taking it,” Ryan says back quickly, and I notice Willow shakes her head, a little stunned by his honesty.

  “You know you could drive yourself to school in the morning, asshole,” she says, her eyes squinting, trying to mask how upset she really is.

  “Oh, it doesn’t scare me so much that I want to drive my dad’s piece-of-shit car. You’re still safer than that,” he says, and this seems to make her feel better.

  “Well all right then,” she says, leading the way as we walk down my front steps and toward the street out front. “You know he’s not that safe either, though, right?”

  “This guy? Hell, he’s never had a crash,” Ryan says, pointing to Owen, whose hands are buried in his pockets, his hood pulled up over his head and his arms stiff with the wool material of his black overcoat. Owen only rolls his eyes, then pulls his keys from his pockets, urging me to ride with him as well. I go willingly, but for different reasons.

  We pile into Owen’s truck, and Elise and Jess climb into Willow’s car; we head a few miles to the outskirts of town where one of the farmers still has a stand open for fall goods. The pumpkin selection is a little picked over, but we all settle on a few decent-sized ones, and before anyone can protest, I hand the money to the cashier.

  “My mom insisted. Part of my birthday present,” I say, smiling and enjoying the feeling of treating friends to something—even though it may be trivial.

  By the time we get home, my mom has moved a few of the cardboard boxes out to the kitchen floor, where she’s cut them open for our carving mess. When I was little, my mom and I used to make a pumpkin for our balcony every year. But that tradition sort of just faded away—forgotten among the other things in life that got in the way. I picked an extra large pumpkin just so she and I could create something together, and when I nod for her to join me, I notice her eyes tear up a little with her smile.

  “So, this is gross,” Willow says, pulling the lid from her pumpkin, long, gooey strings trailing from the bottom.

  “You know there’s more inside, right?” Elise says, reaching into hers with both hands, digging her nails in, and scooping a handful of the pumpkin insides onto the cardboard next to Willow.

  “Oh my gaaaaaaah,” Willow says, bringing her arm completely around her face, smothering her nose. “It smells…so bad.”

  “You are such a baby,” I say, reaching into Willow’s pumpkin and pulling out a scoop for her. I let it plop onto the cardboard, splattering some seeds and strings onto Willow’s jeans.

  “I think I’m out,” she says, standing, her nose still buried in her sleeve.

  “I’ll clean yours for you,” I say, and she lifts her arm up long enough to show me her grin and to raise her thumb in approval.

  It doesn’t take long to understand why Elise likes carving so much. I’ve managed to create a pretty spooky-looking set of teeth, and Owen’s carved his into a series of triangles to form a face—sort of. Elise’s pumpkin, however, is straight out of the set for Sleepy Hollow, a headless horseman charging forward through thistle with bats and menacing tree roots tangling around him.

  “Okay, I officially give up. That is seriously the best pumpkin I have ever seen,” I say, laying my knife down on the cardboard and running my messy hands through a towel.

  “You should see the one she made last year,” Ryan says, standing up and giving up on his pumpkin, which looks about as intricate as mine. “She made a set of four and turned the whole thing into Mount Rushmore.”

  “You’re an artist!” I say.

  “Eh. It only works with pumpkins,” Elise says, her tongue stuck out on one side of her mouth—her focus still on perfecting her craft.

  “It’s still art,” I say, stepping back
and watching her work.

  Elise keeps digging and nipping at pieces of pumpkin for the next hour, and eventually, Ryan, Jess, and Owen move outside to play basketball. House shows up with a few other guys, including Andrew, and pretty soon my driveway is serving as home court.

  “You like watching him, don’t you,” Willow says, nudging into me while we sit on the stoop by my back door, sipping hot chocolate. I bite my lip and shrug, relenting to a small smile. It’s a fraction of my feelings, because yes, I love watching him. I love how he moves, how masculine he is when he pushes the other guys, when he dominates them on the court. The way the ball transfers from hand to hand is effortless for him, as is his ability to put up a shot from any distance—and have it find the safety of the rusty hoop and net above my garage.

  I’m mesmerized by his skill, but more than that, I’m utterly taken with his form. It’s barely forty degrees outside, the sky veiled in a thick layer of cloud, but Owen’s shirt is off, his chest and abs and arms glistening with sweat. His hat is backward on his head, so he can see, and his jeans sling low on his hips, the red of his boxers like a target for my eyes. The things passing through my mind about him right now make me blush, and I’m almost worried that Willow can hear my thoughts.

  “You…love him?” she asks. I think about pretending I don’t hear her question at first. But I know she’ll only ask me again. I don’t answer, but instead shrug and give the same hinted smile I did to her last question. When she breathes in deeply, I know she knows the truth.

  I love him.

  I want him.

  I need him.

  I breathe him.

  Since the moment my eyes met Owen Harper’s, he has owned me, terrified me, consumed me, and I don’t even remember the girl I was before him any more.

  “Just promise me you’ll still be careful. Just…don’t let yourself go, not completely. In case you need to come back from him,” she says.