He both came from money and had made his own fortune, and it showed in the way he held himself, the way he looked around a room, managing to take control of it with nothing more than a glance.
His eyes were as gray as a wolf’s and his hair was the color of cherrywood, a deep brown that hinted at golds and reds when the light hit it just right. He wore it long in the back so that it brushed his collar, and the natural waves gave it the quality of a mane—which only enhanced the impression that there was a wildness clinging to the man.
Wild or not, I wanted to get close. I wanted to thrust my fingers into his hair and feel the locks on my skin. I imagined his hair was soft, but that’s the only part of him that was. Everything else was edged with steel, the hard planes of his face and body hinting at a dangerous core beneath that beauty.
I didn’t know whether the danger was real or an illusion. And right then, I didn’t care.
I wanted the touch, the thrill.
That desperate need to fly I’d been feeling all night? So help me, I wanted to fly right into Evan’s arms.
I needed the rush. I craved the thrill.
I wanted the man.
And it was just too damn bad that he didn’t want me, too.
two
I’d known Evan Black for almost eight years, and yet I didn’t really know the man at all.
I’d just turned sixteen when I first saw him during the sweltering heat of a summer that marked so many firsts in my life. The first summer I spent entirely in Chicago. The first summer away from my parents. The first time I fucked a guy. Because that’s what it was. Not a sweet teenage romance. It was release, pure and simple. Release and escape and oblivion.
And damned if I hadn’t needed oblivion, because that was also the first summer without my sister, who was back in California, six feet beneath the sun-soaked earth.
I’d been lost after her death. My parents—wracked with their own grief—had tried to pull me close, to help and soothe me. But I wriggled away, too burdened with loss to cleave to them the way I wanted. Too heavy with guilt to believe I had any right to their help or affection.
It was Jahn who’d rescued me from that small corner of hell. He’d appeared at the front door of our La Jolla house the first Friday of summer break, and immediately steered my mother into the dark paneled office that was forbidden to me. When they’d emerged twenty minutes later there were fresh tears in my mother’s eyes, but she’d managed a cheery smile for me. “Go pack your carry-on,” she’d said. “You’re going to Chicago with Uncle Jahn.”
I’d taken three tank tops, my swimsuit, a dress, a pair of jeans, and the shorts I’d worn on the plane. I’d expected to stay a weekend. Instead, I’d stayed the entire summer.
At the time, Jahn was living primarily in his waterfront house in Kenilworth, a jaw-droppingly affluent Chicago suburb. For two solid weeks, I’d done nothing but sit under the gazebo and stare out at Lake Michigan. Not my usual M.O.—during past visits, I’d taken out the Jet Ski or skateboarded in the street or taken off on a borrowed bike down Sheridan Road with Flynn, the boy I would later fuck who lived two doors down and had as much of a wild streak as I did. When I was twelve, I’d even rigged a zip line from the attic bedroom all the way to the far side of the pool, and I’d eagerly tested it out, much to the consternation of my mother who had screamed and cursed once she saw me whipping through the air to land, cannonball style, in the water.
Grace had squealed at me from her chaise lounge throne, accusing me of ruining her hardback copy of Pride and Prejudice. My mother had ordered me to spend the rest of the day in my room. And Uncle Jahn had remained completely silent, but as I passed him, I thought I saw the twinkle of amusement in his eyes, along with something that might have been respect.
I saw none of that the summer of my sixteenth year. Instead, all I saw was worry.
“We all miss her,” he said to me one afternoon. “But you can’t mourn forever. She wouldn’t want you to. Take the bike. Go into the village. Go to the park. Drag Flynn to a movie.” He cupped my chin and tilted my face up to look at him. “I lost one niece, Lina. Not two.”
“Angie,” I corrected, making up my mind right then and there to kick Lina soundly to the curb. Lina was the girl I used to be. The one who’d always felt larger than life, and who’d needed to feel the rush of the world around her all the time. Who’d been too alive to be calm or careful. Who’d been a damn stupid fool who smoked cigarettes behind the school and snuck out to dance clubs. A little idiot who made out with boys because she wanted the thrill, and who rode on the back of their motorcycles for the exact same reason. Lina was the girl who’d almost been suspended from high school just one week into her freshman year.
And Lina was the reason that my sister was dead.
I’d lived in Lina’s skin all my life, but I didn’t want to be that girl anymore.
“Angie,” I repeated, firmly cementing the first brick of the wall I was building around myself. Then I’d stood up and gone inside.
Uncle Jahn hadn’t bothered me for the rest of that day or the next, though I knew he was worried and confused. When Saturday morning came, he told me that he was having some students from the graduate-level finance seminar he taught as an adjunct over for burgers by the pool, and I was welcome to join them. My call.
I’m not sure what compelled me to emerge from the dark cave of my room that afternoon, all I know is that I came down in my ratty cutoffs with Uncle Jahn’s ancient Rolling Stones T-shirt over my bikini top. I thought I’d stay for an hour. Have a burger. Remind myself not to sneak a beer, because that was the kind of thing Lina would do, not Angie.