If Josh had used that tone on me, I'd have shrunk. Kudos to Eleanor, she didn't.

"Nice to see how prompt you are to defend her. Anyway, now I understand why you've been so diligent with me on the condom front. Once bitten, twice shy."

Josh's shoulders slumped. He didn't sound flippant anymore when he said, "I'll have moved my stuff out of the house by tomorrow night. I'll make sure you don't have to deal with me until you're ready. If you ever are."

Eleanor flinched. Defeat stirred the fire in her eyes. Not for long. She was back in no time. "Get your speech ready for my father in the meantime. But whatever you say to him, don't count on that job offer anymore. If you're eloquent enough, he might spare your future on the Hill."

And on that note, she turned her back on us and crossed the road. I heard the beeping of an electronic car lock. She climbed into her car and we watched her drive away. When Josh reached the doorstep, our eyes locked. Not for long but enough for me to read the guilt in them.

A gust of wind caught my hair and stuck the material of my tank top to my skin. I shivered. In reflex his hand flew to the bare skin of my arm and stroked it. His touch opened up a gaping hole inside me, one empty with the need of him. I wanted to bend forward and fall against his chest, bury my face in the lemony scent of his shirt, and never, never, let him go.

But Josh took back ownership of his hand and walked inside.

Should I stay? Or should I leave him alone?

I stayed and shut the door behind me. He was already sitting on the couch, in the same place I'd been minutes before. He hunched forward, his head in his hands. I took a few steps towards him.

I wanted to thank him for not letting the "trash" attack pass by. Instead I said, "I'm sorry."

We kept apologizing to each other. What did that say about our relationship? Better not to think too much about it. His head popped up and I saw how drained he looked. The dark circles under his eyes made them look feverish.

"Sorry for what, Cassie? For me breaking Lenor's heart? For me trampling all over her trust?"

"You trampled over her trust well before I even got here." He had the decency to nod. "But I'm sorry for destroying your well-laid plans, your career..."

Josh shrugged. "I'll find another job. Lobbying wasn't what I wanted to do anyway. I accepted the job to please Lenor and her father."

I wasn't sure what kind of job "lobbying" was anyway. Whatever rocked his boat. Josh would do well whatever he applied himself to.

"I hope we're doing the right thing," he whispered, his gaze lost somewhere in the room but not on me.

Blood froze in my veins and I bit my lip. "Is saving Lucas the right thing to do?"

"What do we have to offer that a good foster family won't?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But I have to try. We have to try..."

Josh shot to his feet. His jaw was tight, his head bowed, like when he was on the field back in high school. When he talked, his voice vibrated. "Don't I know that? I'm ready to risk everything. I'm ready to risk Lenor. I love her and she loves me. It's just not the type of family I'd dreamed of for my kid."

After Eleanor's words and how these two had made me feel invisible, his family dreams double-slapped me. "The family or the mother?" I threw at him.

A crease between his eyebrows and a shake of the head were his only answers.

I should have shut up then. My insecurities took over. "Am I too trashy for the likes of you now?"

Josh was already moving toward me, his hands open with a peace offering. But the buzz in my ears covered his words. I stepped back. He rushed forward, trying to catch my arms, but I shook him away.

"I think we said enough for tonight." All my brain could manage now was to order my legs to get out of that house and break into a sprint. They did exactly that. In a snap, I was in the street and heading into the night.

Right, left? I didn't care.

twenty-two.

I took the opposite direction from where I'd come earlier, away from the town center, the only part of Oxford I was familiar with. It was still the same street but the houses became more sparse. And so did the streetlights.

As I started down some steps, the wet touch of a raindrop fell on my cheek. And another. I stared up, but the night sky couldn't tell me if it would stop at one or if I was in for some torrential weather. Like the other day outside the museum.

I shrugged. Whatever... I didn't care. A natural shower was what I needed. While the drip-drop of the rain intensified, I took notice of where I was. I stood on one side of a canal with riverboats anchored along the bank. Not Venice quite, but not the Oxford I'd seen so far.

I started along the bank, bordered on my left by a wall. I squinted because the only lights around were those filtering through the small windows of the boats. The rain got serious, ran through my eyelashes, down my cheeks, my throat and through the line between my breasts.

Finding somewhere to hide would be the smart idea right now. Instead, I extended my bare arms, opened up the palms of my hands, and let the drops bounce back on them. When we were kids, Josh and I used to run out wild under the summer rain. We lost it then, dancing and clowning around. More than once, it ended with a runny nose and a chesty cough.

I lifted my head, glanced at the sky again, then shut my eyes. I let myself travel back to those days when I'd been so happy, before Josh became more than a brother, before things became so complicated.

But "before" was also before Lucas, and I didn't want a life without him.

"Cassie." His voice came from behind me. Even through the curtain of rain surrounding me, I felt him. Still I didn't turn. I didn't want to face him. I didn't want to face what he thought of me.

The touch of his fingers through my soaked top shook me. They tightened around my shoulder. Against my will, his pressure made me turn around. Slowly. Gently. Until I faced him.

With one single step, he filled the void between us. I couldn't look at him in the eyes. Instead I stared at his shirt, stuck against his chest, his chest that rose in sync with his breathing, in rhythm with his heartbeat.

His hand slid from my shoulder to the nape of my neck and buried into the wet mass of my hair. I knew his next move before it even happened. His other hand grasped my hip, settled on the small of my back. He drew me toward him so that my breasts molded against his chest. Only then did I find the courage to look up. Still my eyes didn't meet his. They settled on his lips and the drops of water tipping on their edge.

His lips came closer. Closer and closer... until they reached mine. The sensation echoed what I'd felt the night before, only this time his mouth didn't just brush, it stroked mine. His tongue teased my upper lip, then moved to the bottom one. I shivered not because of the cold of the rain against my skin, but because of the lust Josh unearthed from deep in my body.

The storm awaking inside me made me dizzy. My hands reached for his waist as if it were my anchor. The hand on the small of my back moved down to cup my bottom. He pulled me closer against him and I shuddered, feeling the hard length of him against me. The material of his jeans and of my skirt provided no barrier. I could feel him against me.

This fed my courage and my hands ventured away from his belt, underneath his shirt, along his ribcage, then settled on his hard chest. His heartbeat pulsed under my palm. He released a guttural noise, all man and completely wanton.

And when he groaned, his tongue entered my mouth, fingers tightened around my neck, and the hand that rested on my butt journeyed under the hem of my skirt to land on the curve of my upper thigh. I let him rediscover my mouth, and his moves inspired my own. My tongue and my whole body started undulating against his.

Without warning, he grasped my butt and lifted me up. I shut my eyes, and, in seconds, my back was against a hard surface. The wall bordering the path? His mouth left mine and together we gasped for air and our eyes buried in each other's.

I wanted to talk but my throat was dry and I only managed a rasp which should have been his name. His head lowered to my breasts. Tiny bites on my nipples shot electricity through the material of my top and rippled across my body. The jolt settled between my legs with an ache.

This wasn't enough. I wanted... I needed so much more. And I felt his fingers graze the inside of my thighs. He massaged them until his palm slid to the top, between my legs. I thrusted myself against his touch.

It had never been like that before. The memory of our first time under the cotton tree at Sweet Angel Point shot in front of me. The sweetness of it shone a harsh light on our bodies, all wet and lusty.

Was that what we had become? What I was for Josh? A girl he could fuck outside, against a wall.

I opened my mouth desperate for air, but a scream burst out of me. He looked up and his glazed eyes switched to fear. He searched my face for an answer but I'd gone mute. I wriggled to unwrap myself from him. I stumbled away and tugged at my dress to make sure it was back below my panty line. My heartbeat stopped pounding loudly between my ears and the sound of the rain hitting the path got me back to reality.

A hand took hold of my arm. "Don't go, Cassie. Please, don't go."

I shook Josh away and turned to face him. This time I didn't avoid his eyes. "I'm not a slut... not even yours."

A frown appeared between his eyebrows. "Don't you think I know that?"

With no warm hands over my body, the dampness of my clothes hit home. Goosebumps broke and waves of shivers traveled though me. It was like having escaped a plane crash, and I only kept standing through the rush of adrenaline pumping through me, while I watched down at what we used to be.

"I haven't... I haven't had anyone since you." My confession ended in a muffled sob. "I've kept reliving every time we'd made love. I've dreamt those moments so many times that I don't know the truth from the fantasy. But each one of them made me feel special."

I let Josh bridge the space I'd just forced between us. I also let him pull away the wet hair that stuck to the sides of my face. But he didn't push further and his hands soon hung back at his sides.

"You're not a slut, Cassie, but I am." I felt my eyebrows reaching my hairline. "Or I was. Until I met Lenor..."

What was worse? The nameless girls he screwed for a night? Or the one whose name he said like a prayer? Hard to pick one.

And it was pretty much all I could take for the night. I raised my hands as if I were begging for my life.

"I have to go." What I really meant was I have to get my ass out of here and crawl under my blanket and curl into a ball like a baby and forget about you.

I turned in the opposite direction. With luck, I wouldn't end in a serial killer's hunting ground.

Josh's voice caught up with me. "You're still the same girl I made love to for the first time. You haven't changed, Cass."

I threw one last glance over my shoulder and answered through the rain. "But you have."

twenty-three.

Steep Hill ~ August, five years earlier.

Josh.

I want to get totally trashed tonight. I want to get so out of it that I'll forget my own name, her name.

Clarissa will drive me home.

I haven't seen her since December, since the night she stamped all over my heart and climbed onto that jerk's bike. I hate her and she is back.

Still, my hands clench the steering wheel of my truck. My truck whose engine I've turned off. I keep staring through the windshield, into the lights of the fires burning outside.

"Let's have fun, honey." The sound of Clarissa's voice makes my fingers tingle and want to slap her face.

I feel the shame. One, because I never want to hurt a woman. Two, because I'm the one who invited her to the bonfire in the first place. So I have to lay in the bed I made. That said, with Clarissa, we probably won't even need a bed. The hood of my truck will do. Later, when we've driven away from the party, when I'm so hammered that I can pretend she tastes like someone else.

So I let Clarissa lead the way. We've arrived late and a crowd has already gathered around the bonfires. Given that quite a few of them are already making out, the stock of beer must have been attacked. And I intend to join the show. With Clarissa's body glued to mine, I head for a large ice bucket and drop in the pack of beer I've managed to scavenge from home. My dad is a total Nazi about booze and there's not much I can get away with.

Loud music bursts from Nichols' truck, a guy from my team. The irony? That's the same song as the one I chose as a background when I had sex for the first time. I grab a bottle and hand it to Clarissa. I treat myself to the same and, in a few gulps, I'm done with it. I dry my mouth on the sleeve of my shirt. Beer won't do.

"Go easy, honey. We want you to last." Clarissa has stuck her tits against my chest and her hips start doing the wriggling against me I've seen before. Only, right now, we're in public, and even if we weren't, my body is wired to something else, someone else.

But Clarissa is a horny little number. Her hands cup my face and bury themselves in my hair, the sharp edges of her long nails make me shudder and, just as quickly, her lips are on mine, her tongue inside my mouth. She lets out a dirty moan.

"Josh!"

Woodie. He's been trying to get in Clarissa's pants for the whole of senior year but failed. It's surprising as she isn't that discriminating. I shake her from me. Still she climbs on me like poison ivy, but I manage to turn around.

"Wood-"

I freeze because, yes, Woodie is there, standing right in front of me. But she stands right behind him and my fingers tighten around the bottle in my hand. My stomach flinches, then drops.

"Hey, dude, good to see you. It's been a while." Woodie is right. The "while" has been months really, since December. He reminded me of her, so I kept him at a safe distance.

But I have to be a man. Like right now. It's my chance to show off, to make her watch what she's missing. My arm circles around Clarissa's plump shoulders. I even let my fingers wander over her left breast.

"Hi, Cass. Good to have you back."

She takes a step forward and she's now at Woodie's side. Next to his bull-like form, she looks even tinier than I remember. Not a midget like Clarissa, but petite and delicate like a porcelain doll. A porcelain doll with the warmest tan. My fist curls because I want to reach for her. I want to play with a wisp of her hair. It's still the color of golden corn.

Fuck. Cassie turns me into a poet. A lame, pathetic one.

"Thank you. I've been here a couple of weeks now." She sounds cautious.

If one thing has changed in her, it's her voice. Still husky, but with a lilt to it. Actually, it's shaking. The thought makes me stand taller and I find the courage to give her another look.

I shouldn't have. Because the first thing I set my eyes on are her legs. They are framed by those same old cowboy boots of hers and a denim skirt I've seen many times before. Her legs are so shapely that I crave having them wrapped around me.

I can't. I can't let her do that to me. So, by reflex, I pull Clarissa even tighter against me and let the palm of my hand clutch her breast. And here, again, comes the grinding of her hips.

Woodie's eyes ping-pong from my hand back to my face. He steals a sideway glance at Cassie, then looks back at me as if he's never seen me before. As for Cassie, her eyes shut and her mouth twitches.

All hell breaks loose when fireworks start bursting at the other side of the field. I hear Nichols shouting to draw everyone's attention.

"Come on, honey, let's go have a look."

Woodie is already on his way to watch the show. We're following him, but when I walk by Cassie, she grabs my arm. My muscles tense under her touch.

"Can we talk?" she asks.

Payback time. Last fall, I kept begging her to talk to me. She kept shutting me down. Now she's going to get a taste of her own medicine.

"Honey, I want to go and watch the fireworks."