him away or let him snuggle up close. I put my hands on
his chest, but didn't push. His muscles beneath the tight T-
shirt were hard and firm. He leaned, and I didn't pul away.
If he'd kissed me, I'd have been lost, but if he'd ever
thought he knew me, he proved himself wrong again. He
didn't kiss me. He spoke, instead.
"I'm your husband."
I pushed my arms straight. His hands slid from my elbows
along my arms and fel away at my wrists. I stepped back,
my hand against his chest preventing him from folowing
unless he pushed me, too. Austin looked for a second as if
he meant to try it, but didn't.
"I have a folder ful of paperwork that says otherwise," I
told him.
"Okay, so not officialy. But you can't tel me—"
"I can tel you anything I want, so long as it's true," I shot back.
"Can you tel me it's true that you don't miss me, too? Not
even a little?"
"I miss fucking you," I said flatly. "The rest of it? Not so
"I miss fucking you," I said flatly. "The rest of it? Not so much."
Austin grinned and spread his fingers. "It's a start, right? I'l cal you."
"I won't answer."
"I'l cal again."
I pointed at the door, and he went. I waited until it closed
behind him before I gave in to the urge to sigh. What is it
about bad boys that make them so, so good?
I've known him since kindergarten. Austin. In my
elementary-school class photos, more times than not, his
freckled face is beaming from the row behind me. In one,
we stand beside each other, our grins showing the same
missing teeth.
In high school, we had nothing in common. Austin was a
jock. I was a gothpunk girl with multiple piercings and a
tattoo of a dragonfly on my back. We shared colege-level
classes and the same lunch period. I knew who he was
because of his prowess on the footbal field. If he knew me
it was maybe because I was one of the girls every boy
it was maybe because I was one of the girls every boy
knew, or maybe just because we'd been in the same
school since we were five. We didn't say hi when we
passed in the hals, but he was never mean to me the way
some of the boys could be. Austin never caled me names
or made crude invitations.
In the fal of our senior year, Austin went down under a
pile of boys pumped up with testosterone and fury. We
won the homecoming game, but instead of riding in Chrissy
Fisher's dad's 1966 Impala convertible, Austin took a red-
lights-flashing ambulance to the Hershey Medical Center.
He recovered, nothing miraculous about it. His body,
bones broken and skin torn, healed. Nobody ever said
he'd never play footbal again. Austin simply never did.
Nor basketbal, either, and in the spring, not basebal. By
then his chances of going to anything other than community
colege had vanished along with the scholarship offers, but
if he ever cared he wasn't getting a ful ride to Penn State,
he never said so to me.
And by then, he would have. By the time our senior year
ended, Austin told me everything.
We were an odd couple, but nobody shunned us for it. I
We were an odd couple, but nobody shunned us for it. I
didn't hear whispers in the hals. No jealous cheerleaders
tried to pul out my dyed-black hair, and no slick rich
jocks tried to convince him he was better off without me.
We didn't go to the prom, but only because we decided to
stay home and watch soft porn and fuck, instead.
When I told my mom we were going to get married, she
hugged me and wept. Her bely poked between us—she
was pregnant with Arthur, then. If she suspected I wanted
to marry Austin as much so I could move out of the house
as for passion, she didn't say anything.
When we told his parents, his dad said nothing and his
mother's eyes dropped to my waistband. She didn't ask
me if I was pregnant, and she must have been surprised as
the months of our marriage passed and my bely stayed
flat, but no matter how she might have felt about the
prospect of me as a daughter-in-law, the idea of a bastard
grandchild must've been worse.
I wore a thrift-store wedding dress and Austin wore a suit
of his dad's we'd paid the dry cleaner to take in. In
pictures, my thick black eyeliner and my spiked black hair
make me look pale, wan. Tired. Scared, even.
The truth is, I was happy.
We both were, I like to think. At least at first. Austin went
to work for his dad's construction business, and I kept up
work at my mom's shop. My granddad had died and it
was hers, ful-time, and now that she had Arty, she
couldn't spend as much time with it, so I managed the
shop.
We were happy.
And then, we weren't.
Chapter 07
When I was younger, the prospect of Sunday dinner at my
dad's had so excited me or stressed me out I'd vomit.
Never at my father's house—even when I was little I knew
Stela wouldn't approve of a puking kid. I didn't puke
anymore, but I'd never managed to get rid of the knots in
my stomach, either.
I popped an antacid tablet now as I sat in my not-
expensive-enough-to-be-impressive car in their half-circle
driveway of stamped concrete. This was the fourth new
house my father'd had in the past seventeen years of life
with his second family. Before that he'd lived in a stately
Georgian-style half mansion with his first family. He'd
never lived with my mother.
Birth-order studies claim that an age difference of six or
more years between siblings complicates the normal
oldest, middle and youngest personality traits by also
making each child an only. That's why, though I have five
half siblings and an uncle who's more like a brother, I'm an
only child. I've tried identifying with being the middle kid—
but what it comes down to, in the end, is I'm not.
The door opened and Jeremy and Tyler ran out. They
both favor my dad, too. Al of us look more like siblings
than we were raised to be. I was fourteen when Jeremy
was born, sixteen for Tyler. They're more like nephews or
cousins than brothers. I'm not sure what they think of me,
just that they're always glad to see me and aside from the
fact they're spoiled brats who could use a good spanking
now and then, I'm usualy glad to see them, too.
"Hey, Paige." Jeremy at twelve no longer ran to clutch at
my legs. He settled for a half wave with limp fingers.
Tyler, ten, was nearly as tal as me but squeezed me
anyway. "Paige, c'mon, we're going to play Pictionary.
Grandma and Grandpa are here already. So's Nanny and
Poppa."
"And Gretchen and Steve, too, I see." I pointed to the two minivans that belonged to my dad's kids with his first wife.
"Everyone's here," Jeremy said somewhat sourly, and I
gave him a glance. He'd always been a pretty upbeat kid.
Today he scowled, blond eyebrows pinching tight over the
smaler version of our father's nose.
I leaned back into my car to grab the gift, then locked my
car. It was unlikely anything would happen to it parked in
my dad's driveway, but it was habit. "Come. Let's go in."
I slung an arm around Tyler's neck and listened to him
babble on about school, soccer, the new game system
he'd found under the Christmas tree. He had never known
Santa to disappoint him. I'd stopped trying not to be
envious of that, even though I no longer believed in Santa
Claus.
Inside, Jeremy slunk to a chair in the corner and sat with
crossed arms, the scowl stil in place. Tyler abandoned me