Take Chances Read online

  A slow, unsteady breath eases from my lips. “Thank you.”

  He glances over me again and more lust radiates from him. “You’re welcome,” he says, and then offers me his hand.

  I take it and again I feel the magic in his touch as he leads me toward the door. I thought the night was so full magic and possibilities that I was going to change because of it.

  And I did.

  But not for the better.

  Chapter 6

  Red and the Big Bad Wolf

  Summers in Maple Grove are surprisingly hot, considering how intense our winters are. It’s eight thirty at night and it still feels as hot as it did midday. But I’m enjoying the heat as I wander around the fair with Dylan at my side, the smell of cotton candy and caramel apples in the air, the sounds of roller coasters and other rides in the background. Lights flashing everywhere. It’s a magical night and I feel like Cinderella at the ball, especially with the way Dylan keeps looking at me and how he holds my hand for the entire world to see and doesn’t let it go, even when a few of his friends join us for a while.

  We spend a lot of time riding the rides, ones that he lets me pick, never complaining even when I say I want to ride the Ferris wheel, which is known as the “couples’ ride.” He tells me I look pretty, that he likes my laugh. He smiles a lot. He has a really nice smile, one that makes people turn their heads and makes me forget how to breathe.

  By the time we’re coming off the Tilt-A-Whirl, I’m high off the night, so elated I do a few pique turns when I’m going down the exit ramp with my arms out in front of me, spotting all the way to the bottom.

  Dylan laughs as I reach the bottom. “That was impressive.”

  “That was nothing,” I say proudly and then do a few fouetté turns, swinging my leg out as I spin in place on one toe. I smile when I finish and Dylan smiles back, completely entertained, and it makes me feel warm and breathless inside.

  Then he steps off the exit ramp and brushes his hand across my lower back before heading toward the concessions. “So, Red.” He’s wearing a pair of dark jeans with a little bit of fray on them. His black shirt is just tight enough that I can see how solid his chest is. He’s also got a black baseball cap on that he’s wearing backward, hiding his hair, but he still looks as sexy as he does standing out shirtless working on his car. “Tell me something about yourself.”

  “Like what?” I ask, fiddling with the strap on my dress, my skin damp from the heat and doing the dance moves.

  He shrugs. “Anything,” he says. “Who you are? Where you’re from? I want to learn more about you.”

  I fan my hand in front of my face. “Well, I actually used to live in Fairmount, but then my mom and dad got divorced a few years ago and we moved here because my mom needed to start over.”

  “Do you ever go visit your dad?” he asks, watching me as we walk, the lights around us reflecting in his eyes.

  I shake my head. “I haven’t seen him since the divorce.”

  He gives me a sympathetic look. “That sucks.”

  I nod in agreement, staring at a candy apple booth beside me. “Yeah, but it’s probably for the best.”

  There’s a brief pause, and when I glance over at him, he’s giving me a quizzical look. “How do you figure?” he asks.

  I shrug, stopping and shuffling my heels against the dirt. “Well, he wanted a do-over too, like my mom, only instead of relocating he got a perfect new family, and I don’t really fit into that picture.”

  His eyes leisurely scan over my legs, my cleavage, my neck, finally landing on my eyes. His eyes are hooded and gorgeous and his attention makes me feel special. “You look pretty perfect to me.”

  My cheeks heat from his compliment. No guy has ever talked to me like this, and I feel like I’m going to melt. “Thanks, but I don’t think he agrees,” I say, and we start to walk again. “In fact, he made that pretty clear when he signed over full custody to my mom because he”—I make air quotes—“didn’t have time to raise a teenager the right way.” I lower my hands to my sides. “Whatever the hell that means.”

  “I think your dad is an asshole,” he says with so much anger in his voice it startles me a little. And it should have startled me more. I wish I could go back and shake that girl, tell her to wake up and see the signs, but I can’t. All I can do is remember.

  He reaches out and cups my cheek. The anger still there, and I can feel his hand trembling. “How could he not want you?”

  His words are so overwhelming I start to tremble, fighting to keep my legs under me. He can feel it, too, and he brings his other hand up and cups my face between his hands.

  “Hey, you want to go somewhere more private?” he asks, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Somewhere where we could talk some more without all the noise and chaos.”

  I nod eagerly. “Yeah, I’d really like that.”

  * * *

  He takes me up to Star Lookout, where teenagers are known to go and make out. I’ve never been there, but once we get up there I realize the allure of the place. It’s got a gorgeous view of the city, the lights sparkling below and the stars twinkling from above. Plus it’s quiet and there’s no one around, so we have a lot of privacy.

  “You know, I used to come up here a lot in high school,” he admits after we park and he puts the parking brake on, leaving the air conditioning on and the radio, along with the headlights.

  I want to ask him if he’s brought other girls up here, but not wanting to seem absurdly jealous, I ask, “Wasn’t that, like, this year?”

  He shakes his head. “I haven’t been to school in two years.” He pauses, watching me. “I dropped out at the beginning of my junior year.”

  “Oh.” I’m not sure how to respond.

  “Do you think less of me now?” he asks, more entertained by my uncomfortable reaction than anything. “That you’re on a date with a high school dropout?”

  “Not really.” I turn in my seat and face him, tucking my dress under my legs. “I’m not that great in school myself.”

  “Yeah, but you still go,” he says, rotating in his seat and leaning against the door, his attention still fixed on me. “I chose to give up and be a deadbeat.”

  “You’re not a deadbeat,” I tell him. “You work.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have a steady job,” he says, bitterness slipping into his voice for a brief moment. “I’m just a washed-up loser at eighteen.”

  My heart aches for him. “I don’t believe that’s true at all.”

  “Yeah, but you barely even know me. And if you asked my father, he’d tell you how wrong you are.”

  “Well, I think your father’s an idiot. In fact, most are.”

  He sits quietly in the dark for a moment, and when he speaks again he sounds calm and content. “You think so?”

  I nod, loving that I made him feel better. “I know so.”

  He scoots closer to me and leans forward toward the console. “You know what, Red, you are very wise for a sixteen-year-old.”

  My expression immediately falls. “I’m seventeen.”

  He reaches for me and grabs a lock of my hair. “I think it’s cute that you’re trying to pretend you’re older,” he says. “But I promise it doesn’t matter.” He plays with the strand of my hair, tugging on it. “And word of advice. The next time you lie about your age, you should let your mom in on it.”

  “She told you.” I frown, feeling ridiculous.

  He chuckles lowly. “She actually told me a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  He starts twisting my hair around his finger, forcing my head closer to him, almost like he’s reeling me into him. “Lots and lots of stuff, like how you’ve never had a boyfriend before,” he says, seeming pleased. “But let’s not talk about that.”

  Then, giving me no time to get embarrassed, he tugs on my hair just a little bit and my lips crash into his. The taste of him soars through me. I feel high. Powerful. Intoxicated. And the sensation only builds when he pul
ls me over the seat and onto his lap so I’m straddling him, and he does it somehow without breaking the kiss.

  At first everything starts off innocently. Our tongues gently searching each other’s mouth, him playing with my hair and running his fingers along my shoulders. He even shudders once when I bite gently on his bottom lip, something I saw a woman do on television once.

  Then his hand starts to wander under my dress, inching under the fabric. And the more heated our kiss gets, the higher his palm slides up, until finally he’s cupping my ass.

  I’ve never done this with a guy before, and I feel breathless and excited and terrified all at the same time, because it’s new and I’m not one hundred percent sure that I should want him to touch me this way as much as I do.

  I’m so confused, and my confusion only increases when he leans back, gripping the bottom of my dress, and tugs it over my head, without even giving me time to react. But he looks really distracted right now as he tosses the dress aside, his eyes drinking my body in.

  I’m still afraid, although the longer he looks at me with desire burning in his eyes, the more relaxed I get. But as he reaches for the clasp of my bra, I panic.

  “I’ve never done this before,” I sputter, crossing my arms across my chest.

  His eyes slowly slide up from cleavage to my eyes. “I sort of guessed that,” he says, placing a hand on my cheek and wetting his lips with his tongue.

  I feel transparent, no longer special, like how I felt at the carnival. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he says, briefly searching my eyes. “The first time can be scary, but I promise it’ll be worth it.”

  I swallow hard, because I’m not sure I want my first time to be right now. I try to figure out the best way to tell him that as he reaches around and unhooks my bra, but I’m conflicted between wanting him to keep touching me and looking at me like this and wanting him to stop.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he says as the bra falls from my body and my breasts are exposed. He reaches out and brushes his finger across my nipple with this hunger in his eyes, and I gasp. The noise seems to turn him on more, the hunger darkening and taking over everything about him, from the way he moves to the ragged intake of his breath, and it makes me feel powerful for a moment. “I just want to kiss you all over.” He keeps touching my breast as he leans forward to kiss me, and my stomach spins with emotions. “I promise this will be good,” he says with his lips hovering over mine.

  “But what if I can’t,” I whisper, hating myself at the moment for not being more confident, for not being able to be like my mother and own the moment.

  “You can,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”

  I don’t want to make him mad, but at the same time I’m terrified out of my damn mind. “But I’m not sure I’m ready,” I say, feeling the slightest bit of weight lifted off my shoulders until he leans back a little and looks at me and that intense emotion in his eyes looks like it’s about to burst out.

  He’s angry with me and is no longer looking at me like he wants me. I can feel myself disappearing, vanishing back into Delilah. Becoming Invisible Woman again.

  “Maybe I should just take you home,” he says, leaning away and looking out the window, not at me.

  My mind is racing, and I keep feeling myself fading the longer he looks away from me. And then he starts to move me away and I open my lips to protest, but all that comes out is, “Wait, I want to do this.”

  I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to say, but he looks at me and I feel the slightest bit better. Yet for some reason my shoulders feel more weighted as the pressure builds inside me.

  “Are you sure?” he asks, leaning closer, his eyes focused on my chest.

  I give a very shaky nod, my whole body trembling. Then he looks up at me and the lust in his eyes is so overwhelming I have to shut my own eyes. Seconds later, he kisses me and I kiss him back, letting his hands wander all over my body, feeling my skin, touching me. The longer he feels me the more settled I get. I don’t feel as nervous. As scared. And when he lays me down on the backseat of the car and looks down at me, I literally become lost in him.

  I’ll spare you the details of the rest, other than we had sex, it hurt, and he held me afterwards. That was probably the only part I liked about that night; lying in the backseat of his car with my head resting on his chest, my thoughts racing a million miles a minute.

  Even looking back at it now, I still get confused over what was going on in my head that night. Why I couldn’t see it for what it was. Why I couldn’t be stronger and tell him that I wasn’t ready. Why I couldn’t just do what I wanted to do, instead of what he wanted to. Why I couldn’t see that I wasn’t Odette and he wasn’t Prince Siegfried. That instead I was Little Red Riding Hood and he was the Big Bad Wolf.

  Chapter 7

  The Thunder Before the Rain

  It’s funny how when I look back on my life, I can see all the mistakes I made and how blinded I was by wanting to be noticed. I’d spent so many years in my mother’s shadow that when a guy finally noticed me, I thought it made me stronger. But really, it only made me weaker.

  Maybe if I knew what lay ahead of me, I’d have wanted to stay in the shadows and remain unnoticed. But honestly, I doubt it. I think I was too vain at the time to believe that anything could happen to me, especially death.

  And now all I can do is lie here in the cold water, staring up at the storm clouds, listening to my heartbeat fade away, and reflect on how I lived my life… let my memories take me over and haunt me…

  Despite my awkward and uncomfortable first time, I end up having sex with Dylan a lot. By mid-July, we are one hundred percent consumed by each other, spending every waking hour together. We go to parties, and instead of hanging out in my front yard, watching him work on his car, I sit in a folding up chair beside the car while we talk.

  Not to say that everything is perfect. Sometimes we argue over stuff, like what we’re going to do for the night. It’s nothing major and we make things work. Plus, he always makes me feel special. Always holds my hand. Always kisses me. Touches me. Always lets everyone know I’m his.

  I’ve pretty much been walking around with a huge smile on my face for weeks now, something my mom’s noticed.

  “God, I forgot how exciting everything is when you’re young,” she comments as I enter the kitchen wearing the red dress, because I love how Dylan looks at me whenever I wear it.

  I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and skip toward the doorway, doing a little pirouette. “Aw, to be young again,” I joke, and part of me loves that she’s looking at me with a hint of jealousy instead of the other way around. That I don’t feel so insignificant standing in the same room as her when she’s wearing nothing but a nighty.

  “So where are you going tonight?” she asks as she takes out a pan to cook dinner.

  I check my reflection in the small mirror on the wall. “To a party.”

  She sets the pan down on the stove. “You’re being careful, right?”

  I nod. “Always.”

  She turns up the temperature of the burner. “Good.”

  I leave the room and go get my purse before heading out to meet Dylan. It’s nearing sundown and storm clouds are rolling in. I hear a boom in the distance, the thunder before the rain, and I step back inside and grab my jacket off the coatrack. I slip it on as I cross the lawn and wind around the fence to Dylan’s driveway. Then I sit on the hood of his car and wait for him to come out, because he told me never to knock on the door, that his mother hates when people come over.

  But twenty minutes go by and he still hasn’t come outside. I eye the door, willing him to come out, but it stays shut. The sky starts to rumble again. Lightning strikes and flashes across the land. And then the rain comes pouring down.

  I jump up from the car and run up to his front door, soaked by the time I get there. I hesitate before I knock quietly. No one answers, so I knock a little harder, then I startle back when it swin
gs open. Dylan stands there with more anger in his eyes than I’ve ever seen, and it’s all directed at me.

  “I thought I told you to never knock on the damn door,” he growls, his chest heaving with his breaths.

  I trip backward and into the rain. “I’m sorry.”

  His mom starts shouting in the background, telling him to shut the damn door, that he’s in deep shit for making noise and waking up his father. That he’s such a fuckup. With each one of her words, he gets tenser. Angrier. But he doesn’t say anything back. He just bottles it in and steps outside, slamming the door behind.

  He doesn’t say a word to me as he brushes by me, stomps through the puddles to his car, and climbs in. I stand on the porch in the rain, my jacket drenched, wondering if I should follow him. He seems so angry that I’m not sure what to do. But he keeps sitting in his car with the engine running, like he’s waiting for me, so finally I run to the car and hop into the passenger seat.

  His knuckles are white as he grips the steering wheel, breathing in and out. He’s not wearing a jacket, his T-shirt is soaked, and beads of rain roll over his skin.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, wiping some of the rain off my forehead.

  He doesn’t look at me. “I’m fine,” he says coldly, and then he puts the car into reverse and backs into the road.

  He doesn’t speak as he drives down the street toward the edge of town. The longer the silence goes on, the smaller I feel. I watch the buildings and houses blur by, the rain crashing down against the ground and washing everything away.

  “I’m sorry I knocked on the door,” I finally tell him as he turns off the main street and down a dirt road where trees line the side and mountains are in the distance.

  “It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry,” he says, his attention straight ahead on the road. I can see the lightning reflect in his eyes every time it snaps, and it lights up his anger.

  I start to grow nervous. “Where are we going? Is the party up here or something?”