Back with His Twins for Christmas

Chapter 2

* Seven Years Ago. New Year's Eve *

The Hashtone mansion blazed with light and noise, packed wall to wall with every high school senior in Pine Ridge who mattered—and plenty who didn't.

I stood near the fireplace with my drink warming in my hand, pretending to listen to Megan ramble about her Stanford application while my eyes committed treason.

Dean Sawyer stood right across the room like a dare I wasn't brave enough to take.

Beer bottle loose in his fingers. That dangerous smirk playing on his lips. Dark hair falling into eyes that tracked my every movement even when he pretended not to watch.

Two years. Two goddamn years since he'd captured my heart and spit on it.

It had started innocently enough—Christmas break when we were sixteen. His mom working at my parents' resort. Him assigned to equipment maintenance.

And me, bored and immediately fascinated by the boy who looked at me like I was a problem he wanted to solve with his hands.

He'd taught me to ski the way he did everything—recklessly, intensely, like the world might end if we didn't push every limit. By day five, I was addicted to the adrenaline rush of keeping up with school’s famous bad boy Dean Sawyer.

By day seven, he'd kissed me on the mountain, snow falling around us like we were trapped inside a snow globe, and I'd felt something crack open in my chest that had never quite healed.

Then school started and Dean, who'd spent a week looking at me like I hung the moon, suddenly acted like I was invisible. Worse than invisible—contemptible.

Like that week had never happened.

Like I had never happened.

He was part of ‘the rebels’—the working-class kids who wore thrift store clothes like armor and treated ‘the golden kids’ like me as natural enemies. And I'd become his favorite target.

Every snide comment in the hallway, every mocking laugh when I walked past, every cruel joke at my expense—each one a tiny knife sliding between my ribs and proof that our week had meant nothing.

But I gave as good as I got.

We turned the hallways into a battlefield, trading insults like weapons, each barb carefully crafted to draw maximum blood.

I hated him.

I hated him with the kind of passion that kept me up at night. Replaying every word, every touch, every broken promise his silence implied.

"There's my girl." Tom's arm snaked around my waist, pulling me against him with drunken possession. Whiskey fumes and too much cologne. "Been looking everywhere for you, baby."

I stiffened but didn't pull away. We were on-again this week, technically, even though I'd caught him with his tongue down Sarah Mitchell's throat at Jake's party seven days ago.

He'd apologized. He always apologized. And I always forgave him because that's what good girlfriends did. And I was nothing if not good at playing the role everyone expected, pretending that my heart wasn't somewhere else entirely.

"I've been right here," I said, and my voice came out flatter than I intended.

Across the room, Dean's eyes found mine over the rim of his beer bottle. Something flickered in that steel-blue gaze, before he looked away with deliberate disinterest.

The party swirled around us in a blur of music and laughter until someone suggested ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven.’

Childish. Stupid. The kind of game we should have outgrown years ago. But everyone was drunk enough to think it was hilarious, and suddenly names were being written on slips of paper and tossed into Kyle's baseball cap.

When they called my name, my heart was already pounding.

When they called Dean's, it stopped entirely.

"Oh, this is going to be good," someone snickered. "Mountain queen and the grease monkey."

"Try not to kill each other!" another voice added.

Tom's grip on my arm tightened painfully. "You don't have to…"

"It's just a game," I said, pulling free with more force than necessary. "I think I'll survive seven minutes."

The closet was bigger than I expected. Dean leaned against the back wall, arms crossed while his expression carved from stone. I pressed myself against the opposite wall, as far as possible from him.

Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating.

One minute. Two. Four. The muffled sounds of the party filtered through the door, punctuated by occasional laughter. I focused on breathing, on not looking at him, on the way my pulse hammered against my throat like a trapped bird.

"So." Dean's voice broke the silence, low and rough. "How's the golden boy treating you these days? Heard you caught him with his tongue down Sarah's throat last week."

He shifted, and suddenly he felt closer even though he hadn't moved.

Heat flooded my face but I stayed silent refusing to play his games.

"What's the matter, Lottie? Can't satisfy him? When would you finally get tired of being with someone who treats you like shit?"

It sounded like he had slapped me. My head snapped up, fury flooding through me hot and bright.

"At least he sees me," I fired back, and my voice cracked on the last word, betraying everything I'd tried so hard to hide. "You kissed me like I was everything and then acted like I was nothing. So don't you dare judge my choices when you—"

"You think I don't see you?"

Suddenly he was there, caging me against the wall, his hands braced on either side of my head. His breath fanned across my face, mint and beer and danger.

"You think I don't see you every fucking day? Think I don't notice when you wear that emerald dress that matches your eyes? Think I don't see you play with your necklace when you're nervous?"

His voice dropped to a growl against my ear.

"You think it doesn't kill me watching him touch you when I know exactly how you sigh if I kiss that spot below your ear?"

My knees went liquid. "Dean…"

We were inches apart now. His breath ghosted across my lips, and I realized I'd tilted my face up toward his like a flower seeking sun.

"I see everything, birdie." His thumb traced my jawline, leaving fire in its wake. "I see you pretending to be perfect when I know you want to be reckless. I see you with him when I know you think about me. I see—"

"Time's up, lovebirds!" The door burst open, flooding us with light and noise.

I stumbled backward to the door, cheeks burning, heart threatening to crack through my ribs. Dean brushed past me without a word, shouldering through the crowd gathered outside. But at the doorway, he paused and looked back.

The message in that look was crystal clear: Get out of here.

I waited. Five minutes. Ten. Long enough for Tom to get distracted by a drinking game, for Megan to disappear upstairs with her boyfriend.

Long enough that no one would connect my absence with… his.

Then I went looking for him.

The Hashtone mansion sprawled endlessly, room after room of expensive furniture and bad art. I checked the kitchen, the study, the back patio where smokers huddled against the cold.

My heart hammered harder with each empty space, certainty and doubt warring in my chest.

This was stupid. He'd probably just left.

He'd probably been mocking me the whole time, setting me up for another cruel joke to laugh about with his friends—

An arm shot out from a shadowed alcove, and suddenly I was pressed against the wall beside a closed bedroom door, caged by six feet of Dean Sawyer. His hands bracketed my head, his body a wall of heat against mine.

"Caught you," he murmured against my ear, and the words sent shivers cascading down my spine. "Pretty little birdie, flying through the house looking for trouble."

"Maybe I was looking for the bathroom," I managed, but my voice came out breathless, unconvincing.

"Maybe you're a terrible liar." His lips brushed my temple, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. "Maybe you've been driving me crazy for two years and I'm done pretending otherwise."

"Charlotte?" Tom's voice echoed down the hallway, drunk and petulant. "Charlotte, where are you?"

Dean's hand found mine in the darkness immediately. One sharp tug, and I was through the doorway, stumbling into a bedroom.