The First Last Boy Read online

  “It’s Friday,” he whined.

  “Now, Mark.” She said in a weary tone as she walked past me into her bedroom.

  Mark stomped into his room. “When I’m an adult, I’ll do what I damn well please.”

  “If Mom hears you talking like that, you won’t live to be an adult,” Tana said.

  Mark slammed his bedroom door and a photograph of the three of them hanging on the hallway wall fell onto the floor. Tana picked it up and sighed as she brushed it off and put it back.

  “Has your dad been around this week?”

  “No. He was supposed to take Mark to an amusement park but he didn’t show. Mark waited on the front porch for hours. This is the fourth time in a row he’s blown him off. I hate that Mark is hurt, but I’m not sorry my father isn’t around much.”

  From what I’d gleaned about her father, he was pretty much a selfish asshole. I hated the sadness in her eyes and wanted desperately to fix it. “I have to work at the garage a half day tomorrow but you wanna do something after that? We could hit the party at Kurt’s house. I’ll be the key man so you can have a good time and I’ll get you home safely.”

  “No, I don’t want to go to the party. I decided that I’m going on a date.”

  “With who?”

  “None of your business.” She walked across the living room and pointedly opened the door. “So, thanks for paying for the pizza. I’ll see you around.”

  When I made it out to the porch, I turned to say something else to her, but she’d already closed the door. I shook my head and walked down the steps and over to the 1968 Dodge Charger I’d rescued from the junkyard six months ago. The car was primer gray, with several beat up places on the body and it looked like hell. But what mattered to me was the 426 HEMI engine hulking under the hood. Bigger valves meant better airflow which meant it owned the road.

  The old guy planning to restore it had died and his crackhead granddaughter junked the car for a few hundred bucks minutes before I saw it. My lucky damn day. I sat in the car and ran my hand along the steering wheel but I couldn’t keep my mind from thinking about Tana.

  If not Brett, which I’d make sure of, she’d still probably go out with an asshole who wouldn’t look out for her. Some guy who’d use her, wouldn’t even make sure he protected her. I knew a few of the guys sniffing around and they were more fucked up than I was. She didn’t know that some of them liked to smack the hell out of girls. I don’t know how I’d live with myself if she got hurt. Or how I’d keep from putting the guy who hurt her in the hospital. Slamming my fist against my thigh, I jogged back up onto the steps to knock on the door.

  Tana jerked it open, her beautiful eyes startled when she saw me. “Ryan. Did you forget something?”

  “Three rules.” I ground out, trying to keep from hating myself for not being able to stick to saying no when it came to her.

  She frowned, perplexed. “What?”

  “First, you get on the pill if you’re not already. Second, we don’t ever talk about it afterward because we’re not a couple and we’ll never be together like that. Third, you don’t fall in love with me.”

  She looked at me without speaking, her chest rising and falling in the skimpy T-shirt that showed off her slender figure. I could see the outline of her breasts and the nipples pebbling through the material. Defining moments of our friendship ran through my mind in the eternity her eyes locked with mine. I knew without a doubt that this was going to define it in ways that might scar her heart the way my body had been scarred by foster dad #2. Deep. Ugly. Everlasting. “Well?” I asked when she didn’t say anything and I felt like an idiot.

  “Agreed,” she said softly, her face flushing, and then I could breathe again. She bit her lip. “Will you kiss me? I wanna see if it would be too weird. Because if it is, we’ll forget it.”

  Kiss Tana. My head spun at the thought. “Okay. Yeah.”

  She stepped out onto the porch beside me, pulling the door shut behind her. “Umm...” She raised her arms and then lowered them, giving a nervous laugh. “I’m not sure what to do...I mean...I’ve kissed guys before...but this is you...and...”

  “Shh...” I put my hands on her hips and guided her closer until her body was flush with mine. The effect when we connected was an adrenaline high. The cold bastard in my soul drank in the innocent sweetness of hers. I clenched my jaw, fighting myself. If I could, I’d kick my own ass. Every fiber of control in me was screaming at me to let go, to walk away, to never look back. Then she pressed into me and that wasn’t an option I had any more.

  She had great curves, ones that lured me closer to the edge. Her perfume surrounded me and the sweetness of her breath blew across my face when she exhaled. I deliberately dropped my hand to her sweetly curved ass and pressed her body against me, letting her feel how she affected me. Where she was soft and giving, I was hard and unyielding. Her eyes widened and she trembled.

  Part of me wanted her to push me away and say she’d changed her mind. The other part of me, the part the system taught to look out for number one, wanted her against me for the thrill it gave my body.

  She breathed out faster, her breath coming in small hitches. I lowered my head slowly, searching her beautiful face, giving her time to change her mind, hoping she would because the road we were on was slippery, coated with the ice of future regret. But she didn’t move and then it was too late because I was going to take what she was offering. I was a man who’d fallen off the cliff. My lips touched hers for the first time and it tilted my world upside down. Her lips were soft and eager, her hands wandering across my back, her breasts pushed hard into me. The taste of her was like sunshine and summer and I couldn’t get enough. My body heated up like a wildfire had me in its grip. I dove deeper into the kiss, pulling at her lower lip gently with my teeth. I wanted to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist and dive into her.

  When she whimpered and moaned my name, I knew I was thinking with my dick and was only minutes from taking her right here on the damn porch. No girl had ever made me feel so out of control. Forcing myself to stop, I put my hands on either side of her face. “Slow down,” I whispered against her lips, shocked at how right kissing her was, at how badly I wanted to bury myself in her and not stop until neither of us could walk. The kiss drove home what a friendship- wrecking idea us together was and nagged at me to tell her I’d changed my mind. But I couldn’t form the words that would push her away. This girl owned pieces of me that no one else ever had. Pieces I didn’t want to examine too closely and that was dangerous for both of us. I couldn’t let her fall for me. The people in my life always ended up damaged because of me and I’d rather break into a thousand pieces than to break her.

  My body screamed at me, calling me an idiot for not taking the next step, but I ignored it and dragged my mouth away from hers.

  “Wow,” she whispered with a glow in her eyes.

  Her expression was full of shooting stars and what-if fantasies. I had to crush the fairy tale, make her see that reality with me was cut and dried. Sex and nothing else. I injected as much arrogance in my voice as I could muster. “After you get on the pill, show me the proof.”

  She yanked her head back like I’d slapped her. A disgusted expression flashed across her face and she shoved against my chest. “You think I’m looking to get pregnant?”

  “No, I don’t think that.” I glanced away from the accusation in her eyes. I’d meant to create distance to clear my own head and make sure she didn’t think I could give her more, but I hadn’t meant to insult her. Tana didn’t know the drama that went on with some of my friends and I’d be damned if I was ever going to let myself end up as a father. With my fucked up history, I didn’t have anything to offer a kid. There was no way I wanted to pass that legacy on.

  “Fine.” Her eyes flashed her anger. “I’ll show you the proof. Anything else?”

  A heavy awkwardness settled between us, coolness where there had been heat. I wanted to reach for her, but it was better
that I didn’t. “I’ll let you know when I set up a place we can go.”

  Nudging a piece of cracked wood on the porch with the tip of a pink painted toenail, she sighed, the anger draining from her. She looked more unsure of herself than I’d ever seen her when she turned her beautiful eyes back up at me. “I know it’s only sex and you said that we won’t talk about it afterward but...could you like...not make me feel bad about it later?”

  That stung. I wasn’t anything like her damn father. He’d done some emotional damage to Tana as well as her mom and brother but I didn’t play mind games and I didn’t hurt women. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. It had always been easy to talk to Tana before sex became the topic. “You really think I’d do that?”

  “No.” She gave me a smile. “I’m just nervous, I guess. I shouldn’t be.” She rubbed her hand across the tattoos covering my left arm. “Despite your fierce appearance, you’ve always been so gentle around me. Tough on the outside, sweet on the inside. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.”

  Her words sucker punched me in the heart and the blood drained from my face.

  Laughing, she patted my chest, her hand lingering for a sweet torture of a second. “Easy. You can breathe, Ryan. I would have been so crazy without you when we first moved here. You were my anchor. I didn’t mean that I’m in love with you. I meant I love you as in you’re my best friend.”

  “Oh.” I took a deep breath and let it out as everything righted itself again. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll call you later.” I walked to my car, waiting until she was safe inside the house before I backed from the driveway. I didn’t like the funny sensation coursing through my body. Like I was in a race car doing two hundred miles an hour headed straight for a wall and even knowing a crash was inevitable, I kept my foot on the gas pedal.

  Chapter Two

  TANA

  I walked back inside the house with my lips still tingling from Ryan’s kiss. Kisses that gave a girl butterflies and caused her heart to race were things that happened in movies, not in reality. Yet, here I was, no doubt with a stupid grin on my face, dealing with butterflies and a racing heart. When I’d put my hand on his chest, I’d felt the solidness of his muscles and the strength there. My legs had quivered and I’d been surprised at how I’d pushed up against him without even thinking about it. It was a little surreal that we were going to cross the line of friendship to lovers.

  When I’d first met him, I’d been caught up in such a dark, heavy space in my head and I couldn’t see a way out. After Dad supposedly lost all the money, I’d foolishly thought nothing would change. I’d assumed that I’d still be at the private school I’d attended with all my friends and my boyfriend, Tristan. I’d thought I had people in my life that I could count on.

  But after my family’s fall from grace and the ensuing scandal and humiliation that followed in the wake, all my friends except for Shelby had stopped hanging with me. Then the phone calls had ended. They were busy going from one party to another. Shopping. Gossiping. Ruling high school. And I was officially the poor outcast, emphasis on the poor. My social standing took a nosedive and Tristan had broken up with me on social media. After neglecting to clue me in first. I’d seen pictures of him and his new girlfriend trying to swallow each other’s tonsils on Instagram.

  Reeling from the all-guy’s-suck pain ripping through my heart, my parents splitting up, losing our home, and the worry about how we were going to survive without money, I’d gone to the park. I’d tried to get rid of the gnawing hurt in me by pounding my hands over and over onto the ground until my skin cracked and blood oozed out. What I’d hated was that I couldn’t make things better for my mom or for Mark. I was used to always making things better for them, often running interference when Dad was in one of his tear-everyone-down moods. I was helpless to ease Mom or Mark’s heartache. I could handle struggle if it was only me doing the struggling. But I hated seeing them suffer. Hated seeing the wounded, little boy hurt in Mark’s eyes when he’d asked to live with Dad and been told that he wasn’t wanted. The whole awful mess had played over and over in my head and that’s when Ryan had found me.

  His eyes had held concern and a banked anger as he’d crouched down beside me and gently placed his hand on my shoulder. I’d jumped at the sudden contact and gasped when I’d seen him. With the fierce look of a warrior and the darkness in his eyes, he’d scared me at first. But then he’d told me that I was safe, that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. I knew what he’d mistakenly thought and I’d wanted to correct that. I’d ended up pouring my heart out to him, thinking he was a guy I’d never see again. But then I’d run into him at school a few days later.

  “Better?” was all that he’d quietly said and I know it sounds stupid, but I’d recognized in that breathless moment that we were meant to meet, meant to become friends. We’d sort of stuck together since then.

  Ryan was more than my anchor. He was the missing piece that I didn’t know had been missing until my life had intersected with his. Maybe I did just want to lose my virginity so I could experiment in college without that hanging over me. And maybe, deep down in an area of my heart that held the kind of secrets I lied to myself about, I wanted my first time to be with Ryan, the guy who made me feel protected, who’d given me hope when I’d lost mine. I still couldn’t believe that he’d said yes. Though I’d asked, I don’t know that I really believed he’d agree to it. I didn’t think there was any way he’d want me. Kissing me on the porch had disproved that when I’d felt the hard length of his erection pushing against me.

  Walking into my room, I noticed that everything suddenly looked brighter, better. Beside the bed, I had a photo in a frame. Picking it up, I traced the swirling designs around the picture. Ryan and me. Smiling. The world at our feet. Taken on the unsanctioned-by-the-school Senior Cut Day, we’d blown out of town with a group of our friends and gone to see an indie rock band playing at a club just over the line in Indiana.

  It was the first time that Ryan and I had danced together. And when our bodies had touched off and on throughout the dance, I’d felt something different, something sharper, edgier than friendship that made my mouth go dry. But Ryan being Ryan I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I’d been too chicken to act on the urge to kiss him.

  I was glad later that I hadn’t. When we left the club in the wee hours of the morning to head home, we’d brought an extra passenger. One of the girls from the band who couldn’t keep her hands off him. I’d known that Ryan had a reputation but I hadn’t ever had to ride side by side with one of his sexual partners before. She’d kept her tongue in his ear and her hand inching up his thigh and I’d felt knots in my stomach. He hadn’t even noticed that I’d disappeared into my shell and there was no way that I could have told him why I’d gone quiet.

  Shaking off the memory, I stripped down to get ready for bed, wondering if tonight Ryan would be thinking about what it would be like to be with me.

  *

  RYAN

  It took an hour to get home after I left Montana’s house. Normally, it was a fifteen to twenty minute drive, but I needed the call of the road to clear my head. Four wheels, the sweet night air blowing in my window, and an empty stretch of asphalt calmed my churning thoughts, fooling the demons waiting to drag me back to who I’d once been into thinking I had a handle on my life.

  Sometimes, those demons were ones others set on me. The foster mom who’d locked me in the trunk of her car every weekend while she got drunk at bars gave me the demon of drinking to forget. The foster dad who liked to heat spoons up on the stove and then stick them to my back gave me the demon of rage. Those demons made me feel like I was bits and pieces of a puzzle that others had put together. Sometimes, they were demons I unleashed on myself. Those were the hardest ones to live with because they made me hate the guy I saw in the mirror. I exhaled, blowing away the thoughts. I didn’t like thinking about the guy I’d been. The way he’d treated people, the things he’d done to stay alive wasn’t who I wa
nted to be.

  Eventually, I turned around and headed home. In my neighborhood, on the wrong side of Southtown Freeway, empty lots intermingled with the occasional abandoned home wearing plywood in place of windows and doors that had become Caldwell, Michigan’s trademark.

  I lived with three other foster boys in Mama Leena’s two-story house. The house, built in the late 1800s, had blue-gray siding and was one of the better homes in the area. Everyone in the neighborhood referred to it as “that house with all those kids.” Over the years, the home had seen dozens of kids come and go.

  Leena owned a successful temp service helping companies find employees. The Michigan Chronicle did a story on her for one of their Who’s Who features several years ago when she’d run for county council. She was known to take in foster kids who didn’t have any other place to go and she didn’t give a damn what our skin color or story was. She had two rules. Don’t break the law and don’t mess with her teenage daughter, Destiny.

  When I pulled past the crooked tree and into the driveway, Juvante, the foster brother I was closest to yelled my name from his spot on the porch. Cooper was beside him and raised his chin my direction. From the time he’d been born, Cooper had only been known by the name Bastard. He was six before he’d learned it wasn’t his real name. He’d been found living in a closet in a house that had made Mama cry when the social worker had shown her the photos. By the time Mama Leena adopted him when he was a teenager, the hardness of the street had taken almost everything that was good in him the same way it had me.

  Cooper, Juvante, and I ended up on the wrong side of the law for shit I didn’t get involved with anymore. Not since I’d seen a friend bleed out right in front of me and learned that while blood washes out of clothes, it never washes out of the soul.

  Juvante made a dash for me, grabbed me around the shoulders and screamed in a falsetto. “The boy is home from chasing girls. Knock anyone up today?”