"Please, Ripley. I miss you." He cups my face in his hands. "I promise to be on my best behavior. And it would make him really…really mad. I know how you like that."
I smile. "Yeah, okay."
22
a girlfriend and a boyfriend
Dax
"Are you okay back there, Saige?"
"I just don't like the bridge," she says. "I don't like dark water like that. Maybe on some subconscious level, I knew I'd end up moving to this side of the bridge, and subsequently, ruin my life."
"Don't be dramatic," I tell her. "So, you accidentally killed one dude, and your stepbrother is a little sadistic. That's not really enough to ruin a whole life, Saige."
"I don't understand how you can downplay literally everything."
She's still a little off, but that's okay. She trusts Nolan, so she'll come around. I just want every day to be like it has been for the past few weeks with the three of us.
"I think it's called having a positive mindset. Nolan likes my mindset, don't you, Nolan?"
Nolan shrugs. "The contrast is needed at times, yeah."
We roll through downtown Aurora Cove before I turn onto the coastal highway leading to my family's cliffside home.
"Do you really think Elias is sadistic?" Saige asks a few minutes later.
"I don't know. I think he's fucking hilarious and fun at parties."
I also think he's a dick who's trying to get between me and Saige after he practically handed her to me on a silver fucking platter, but I won't say that. Elias and I have never fought over a woman. Neither of us is the type to get attached, and we've never had a problem passing a girl back and forth. This territory is already too fucking foreign to me. It's complicated, and I don't do complicated. I can't add the extra layer of fighting with my best friend to the mix.
I glance at the girl in the backseat through the rearview mirror. Maybe it is because I hurt her; I don't know. I feel oddly possessive of her—the same way I do with Nolan. I don't know what that means, but I know they're mine.
Saige used the word love. She thinks Nolan loves me, but I haven't really thought about it that way. I just kind of thought I was a placeholder for him. I mean, of course we care about each other. But I assume that someday Nolan is going to find someone more serious than I am—someone who can be his peace, and then he'll slowly slip through my fingers until one day, he's just gone.
And I'll have to be okay with it, because he deserves peace.
It's a grey, windy Saturday evening when we pull up to the house. I look back at Saige again, who rolls her eyes, when Ipull around the circle driveway and into my spot in the four-car garage.
"This place is ridiculous," she says.
"Have you really never been here before?" I ask as we get out of the car. "Not even for a party?"
"Dax, why would I have ever come to a party at your house? Hazing?"
I shake my head and laugh, throwing my arm around her shoulders. "You're so cute, Saige. I l—ook forward to showing you around the house."
What the hell was that? I've been thinking about that word too much.
"How oddly formal of you."
Nolan has been here hundreds of times, so he makes himself at home, heading through the kitchen to the bar while Saige slows, taking it all in.
"It feels like a museum," she says. "And it's so clean. And cold. I mean, no offense."
"None taken. You pretty much just described my mother's aesthetic, and I'm pretty sure that's what she was going for, anyway."
"I feel like I need sunglasses in here."
