Page 3 of Devil in Disguise
She wasreallylooking forward to that U-Dub anonymity. She’d be an engineering student, a mouthy geek with too many piercings and an attitude, and that was all. Not the rapist’s daughter, and there’d be nobody she had to hit when they talked smack about her mom, either. Talk about a relief. She hadn’t been suspended since the tenth grade, but that was only because her smackdowns were verbal now.
That wasn’t because she was only five-two, because if you were mad enough and willing to take a punch, you could usually win even if you were small. Most girls were wimps. They retreated. Dyma didn’t believe in retreat. But she was even better with her mouth than she was with her fists, and you didn’t get suspended for giving somebody a sick burn. All you got afterwards was a little trembling from the adrenaline rush, not sore knuckles, a trip to the principal’s office, and a call to your grandma.
She’d had no choice but to stop fighting anyway, because her grandma had died at the beginning of senior year, and the fighting had been their secret, like so many other things. She felt the familiar wave of desolation, the empty space where her grandma would have been, and as usual, didn’t know what to do about it, so she thought about something else instead. Her great-grandpa Oscar, following after her mom, his face breaking into a smile at sight of her. That was OK.
She missed Grandpa Oscar, too, because he’d refused to come to Portland with her and her mom. It was comforting, though, to know that he was still here. Thatsomethinghad stayed the same, anyway.Shewanted to change. She didn’t want everything else to change. But she hadn’t had a choice.
Which brought them to the guy holding her mom’s hand and looking like he wanted to make sure everybody saw him do it. Harlan Kristiansen, Jennifer’s movie-star-handsome, wide-receiver boyfriend, and the father of the baby boy who was going to be, weirdly, Dyma’s nineteen-years-younger brother. Like her mom hadn’t even waited to get her out of the house before starting Act II. Which was fine, of course, because Jennifer could be seriously overprotective, and Dyma needed to start her real life without all that scrutiny and judgment, thank you very much. She wanted to makemistakes.
Moving on was fine. She was excited about moving on.
Then there was Harlan’s sister, Annabelle, who was as tall and blonde and Nordic-perfect as Harlan, but didn’t really seem to know it. And Blake Orbison, former quarterback of the Portland Devils. Also Dyma’s mom’s boss and Wild Horse’s formerly most-eligible bachelor—by about a mile—here with his wife, Dakota Savage, who was effortlessly cool and never seemed to even notice the extra attention she got these days.
Dyma kind of wanted to be Dakota. Less artistic, because hello, she wasn’t. U-Dub made you take an arts class to graduate, which meant visual art, creative writing, or theater. She’d been told to take it during her freshman year, since it would be easy compared to the other classes on her schedule. Nobody understood that the arts class was the one thing she was actually dreading. Some people feared organic chemistry. She feared being asked to create something. If they said, “Here’s how to draw a tree,” and you followed the directions and drew the tree like that? That was the kind of art class she could get behind. Instead, they’d tell you to “create” something, “using theideaof a tree.” Like what?
Same with creative writing. She’d had to do that, sophomore year. She’d just used the plots of video games. Fortunately, high-school English teachers didn’t game all that much, but who knew about professors? She’d be bound to get the one college professor who played World of Warcraft in her spare time.
So, no, she didn’t want to be Dakota. She wanted to belikeDakota, maybe. She might be able to manage that. She was all good on attitude.
And then there was Owen. Whose roar she’d heard all the way from the top of the bleachers when she’d walked across the stage with her gold high-honors cord around her neck, trying to tell herself this whole thing was lame, and unable to feel anything but thrilled about it. Owen, whose bearded face was creased by a smile as big as the rest of him, whose broad-shouldered, heavy-chested, six-five frame was dressed in jeans and boots that added another inch to his height, not to mention the brown cowboy hat he wore just about everywhere.
He took up half the deep-blue, late-evening Idaho sky, and as soon as he appeared, he was all she saw. She was running, her heart slamming in her chest, her mortarboard flying off her head. Running toward Owen’s smile, wide as Wyoming, seeing his big arms coming out to grab her.
She leapt, and he caught her, held her off her feet, and twirled her. And then he kissed her.
It wasn’t like she’d never been kissed before. She’d been kissed plenty—she’dkissedplenty, too—and she’d liked it. She’d liked it alot.
They said men ached to the point of pain from unfulfilled desire, or call it what it was: too much blood to the genitals for too long a time. Well, she couldn’t believe any guy had ever ached the way she did. Women had erectile tissue, too, and it got every bit as engorged as a man’s.Especially if the man she was kissing was Owen, because nobody she’d ever kissed was Owen Johnson, and no teenage boy’s hands felt on her body like his huge ones did, completely rough and absolutely gentle at the same time. Nothing felt like having his arms wrapped around her, or being held up effortlessly against his chest with a single arm while she gripped a massive shoulder with one hand and got the other one behind his head to kiss him better.
The way he held her—it was like you were safe, but you weren’t. Like there was so much more there for you, almost within your reach. Like you wanted everything, and he knew it, andyouknew that he could give you every bit of it. And that when he did, it would take forever.
The kiss didn’t last nearly long enough, but she was tingling all over anyway by the time he set her down. Her knees were trembling, too.
She hadn’t had an idea, before. She hadn’t had aclue.Just seeing him walking toward her was a head rush. And agroinrush.
And he was always, always telling her no. After prom, when he’d driven her home, parked in her driveway, kissed her in the car for about an hour, and then told her to go inside. When he’d come up for her nineteenth birthday a few weeks ago, and they’d gone hiking above the lake and had ended up sitting on a log. That time, he’d gotten his hand up under her shirt, and it had felt … amazing. Like her body was a circuit, and his hand and mouth closed it. She could still close her eyes and feel that rush, and she did. Every night.
And then, of course, he’d stopped. Because, he’d said every time, she was in high school, and he didn’t sleep with high-school girls. Last time, he’d stared at her, his face serious, nearly scary, and said, “No. That’s a hard no.” In his deepest, most no-nonsense voice, with that edge of roughness to it, which had been a thrill all its own.
But she wasn’t in high school anymore.
3
Dragon Wings
A couple hours later,and Owen had sat through dinner with the whole gang. He’d given Dyma her graduation present, which was a pair of chunky, industrial-looking, white-gold hoop earrings with a discreet diamond set into each. They were from Cartier, but they didn’t look like it, which he figured was a compromise.
Earrings weren’t a good enough present. They were going to have to do anyway, because a car was out. It had been clear to him, even as he was scrolling makes and models, that it would be wrong. Too much pressure. She couldn’t accept it, and he shouldn’t give it.
He could have found somebody easier.Anybodywould have been easier. Unfortunately, his heart wasn’t listening, and every time he saw her, it got worse.
Which was why he’d had a serious talk with Dyma’s mom a few minutes back. It wasn’t easy to tell a girl’s mom, however obliquely, that you weren’t sure how much longer you’d be able to hold out before you had sex with her daughter, but when you had to do something, you went ahead and did it.
It hadn’t gone horribly, except that she’d told him she trusted “your heart and your honor.”
So no pressure there.
Now, though, family time was over, the bright light of midsummer was fading, there was a little pink on the mountains and the still waters of the lake, and he was asking Dyma, “Want to go out and celebrate a while?” Another idea that wasn’t half awkward to express in front of her mom and great-grandfather, which was exactly the reason he wanted to go somewhere else.
