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  CRASH

  Copyright © 2012

  Nicole Williams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  For the fine and fabulous girls of the FP. Not a day passes where I don’t find myself thankful to have each and every one of you. You inspire me to become a better writer, as well as a better person. You encourage me, let me vent, and aren’t afraid to tell me to suck it up. Write until there’s nothing left to be said. Then write some more. Love and glitter cannons to you all!

  CRASH

  A novel by

  Nicole Williams

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Summers turn me into a sucker. That’s why I was glad this one was almost over. Every year since puberty, from mid-June to early September, I’d been sure I was going to meet the real world equivalent to Prince Charming. Call me old fashioned, call me hopelessly romantic, you could even call me a fool, but whatever I was, I knew the end result—I was a sucker. To date, I’d never found a guy who was worthy to stand in Prince C’s shadow; no real surprise there as I’d discovered more and more after each summer that guys were something of a pain in the ass. But here, working on my tan at Sapphire Lake’s public beach just a couple weeks before I was all set to start my senior year at a new school, I’d just found me a Prince Hot Damn.

  He arrived with a whole mess of guys, tossing a football back and forth, and specimens like this confirmed there had been some kind of divine rule in the universe because no natural selection process was up to the task of creating something like him. This was some god’s, somewhere’s, handiwork. He was tall, his shoulders were wide, and he had those dark ringed eyes with black lashes that had the power to undo a woman’s best intentions. So, in non-sucker terms, he was just my type. Along with every other English speaking woman in the northern hemisphere’s.

  My blue raspberry slurpee—that was becoming more mush than slush with each passing wanton stare—couldn’t even compete for my attention. I didn’t know his name, didn’t know if he had a girlfriend, didn’t know if he wanted one, but I knew I was in trouble.

  However, it was when his dodging and tackling and sprinting ceased when he glanced my way that I knew I was in big trouble.

  The glance was immeasurably longer than every other glance shared with a stranger, but what was conveyed in that shortest of connections cut through me, letting some piece of this stranger work his way inside. I’d experienced this before a few times in my life, nothing but an eye connection with a passing stranger that moved me on an instinctual level. For no reason at all, it was like I felt my soul surface in a typhoon, begging me to take notice and follow after that moment of serendipity.

  To date, I never had, but the last time I’d let one of these moments pass was last fall when a boy working at a restaurant my family visited while on vacation delivered a pizza to our table. He’d dropped the pizza on the table, told us to enjoy, and then, right as he was leaving the table, he looked and me. My heart went boom-boom, my head got all foggy, and I felt this ache inside when he turned and walked away, like we were tied together by a fixed rope. I’d let exactly four of these soul typhoons pass unexplored, but I’d made a pact of the utmost sacredness with myself that I wouldn’t let a fifth go by in the same kind of way.

  I was never sure if the person on the other end of that look felt the same kind of intensity I did, so when Prince Hot Damn turned away, tackling someone into the sand, I knew I ran the risk of him thinking I was one of those girls who made an art-form of preying upon beautiful boys minding their own business. I didn’t care, I wouldn’t let another one of these moments go. Life was short and I’d been a firm believer in seizing the moment for the majority of my life.

  Then, he came to another standstill, like my stare was freezing him in place, before looking back. This time it wasn’t a glance. It was a good five second stare where his eyes did that dumbfounded thing mine were doing to me. His smile had just begun its upward journey into position when a football whizzed right into the side of his face. It was one of those moments you saw played out in movies: wide-eyed boy staring at girl, oblivious to the world around him until the laces of a football indented his forehead.

  “Stop staring, Jude!” the young boy who had thrown the ball called out. “She’s too hot, even for you. And since she’s got a book, she probably knows how to read, so she’s smart enough to know to avoid guys like you.”

  I slid my glasses back into place as serendipity boy chased after the pint-sized teaser and turned my attention back to the book sprawled out beneath me, no longer worried about having to chase him down to explore if there could be anything else between us than a loaded look.

  I saw the reciprocation in his eyes, that and more. It was only a matter of how much time he wanted to play it cool until he came over. I had all day.

  That was what I reassured myself with as he threw the caught boy over his shoulder and ran the both of them into the lake, dunking up and down until the boy was squealing with laughter. I reassured myself again when he and the boy trudged from the water and returned to the cluster of boys playing football and picked up right where he left off, not sparing a single look my way.

  I tried to distract myself with the book below me, but when I found myself reading the same paragraph for the sixth time, I gave up. Still not another look my way, like I was invisible.

  When a second hour passed in the same way, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. If he wasn’t going to come to me and I wasn’t quite ready to go to him, I’d just have to make him. I’d found boys were fairly simple creatures to figure out, at least on a primal level—on a mind, heart, and soul matter they were about as confounding to me as thermal dynamics—and since primal was just a nice term for raging hormones, I decided to use their overabundance of teenage boy ones to my advantage.

  Grabbing a liter of water from my beach bag, I rose to a stand, making every movement slow and deliberate. At least without looking ridiculous. His eyes weren’t on me as I stood and adjusted my bikini just so, but a few male sets were. Good sign I was doing the right thing, but bad sign he wasn’t noticing since this whole stunt was set into motion for him.

  Pulling my clip from my mass of hair, it fell down my back, and I shook it into position for good measure. I practically cursed under my breath when I chanced another look his way to find him in utter oblivion. What’s a girl got to do to get a boy’s attention these days?

  I walked back towards the picnic table where the newest addition to our family, the furry kind, was still smiling through his panting. “There’s a good boy,” I said, kneeling be
side him where he was using the shade of the table to his advantage. “Since you’re of the same gender, although I find your species to be more appealing on so many fronts, do you have any suggestions for how to make that boy mine?” I asked, pouring some more water into his bowl as I watched Jude pry a football from the air. The boy played the best game of beach football I’d ever had the pleasure of watching.

  My furry friend offered a few licks over my arm before his wet nose nudged at my leg. I could have been reading into the nudge of encouragement a bit, but when his doggy eyes tracked over to Jude and his doggy smile stretched farther, I laughed. “Yeah, yeah. I know it’s a woman’s world and all, but there’s still some things I like old-fashioned,” I said, scratching behind his matted ears. “Like the guy approaching the girl. Don’t call the feminist movement and rat me out or else no steak for you tonight.”

  I patted his head as he yapped his vow of silence before heading back to my blanket baking in the sun. I kept my head forward, but my eyeballs were as far in the corners as they’d go, watching as he sailed the football to another little boy. If standing, stretching, and swimsuit adjustment weren’t working, with dinner not even an hour away, I’d have to resort to drastic, or desperate, measures. I was as stubborn as I was a sucker, and since I’d waited this long for him to come over, I wasn’t going to give up now. Giving up was not in my blood.

  I stretched on my blanket, stomach down, twisting my arms behind me to pull the string free of its tension. In my experience as a seventeen year old girl, seven of those years having boobs that required a bra, undoing that one little knot at the center of your back had about a ninety-five percent accuracy rate of attracting any male within a five beach towel radius. Jude might have been right on the five/six cusp, but it was all I had left. The last trick in my bag.

  I made a pillow of my sundress and pretended to be nothing more than concerned with minimizing my tan lines, but as I took a quick survey of the area, every male eye within five beach towels was staring. Except for him.

  A few whistles even sounded from his fellow football player’s lips, of which I played ignorant, but still, not the slightest of looks in my direction. One of my friends at my old school had once told me that if ever a day came where our intended male targets didn’t flock our way after this last ditch effort, it would be time to send word to the pope that a miracle needed to be inspected.

  Get Rome on the phone because a miracle was playing out in front of me as the only boy I wanted to notice was the only one who didn’t. Darn you, serendipity and soul typhoons.

  I’d give him five more minutes before I’d force myself to swallow my pride and make a move. I knew if I had to approach him, I’d likely get denied, but I wasn’t going to let another one of these pass me by. Carpe diem, baby.

  I noticed something whizzing above me from the corner of my eye, but it didn’t seem of much importance until a certain body I’d been lusting over snagged it out of the air right before falling back to the earth from his impressive suspension in the air. Or at least falling right over the top of me.

  He didn’t crash into me all that hard, leading me to believe it was intentional, but I still managed to shriek like a little girl. I knotted my top back into place while he struggled to reposition himself.

  “The name’s Jude Ryder, since I know you’re all but salivating like a rabid dog to know, and I don’t do girlfriends, relationships, flowers, or regular phone calls. If that works for you, I think we could work out something special.”

  So that serendipitous moment I’d been angsting over the better part of a glorious summer afternoon? What a waste. There had been nothing on the other side of that loaded look than an opportunistic summer . . eh-hm fling. Lord help me, I was going to become a nun if my male radar didn’t realign towards guys that were not walking penises.

  “And I’d give you my name if I actually wanted to pursue anything more with you than telling you to get the hell off of me,” I said, twisting onto my back once I was confident everything up front was covered. However, whether it was my twisting motion or his twisted sense of self, his leg caught my hip as it rotated and followed it all the way around. Super, the boy was all put straddling me now and, despite being angry beyond appeasing, I felt my heart pounding through my chest like it never had.

  He smiled down at me. Actually, it was more of a grin. A grin full of attitude and ego. It was a tad sexy too, and it could have been hella sexy if I hadn’t already decided to not fall into this boy’s traps. “I was wondering how long it would take to get you horizontal,” he said, eyes sweeping down to my belly button. “Although I’m not really your missionary style kind of guy.”

  Whatever was left of my romantic notions of male chivalry and love at first sight was just obliterated. I’d never verbally admit I was a romantic, that was one of the many secrets I kept to myself, but it was a special ideal and one guy took the last bit I’d clung to.

  Pushing his chest, which was like trying to move a tank, I removed my sunglasses so he could see my glare. “Is that because it would require a real, living, breathing female—not one of the imaginary or blow-up kind—to have sex with you?”

  He laughed at that, like I’d just said something as cute as a kitten. “No, a supply of girls is never a problem. But if they’re the ones that come aknockin’ at my door, why should I be the one to do all the work?”

  That nasty taste in my mouth might have just been a bit of vomit. “You’re a pig,” I said, shoving him again. Harder so my hands slapped his chest, but it was like nothing more than a gust of wind had come at him.

  “Never claimed to be anything but,” he answered, raising his hands in surrender when I came at him again with my palms. “I also knew you wouldn’t stop your staring until you learned the cold, hard truth. So, consider yourself warned. I might not be the kind of guy that reads textbooks at the beach,” he said, glancing back at my open book, “but I’m smart enough to know girls like you should stay away from guys like me. So stay away.”

  My glare was now officially a glower. “That won’t be a problem once you stop all but holding me down,” I said, waiting for him to move. He did, but it was still with that cocky grin. I hated that kind of grin. “And you can consider yourself warned that you are trespassing on my personal property”—I grabbed my pink beach blanket in explanation as an eruption of barking sounded behind me. I knew that dog was a kindred spirit—“and beware of dog.” I sneered up at him as he situated himself beside me, still in a straddling position. “You can go now.”

  That wiped the grin from his face. “What?” he asked, the lines of his forehead pulling his gun-metal grey beanie lower. And what kind of a person wore a cotton hat to the beach on a scorching hot day? The mentally deranged ones I need to stay away from, that’s who.

  “Scrambo,” I said, waving him off. “I’m done wasting my last few precious minutes of a lovely summer afternoon on you. Thank you for the eye candy distraction, but I can see it’s nothing more than that. Oh, and by the way, your butt is not nearly as impressive up close as it is at a distance.”

  I didn’t have time to curse myself for my latest bout of verbal haste because his mouth fell open for a second. It was exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for. “You girls speak a language I’ll never understand, but are you saying what I think you are?”

  “If it involves you getting up and walking out of my sunshine and my life from here until the end of time, then we’re on the same wavelength,” I answered, sliding farther down on my towel to realign my face with the sun, trying to pretend his face wasn’t the thing naughty thoughts are made of. Save for a long scar that ran the diagonal of his left cheekbone, it could have been classified as mind-dumbingly perfect.

  Perfectly not my type. I had to remind myself of that. And convince myself, too.

  His eyebrows were still squished together, like he was trying to figure out the most riddling of riddles.

  “What’s that dumbfounded look for?” I asked.
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  “Because I have yet to come across a girl who sends me packing,” he said, looking at me with something new in his eyes.

  “So sorry to upend your world of non-respect for women, but it seems my work here is done.” I sat up, shuffling my textbook into my bag.

  “What kind of dog is that?” he asked abruptly, taking a seat on the sand beside me. The low notes were gone from his voice.

  I peered over at him as I continued tossing my beach day must haves into the bag, gauging to see if he was serious. He’d just gone from all but riding me on the beach to casual conversation. “He’s got a bunch of breeds in him,” I began slowly, watching him from the corner of my eye to see if this was some new trap.

  “So he’s a mutt,” he said.

  “No,” I said, looking at the shaggy bundle still baring his teeth in Jude’s direction. “He’s well-rounded,” I added.

  “Well that’s the best attempt I’ve heard yet of making a piece of shit seem less shitty,” he said, spinning the football on his finger.

  “No, that’s my way of seeing something for what it actually is,” I said, sure I sounded more defensive than I’d intended. “That ‘piece of shit,’ I’ll have you know, was hit, kicked, underfed, and lit on fire by his previous owners who dropped him off at the shelter when he had the nerve to devour an unattended tuna fish sandwich. That ‘piece of shit’ was scheduled to be put down today for no other reason than drawing the short straw in life.”

  Jude looked away from me, back at the dog. “You just got this guy today?” he asked, making a face. “Out of all the dogs you had to choose from, you picked the one that was the sorriest excuse for a dog I’ve yet to see.”

  “I couldn’t let him be killed because the slime of the earth ruined him, could I?” I asked, nearing a wince as I wondered what my parents would say. “I mean, look at him. He’s been brutalized by humans and the only thing he’s concerned about right now is protecting me. How could I not save him?”