FULL NOVELXO Bad Intentions: Chapter 1
Parasitoids: Insects that eventually kill the host they feed on.
I tracked my finger down the well-worn page in my notepad. My writing was neat rows of black on white, flowing down the paper, punctuated by pink highlighter.
Light rain hit the window of the coffee shop I was sitting in. I liked to study in the library, coffee shops, and parks. For some reason, all the noise helped me concentrate. Maybe it was the silence at home that distracted me more than anything. My parents were strict about study time and held themselves to the same standard. No one disturbs our A+ student. I could just hear my dad’s voice.
But he was right; I was in my senior year, and I needed to concentrate more than anything. My cell phone rang just as I turned the page in my textbook and jotted down yet more facts about parasites.
“Tell me you’re home already and getting dressed?” Eve’s hopeful voice brought a smile to my face.
“I’m home and getting dressed.”
She sighed. “Liar! I can hear that you’re not. Lily, we need to go to this party.”
I closed my textbook and laid my notebook on top of it, doodling under my notes. “Yeah, but we really don’t. If you think about it, absolutely no one will care if we go or not.”
“That’s not true. I’ll care. Lily, we’re running out of time to do stuff. Let’s not have regrets about missing the all-American rite of passage that going to a high school rager is. For me, please!” She shifted her tone with the last to the cute voice I could never say no to.
Eve had been my best friend since before we could walk. Our mothers were best friends, so there’d never really been an option not to be best buds.
“Fine. I’ll go for an hour, and I’m not getting changed. Final offer.”
Eve laughed. “You can’t open with your final offer. Counter, we go for an hour, and you wear something I bring you.”
“Whatever. Let’s get this over with. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.” Today, I’d borrowed my mom’s car, and it felt great to have a miniscule amount of freedom.
Eve squealed. “I can’t wait!”
“Me neither.” For it to be over.
I packed up my things and headed out of the coffee shop. The smells of burnt coffee grounds and pastries faded to the wet smell of a brewing storm. I ran to my car.
Soon, if I got my way, Maine weather would be a distant memory. I had plans to go to California for school. I had the grades; I had the extracurriculars; now all I needed was the acceptance letters and my parents’ approval. I had a horrible feeling that the last would be the hardest to secure. They wouldn’t refuse, they’d just be hurt. That was so much worse.
I was only a few feet away when I ran into a wall. Not a literal wall; actually, that might have been preferable. I ran into a wall of a person, bounced backward, and fell on my ass in a freezing puddle. My glasses flew off and landed somewhere on the wet asphalt.
My backpack landed in the puddle beside me, and I reached for it immediately. One of the corners was drenched. My heart lurched. My notes! I groped for the strap and dragged it toward me, my vision blurry without my glasses.
I tugged it onto my lap, an angry retort forming for the person who’d run right into me and sent me careening away like a pinball. But when I looked up, the words died on my lips. The man stood over me, rising to an awesome height. Dark jeans with holes at the knees, and black boots. Thin, drenched hoodie. The hood was up, shielding his face from my inspection, not that I could see well, anyway. Everything was hazy. I’d been wearing glasses and occasionally contacts for years, but I’d never been in this situation: knocked down in a puddle, blind as a bat without them, while the person responsible simply loomed over me and didn’t lift a finger to help.
He stared at me. I could feel his eyes on me, even under the darkness of his hood.
“Excuse me—” I started angrily. I wasn’t the bravest at standing up for myself, but the horror of my color-coded notebook getting wet was enough to send fearless adrenaline coursing through me.
“You’re excused,” a deep voice interrupted me. The man stared down a moment longer and then turned on his heel and walked away.
Fury like lava bubbled up in my chest. I staggered to my feet, crying out when I slipped and scraped my palm in the process.
“Hey! My glasses!” Damn it. Blood ran down my hand as I pointed at the departing stranger’s back. “You damn—” My mind blanked, searching for a word. “Parasitoid!”
The stranger stopped; his shoulders hunched. I watched him, slightly alarmed that my mild insult had provoked a reaction. I groped around madly for my glasses. They couldn’t be that far, and I needed my eyes back. My hand closed over the frames, just as the stranger turned slowly and headed back toward me. I shoved them back on and straightened up to my full five foot seven, fighting the urge to back up a step.
Now that I was standing, I could see how big this guy really was. I was no stranger to big guys—Hade Harbor was an ice hockey town after all—but this guy took the prize. His huge shoulders bunched together with tension. He was over six five, I was sure of it.
He leaned down toward me, as if I were a speck on a petri dish. His face was still shadowed, but I could nearly make out his mouth. He had full lips and nice teeth; a clean-shaved jaw that could cut glass. His pretty mouth pulled in a sneer, making its beauty bearable.
“What did you call me?”
Now that he was closer, and I could actually see, I realized he was younger than I’d expected. His shadowy eyes glittered in the gloom.
“A jerk,” I attempted.
He shook his head. “That’s not it.”
I folded my arms over my chest and angled my chin up in the best pretense of confidence I could muster. “I called you a parasitoid, so what?”
“And what would a parasitoid be?” He took a step closer to me.
All imaginings of bravery fled my head. I mirrored his movement in the opposite direction.
“Look it up.”
“I’d rather you told me.” This guy was infuriating.
I could see an adult, like my dad, getting pissed and demanding answers from some cheeky student, but a guy my age? Absolutely not.
“I don’t have to tell you anything. How about you apologize for knocking me on my ass and I’ll tell you?” My eyes blazed a challenge up at his shadowy face.
He stared at me. I couldn’t see his expression well enough to read it. He tilted his head, a movement that seemed expressive as hell. He didn’t know what to make of me. Well, that was fine. I didn’t know what to make of him, either.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said slowly and moved closer to me.
I stepped back again, this time grabbing my keys from my pocket.
His satisfied grin made it clear he was aware of rattling me. “I think you’re going to tell me. Right. Fucking. Now.”
“Cade! We’ve got to go!” A shout reached us, piercing the building tension.
Cade?
The menacing stranger twisted to look over his shoulder, and I took the chance to unlock my mother’s car and jump inside.
I slammed the door and locked it as my shadow in the hoodie looked back at me. He studied me, unmoving. I turned the key in the ignition, jumping when the windshield wipers scraped furiously against the glass. The rain had gotten heavier, and I shivered. My jeans were wet, and my head felt just as drenched, thanks to standing outside for the intense showdown. My wet bag slouched on the passenger seat next to me. In a testament to how intimidating the guy outside had been, I’d completely forgotten to worry about my notebook.
I pulled out of the lot.
The stranger in the hoodie stood as still as stone, watching me go.
I drove across Hade Harbor toward Eve’s place. My dad didn’t like me driving to Eve’s house. It was on the so-called bad side of town. I wondered what Coach Williams would think about meeting the most intimidating guy right in the good part. He had a whole list of things he was overprotective about, starting with my friends and ending with scaring away any potential boyfriends who might have been out there.
Sure, I didn’t flatter myself that guys would be lining up to ask me out, even if it wasn’t for my dad, but being the only child of the school ice hockey coach had to be off-putting.
Yep, that’s right. I was Lillian Williams, and Coach Williams was practically a celebrity in our little Maine town. Ice hockey was big here, and my father had big dreams. As a teen player at Hade Harbor High, he’d been heading toward the NHL, already a state champion, but that had all changed when I’d come along. My mom had had a difficult pregnancy, and my dad had missed out on the offers he’d been given from colleges while looking after her. The timing hadn’t been right, they’d told me. Now, at HHH, since my father had taken over the team a few years ago, they’d been steadily improving. This year, he had his heart set on becoming champions again, but how they were going to get there was still a mystery.
I pulled up outside Eve’s small house, sitting on a slightly run-down street. I hadn’t had a chance to turn off the engine before her door opened and she scooted out. She practically ran to the passenger side of my car and jumped in.
“Let’s get out of here!” She sounded breathless as she tugged her seat belt on and grinned at me.
“What’s the hurry?”
“No hurry, Asher’s getting ready to go to the party, too, and I don’t want him to see me. He’s such a buzzkill.”
“And you don’t think he’ll see us at the party? Let’s stop to get dinner. I’m starving.”
“Sure. And no, I don’t think Asher will see us, because if he does, I’ll have to come home.” Eve slid down in the seat and frowned out at the rainy street. “He’s so controlling.”
“I suppose he worries.” It was a poor attempt to comfort her.
Asher—her hot, ice hockey-playing older brother—was terrifying. I tried my best not to be in the room with him when he blew through. Eve was right to worry. He didn’t like his sister going to parties. He was overprotective as hell. Luckily for him, Eve had never been invited to many. Fear of Asher ran deep at Hade Harbor High.
We stopped at a local fast-food place. Eve dramatically clamped a hand over her mouth when I got out of the car.
“Holy shit, what happened to you?”
“I fell over on the way to the car.”
“Classic Lily. You look like you tried to swim in a puddle. Thank God I brought you a change of clothes. Just call me Eve, fairy godmother to the hopeless.”
“Sure. A fairy godmother who forces me to go to crappy high school parties where we’ll have to hide from your brother the entire time.”
“You love me really,” Eve said breezily.
We headed inside and ordered. Eve waited for the food while I went to the bathroom to change. Inside, I deliberated for a moment, checking the time before calling home. At this hour, it should be my mom who was nearest to the phone.
“Williams’ house,” a deep voice spoke.
Damn. My dad was the hardest to get around.
“Hi, Dad, it’s me. I’m going to be a bit late. I’m with Eve, and we’re going to the movies,” I improvised.
If Eve thought Asher was protective, she had no idea what Coach Williams was capable of.
“Is that right? What movie?”
“Um, we haven’t decided. Something scary.”
My dad was quiet for a long moment. “Well, as long as you’re really going to a movie and not Beckett’s party.”
“Is Beckett having a party? I wouldn’t be invited to that anyway. I’m not a puck bunny.”
“Damn right you’re not. My daughter will never be a puck bunny, will she?”
I gripped the phone tight. The entire conversation-from my father’s trusting tone to all the lies I was telling-was making me squirm. At least I could be honest about the puck bunny thing. Hockey guys weren’t my type. They were way too confident, arrogant, and fit, for a start. And Beckett Anderson was one of the worst offenders of the entire team. Not only was he gorgeous and a skilled player, but he was rich, too.
“No, Dad. Don’t worry. I’ll be home after the movie, okay?”
“Okay, Lily. I trust you.”
Guilt flooded me at his parting shot. I hated lying, but I’d hate being forbidden from going even more.
I hung up and pulled Eve’s dress from the bag. A quick change later, and I stared, aghast, at my reflection. She’d given me a little black dress to wear, emphasis on the “little.”
It had off-the-shoulder straps and a hem that sat higher on my long body than it would on my best friend’s. I seriously considered putting my dirty jeans back on instead. I never wore revealing clothes. It didn’t seem right that the off-limits Coach’s daughter, a complete bookworm and science nerd, should care what she wore. I’d learned the hard way that even if I made an effort, no one noticed. I washed my hands and balanced my contacts case on the edge of the sink, quickly swapping my glasses and tucking them away in my bag.
I headed back to our table, the thought of food too good to resist. I decided I could always keep my jacket on at the party. Everyone thought I was weird, anyway. One more quirk wouldn’t matter.
Eve froze when she saw me, dramatically pausing with her burger halfway to her mouth. “Jesus, you look so hot.”
“My dad would kill me if he saw this outfit,” I muttered, sliding into the booth and grabbing my bag to lay it over my knees. I’d checked inside it already, and my notebook had somehow escaped getting too wet.
“He’s not going to be there, and you deserve a night of acting like a normal seventeen-year-old.”
“Whatever you say. We agreed on one hour, don’t forget.”
Eve grinned. “Let’s just play it by ear.”
“Sure, let’s. After an hour I might just run into Asher, in that case.”
Eve’s brother would make sure she went home if I couldn’t get her to leave when she said she would.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t test that theory.” I smiled as I started on my fries.
The hot, salty goodness soothed my ragged nerves. I decided not to tell Eve about the weird incident in the parking lot. I didn’t feel like I came off very well in it. It left me unsettled, like a jagged tooth I couldn’t stop running my tongue over. Eve didn’t notice that anything was up as she filled me in on the latest gossip about the popular kids in our grade. I might not talk to half of them, but I knew who they were. I laughed until my sides ached. I wished we could just stay here, eating fast food and talking shit. I didn’t want to go to a party where I’d feel awkward and weird. I didn’t want to creep around, avoiding Eve’s brother. I didn’t want to wear this dress.
Stop being a buzzkill. It’s only an hour.
Right. I could do anything for an hour. Right?
Maybe if I kept repeating it, it would come true.