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  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

  Crush copyright 2016 by Heather West. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

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  Jasper

  Miles

  Shadow

  Chapter One

  My luggage lay at my feet, nothing more than a duffle bag sporting the words New York City across the black canvas in bold white print. I’d splurged on it a while back when I first moved out there, a little drunk on the fact that I’d actually made it that far. Of course, it was only step one in a long succession of steps, most of which seemed to consist of going backward.

  Maybe it was fitting then that I was standing at the airport back home waiting for my dad to pick me up.

  He was late; not unusual, especially given the circumstances. Reaching up, I yanked out my ponytail holder, letting my mass of honey blonde hair fall about my shoulders. I shook it out, massaging my fingers along my scalp, before wrapping it back up again in a messy bun. It wasn’t glamorous, but I was tired as was evidenced by my bleary, red-rimmed eyes, and I wasn’t all that concerned with appearances right now.

  I finally spotted my dad pulling up in the loading and unloading area. Relief filled me; I hated waiting at airports—or any transport terminals, really. It was a New York thing.

  He pulled up in the sporty little car he and Selene had bought after all the kids had left the nest. Parking it along the sidewalk amidst the slew of other cars, he left it running and popped open the door to get out. He seemed older than I remembered, though that was stupid; it hadn’t been that long since I’d last visited.

  Quickly, Dad came around the car and I scooped my bag up, throwing it over my shoulder, and heading over to him. Smiling, I embraced him as we stood on the asphalt amidst all the cars and coming and going passengers. As soon as we hugged, grief tugged at my heart. The reason why I was here flooded back over me once again and it was all I could do to not collapse in my father’s arms right then and there.

  I couldn’t stop from crying, however, and had to blink back hot tears. Sniffling a little, I pulled back to see that he was teary-eyed, too. Of course, he was. If I was heartbroken, he had to be devastated.

  “How are you doing, dad?” I asked in a quiet voice, trying to put as much love and sympathy into my tone as possible. I wanted him to know I was here for him.

  He took a deep, steadying breath, before managing a shaky smile. “Not too good, kiddo,” he admitted honestly. It was a testament to how much things had changed between us, because when my mother had died all those years ago, he never would have admitted that anything was wrong. He would have been too busy being strong for me. But the fact that he was being honest now told me that he really thought I was an adult now. And it told me how much he had loved Selene.

  “Here, lemme grab your bags.”

  I let him take my duffle bag but held on to my backpack. When he searched around for the rest of my luggage, I offered him a wry smile. “Sorry pops. That’s it. I packed pretty light this time.”

  He shook his head. “I remember when you were little, you used to pack three suitcases and a backpack just to go three houses down for a sleep over.” He smiled at me. “Half the time you didn’t even stay the whole night.”

  I rolled my eyes at him though I was smiling. “I’m not ten anymore dad.”

  “I know, I know,” he told me as we began to walk towards the car. “I just can’t help remembering what a sweet little girl you were.”

  Dad threw my duffle bag into the trunk of the little car—far more spacious than I would have expected—and I kept my little backpack up front with me. We buckled in and began the trip home. Unable to sit in silence, I told dad, “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  He nodded his head, his lips pulling down in a deep frown as his face scrunched up momentarily in anguished grief. “It all happened so fast. A doctor’s diagnosis and then suddenly, we didn’t have any time left.”

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” I told him meaning every word of it. “I should have been.”

  “No, no,” he said immediately. “Don’t be ridiculous, honey. You were so busy and we all thought we had more time. Selene said herself that she felt fine, that the doctor was just being pessimistic.”

  We fell silent then. Clearly, the doctor had not been merely pessimistic. He’d been right. Well, sort of. The liver failure had seemed to appear out of nowhere, though in all fairness the signs had been there. She’d just been so strong and hated to complain that we all ignored them. By the time they discovered what was going on, it was too late. It happened so quickly after that and like dad said, I had thought that we all had more time.

  But we didn’t and now Selene was gone. I’d never see her again and I wasn’t sure if I could ever forgive myself for that.

  It wasn’t fair, I thought. How could I lose two mothers?

  Selene had been my father’s second wife and my stepmother. Mom died when I was really little and I had loved her very dearly, but I didn’t expect my dad to spend the rest of his life alone. I wanted him to be happy, so when I saw how his eyes lit up when he met Selene, I didn’t object to them getting together. I even got to be in the wedding. I was twelve at the time and was the best damn flower girl there ever was.

  At the time, I hadn’t thought I would ever really consider her family. She made my father happy and that was important enough to me that I would be sure to be polite, courteous, and as affectionate as I could, but I didn’t think I would grow to love her. But as time went on, I did grow to love her. She couldn’t replace my own mother, but I found that there was room enough in my heart for the both of them.

  And now, I’d lost her, too.

  My dad’s voice pulled me from my own grieving thoughts. “Danny’s at practice right now, but he promised to stop by later.”

  I ignored the familiar jump of my heart and smiled at my dad. “I’m glad he’s so close to home. I’m glad he can be there for you.”

  Danny was Selene’s biological son making him my stepbrother. He was older than me by only a year, so we’d spent all of high school together, up until Danny’s graduation. I considered myself truly lucky because I knew a lot of stepsiblings didn’t get along. Danny and I, however, had been close almost instantly.

  Appropriately close, I thought forcefully.

  “How is he doing?” I asked my dad, clearing my throat slightly. Sometimes it was more difficult than it should be, but I worked hard to make sure things were normal, especially around dad.

  “Oh, he’s a wreck,” dad told me, thinking of Selene. “They were so close and she meant so much to him.”

  I felt instantly guilty. When I’d asked, it hadn’t been about Selene at all. I hadn’t seen Danny in a long time now and now that I was back, I felt an insatiable urge to know everything that I’d missed while I’d been away. How was he doing? How was his impressive NFL career? Did he still love the game as much as he used to? Did he ever miss me?

  But all of those were incredibly stupid and insensitive questions. They spoke volumes about how much I’d missed him and how important he was to me, but they said nothing about what he was going through. Selene had been his birth mother, his real mother, and I of all people knew exactly what it was like to lose your mom.

  Of course, he was a wreck. If dad was struggling—and I knew he was with his red eyes and his screwed up, grief-stricken face—then, of course, Da
nny was.

  “I can’t believe he made it to practice to be honest,” I admitted quietly. “I don’t think I would have been able to. I remember what it was like when mom died and—” I broke off, shaking my head. After all these years it still hurt to talk about her. Besides, this wasn’t about mom, this was about Selene. Shaking my head, I continued, “I can’t think of a lot of people who would have handled it so well.”

  Dad kept his eyes on the road, but shook his head. “He’s not handling it well, I promise, but he’s doing his best. You know Danny, always wants to be the strong one.” He sighed heavily. “Bless his heart, he’s a good boy, but I know that whatever front he puts up, he’s really hurting inside.”

  My insides twisted at the thought. I hated to see Danny in pain of any kind, but the kind that wouldn’t heal and that I couldn’t do anything about was the worst kind.

  “He’ll be happy to see you, though,” Dad added as an afterthought. He smiled lightly. “It’s been a long time since you kids have been together. It’ll be nice to have everyone back home for a while.”

  I bit my lip, turning away from dad to try and hide the emotions that were likely plastered across my face. “I wish it were under better circumstances,” I told him.

  “Me, too.”

  The weight of those circumstances weighed heavily on me and I desperately needed to change the subject to anything that didn’t make my heart well up with sadness. Clearing my throat, I tried again to focus on Danny and his incredible success. “How is practice going?” I asked as perkily as I could.

  My dad cracked a smile and I knew I’d hit on the right subject; he was so proud of Danny. “It’s going. The whole team looks exceptional this year and I think Danny’s really going to be able to carry them the rest of the way.”

  “That’s really great. I know how important football is to him.”

  Dad nodded. “It’s his life. I always expected him to come home one day and tell me he’d found some woman to spend the rest of his life with, but not Danny.” Dad shook his head, smiling wryly. “I never saw any woman he brought home, though I’m sure he’s had a few in his life. Just none important enough to bring by to meet the parents.”

  I tried to keep my expression neutral. When I’d brought up Danny, I hadn’t really meant to talk about his love life. That was a little too hard for me. I wanted to know how he was doing, how he liked his job and how much he’d grown since the last time I’d seen him. But that didn’t mean I wanted to know about his flings or his potential future wife.

  A small part of me was grateful, though. When dad said that Danny hadn’t brought anyone permanent home, it was music to my ears. I told myself that it was because I didn’t want to have to make nice with some trophy wife—or future trophy wife—while I was still coming to terms with the loss of Selene. But that wasn’t really true. Secretly, I was pleased because I didn’t want to see him with anyone. Not like that.

  It was a stupid, ridiculous feeling, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted him to be happy, but I knew that his happiness would come at a very steep, very odd price.

  I focused on football. “I’ve been watching his games when I can,” I told dad brightly. “He looks really good.” I winced and quickly added, “I mean, strong, solid, you know? The kind of guy you can depend on.”

  Thankfully, dad was watching the road so he didn’t see my expression as the words slipped out of my mouth.

  “Oh yeah. He’s doing great. They’re lucky to have him.”

  “Have you kept his ego to a manageable size?” I teased. Danny was cocky, it was true—it was hard not to be when you looked like he did and played in the NFL—but he was also a good guy. Sometimes you just had to dig a little to see it.

  Dad laughed. “I can still fit in an elevator if it’s just the two of us,” he joked, then added with a wink, “Barely.”

  Smiling, I shook my head. “Well, hell, that’s better than high school! Glad to see he’s learned what humility is.”

  We spent the rest of the ride home talking about Danny, which suited me just fine. He was the only sibling I had and we’d always been very close, ever since our parents first got together. It helped that we were both close to the same age, but I think what really made the difference was how much we liked each other’s parents.

  Danny’s dad was a deadbeat. He was a worthless piece of crap that used to lounge around all day drinking. When he wasn’t doing that, he was busy getting fired from jobs. Finally, he just quit trying to keep a job at all and left all the bills for Selene to take care of. Add that with raising a kid basically on her own and keeping up with the house, Selene might as well have been a single mom. Two years before meeting my dad, she kicked Danny’s biological father to the curb and told him that if he wanted to be a part of Danny’s life he’d have to get his act together.

  He didn’t. And it wasn’t even that he didn’t get his shit together, it was that he didn’t even try. Every once in a while, Danny might get a letter or a card, but it was rare and mostly out of the blue.

  Danny’s dad used to say that he put twenty bucks or so in every card he sent Danny and when Danny always said that he’d never seen any money, his father blamed it on the mailmen stealing it or worse, Selene. It didn’t take a genius to know he was lying and Danny may have always been a jock, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  After the first year of fuck ups and half-assed attempts at seeing him, Danny finally gave up on his dad and embraced his mom for everything she’d sacrificed to take care of him.

  I thought that was pretty mature for a twelve-year-old, but Danny was like that. Maybe it was because his dad was such a worthless flake, but Danny always felt responsible for Selene and when she married my dad, he felt responsible for me, too. Like it was his job to protect the women in his family.

  I smiled a little at the thought.

  As a kid, I hadn’t been nearly as popular as Danny, but I’d done alright. I was the kind of girl who’d been a little gangly and a little geeky when I was little, but once my breasts started coming in the rest of me filled out quickly. By fourteen I was cute and by fifteen, I was just shy of bombshell status.

  It really gave me a lot of confidence, because I was suddenly getting all of this attention from all of these guys—mostly really popular and really attractive guys—but not all of it was the good kind of attention.

  I remembered one time when I was sixteen, I’d been asked out by one of the guys on Danny’s team—he’d played football throughout high school—and I was so excited because a lot of the girls were really into him. In retrospect, I don’t think I really cared all that much for him, but I was just so happy that someone cool was interested in me that it didn’t matter whether or not there was chemistry.

  The date had been pretty lame. I think we went to a pizza place, one of those chains with the really greasy pizzas and the expensive watered down soda, and then we were supposed to have gone to a movie. At least, that’s what he’d told me.

  But instead of the movie we ended up going for a drive. When I asked him where we were going, he told me we were going to a ‘special place.’ Turned out he wanted to do me in the backseat of his car at the local make-out point.

  I let him kiss me and he groped my boob, but when he tried to slip his hand into my pants, I’d gotten pissed. Before he could even try to talk me into something that I wasn’t ready for, I slapped him across the face so hard that I left a red spot complete with a handprint that showed my fingers.

  At the time, I thought that was it. I’d made my stance pretty clear on the whole thing and he definitely wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me.

  When the next day rolled around, however, I noticed that some of the other girls were whispering and giggling at me. As soon as I got too close, however, they clammed up and suddenly they didn’t have a thing to say. It was my first clue that something was going on. My second clue was much stronger.

  Danny always left for school before I did, so we didn’t see much of each
other in the mornings. He had practice and I wasn’t interested in getting up that early just so we could go together. So I didn’t know he was upset with me until later in the day after fourth period and just before lunch.

  I saw him in the hall and waved. We were stepsiblings, but we got along and were friendly with one another. That day, though, he didn’t wave back. In fact, it seemed like he was giving me the cold shoulder.

  By the end of lunch, I confronted him and demanded to know why everyone was being so weird.

  Irritation—and maybe hurt, though it was hard to say if that wasn’t just wishful thinking on my part—lacing his voice, he told me; Everyone thought I’d slept with that jackass football player. I was absolutely shocked and it must have shown on my face, because as soon as he saw my expression, his turned to one of sympathy.

  He pulled me into his arms then for a hug, soothingly rubbing my back and telling me he’d known all along that that kid had been full of shit. He told me he’d take care of it before I even knew what was really going on.