“Why?”
“We’re underage for a start, and my father will go mad if I come home reeking of booze.”
Harper just smiled with a cheeky wink. “We’ll see.”
I then followed her through a large archway and into a room that had sofas around the sides. There was a pool table, and a game was taking place. Boys versus the girls, from the looks of things.
Taking a sip of my drink, I almost pulled a face. Harper had made it way too strong.
As Nick appeared with a beer in his hand, I glanced around, hoping to see Hudson.
Nick must have read my thoughts. “You looking for someone special?”
I shrugged, “No, not really.” I didn’t miss the twist to Harper’s lips. She knew I was looking for Hudson.
Nick’s smile suggested he also didn’t believe me, and he turned to Harper to whisper something in her ear. She laughed, and then I felt like a gooseberry as Harper and Nick started flirting like their lives depended on it.
We were standing by another set of patio doors, and as I glanced outside, I could see the beach where a large bonfire had been lit.
My excitement shifted into gear at how close we were to the coast. We had only been in Xander’s car for around thirty minutes. I wasn’t aware that we lived so near the ocean. Somewhere I had yet to visit.
Throwing caution to the wind, I finished off the rest of my drink as Nick went to get him and Harper a refill.
“I love the beach,” I shouted at Harper.
“What?”
“The beach,” I said, motioning towards it with my finger. She nodded, but I could tell she hadn’t heard me. We were standing next to one of the speakers, and my ears had started ringing.
As I shuffled backwards, I hit another body and turned sharply, ready to apologise.
The body turned out to be none other than our host, Nash Straker, number sixty-nine himself. Thankfully, he’d been behaving himself recently.
“Sorry,” I said, as he sucked his fingers free of the beer which had spilt from his bottle onto his hand when I’d crashed into him.
“Don’t worry about it, beautiful,” he replied, lowering his arm with a toothy grin.
As Nick appeared back from the kitchen with their drinks, he and Harper started to chat, and Nash introduced me to a group of people he was standing with. It was a mixture of boys and girls, and they were all very welcoming, but apart from Nash, I didn’t recognise any of them from school. I was surprised Nash didn’t tell us to leave, as we were clearly younger than most of the kids there.
Any nervousness I’d felt earlier vanished. I was complimented by a couple of the girls who told me how cool my accent was. Nash had a great sense of humour, and gone was the smut he’d showered me with during that first week of school. I felt like a normal teenager until my mother’s favourite song came on, and that sadness I’d managed to keep down started to resurface.
I missed her so much, and I wondered what she’d think of me being at a party and drinking. Not good, would be my guess.
As I pretended to listen to a story that a girl named Mia was telling, I glanced outside. I watched the sea as it glittered in the sunshine until my eyes landed on Mark. He was standing with Laura and Lily by a pool house. They waved as they saw me.
I was just about to excuse myself from the group and go speak with them when Harper ducked behind Nick, bumping my cup. Luckily, it was empty. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whispered-shouted.
Both Nick and I took in her actions with a frown.
“What’s up?” I said, watching the way she was peeking around Nick’s body.
“Phoenix is here.”
A surge of adrenaline shot through me as I knew what that meant. Hudson would be close. The brothers were joined at the hip.
“So?” I questioned.
“He told me he wasn’t coming and that I wasn’t to come either,” Harper confessed, keeping her head down. Nick scowled.
