A bad apple.

Van Der Zees always hang with the shiniest fruit in the basket, Edie.

Snapping my head back to the shore, I paddled faster.

“Fucking coward,” Bane yelled loud enough for Jordan to hear.

I didn’t answer, and not for lack of words. Bane didn’t know the whole story. I needed to stay civilized with my father. He held my future in his callous hands. I wanted it back.

Bane got his name for a reason. With zero filters, he was essentially a glorified bully. Only reason he was never kicked out of school was because his mother had a shit-ton of connections with the city council. But Bane ruled us all. Every single damn kid in the school. The rich assholes. The corrupted footballers. The cheerleaders who made the other girls’ existence a living hell.

Bane wasn’t a good guy. He was a liar, a thief, and a drug dealer.

And my sometime boyfriend.

So, while Bane was right—my father was indeed a world-class prick—Jordan was right about something else. I was obviously making dubious life choices.

“Jordan?” I asked, hoisting the board horizontally and tucking it under my arm as I strode toward him. The cool sand clung to my feet, numbing my skin. The rush of the surf still coursed through my veins, but I knew the adrenaline would die down soon and I’d freeze. I didn’t wince, knowing my father would take small pleasure in watching my discomfort and deliberately lengthen the conversation.

He jerked his chin behind my shoulder, his eyes narrowed to slits. “That the Protsenko kid?”

I scrunched my nose, a nervous tick. Even though Jordan was a first-generation immigrant, he had a problem with me making friends with a Russian kid who’d come here with his mom after the downfall of the Soviet Union.

“I told you to stay away from him.”

“He’s not the only person you’ve told me to stay away from.” I sniffed, squinting to the horizon. “Guess we agree to disagree.”

He thumbed the collar of his dress shirt, loosening it around his neck. “See, this is where you’re wrong. I’ve never agreed to disagree with you, Edie. I simply choose my battles. It is called good parenting, and I try to execute it as much as possible.” My father was a chameleon, interchangeable, and adaptable to a fault. He masked his ruthlessness with concern, and his bulldozing ways with enthusiasm and a type-A driven personality. It was his actions that made him the monster he’d become in my eyes. From afar, though, he was just another law-abiding citizen. A poor Dutch boy who’d come to the States with his parents, fulfilled the American dream, and became a self-made millionaire through hard work and merciless wit.

He sounded concerned, and maybe he was, but not about my wellbeing.

“Father.” I wiped my face with my arm, hating that I had to call him that just to please him. He hadn’t earned the title. “You’re not here to talk about ‘the Protsenko kid’. How can I help you this morning?” I jammed the surfboard into the sand and leaned against it, and he reached to touch my face, before remembering I was wet and withdrawing his hand back into his pocket. He looked so human in that moment. Almost like he didn’t have a hidden agenda.

“Where did you hide your acceptance letters to Boston University and Columbia?” He parked his hands on his waist, and my jaw almost dropped to the sand. He was not supposed to know that—obviously. I’d been accepted to five universities. Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Brown, and Boston University. My GPA was 4.1, and my last name was Van Der Zee, meaning these people knew my father would donate a couple million dollars and a kidney to the fine institution that would unburden him from my presence. Unfortunately, I’d never had much interest in attending an out-of-state college. The obvious reason was my surfing. It was my oxygen and air. The sun and the open sky were food to my soul. But the main reason was that the only person I cared about in this world was in California, and I wasn’t moving away. Not even to Stanford up north.

Jordan knew that damn well.

“I didn’t hide them. I burned them.” I stripped out of my wetsuit, the latex slapping my flesh punishingly as I revealed my small purple bikini underneath. “I’m staying close to him.”

“I see,” he said, knowing we were not talking about Bane. The whole reason why my father had decided to have this conversation at the beach and not at home was because he couldn’t chance my mother overhearing us. Lydia Van Der Zee was in a fragile state, her sanity constantly hanging by a thin thread. Shouting was a hard limit for her, and this topic was volatile enough to bloom into a massive fight.

“Just say it.” I closed my eyes, a sigh rolling from my throat.