Summer Girl Page 8

  “Don’t,” I said, and turned and walked into the party without looking back at her.

  Just the mention of it, just thinking about that night, made my heart beat like a jackhammer, sent a red tide of rage flooding through me.

  I balled my hands into fists, walking up the flagstone path and blinking hard, shaking my head against the memories that were flooding me.

  He was drunk, raging, his fists flying, hitting her and hitting her, and I lay curled up on the floor, dizzy from a blow to the head…her blood was a red pool that spread across the floor…

  I drew in deep breaths and let them hiss out through my teeth. I couldn’t look back at Heather, couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I walked along the side of the yard, fast, towards the sound of music and laughter, cursing my weakness.

  There was a crowd of people behind the house, laughing and drinking. I knew a lot of them from town; it was mostly a townie party. Music blasted from a Dr. Dre pill beatbox, and a table on the back deck held silver tubs full of ice, with long neck beers poking out of them. Blue Styrofoam coolers held ice and soda and more beer.

  I grabbed a beer and twisted the top off and downed half of it in one long pull, and felt the tension start to lessen. I don’t think the alcohol had even hit my system yet, it was just the knowledge that it would that made me feel better.

  “Hey, man. You busted out of the big house.” Jason, the bouncer from the Sand Bar, was standing there. He had floppy side-razored hair that I happened to know that he flat-irons every day like a freaking girl, and a pretty blonde was hanging on his arm. So I guess the whole boy-band hair thing was working for him.

  “Dude.” I shook my head at him. “Nobody talks like that.”

  “Yeah, they do. Cool people talk like that,” he grinned at me. He tilted back a bottle of beer and took a long swallow, then turned his attentions back to the pretty blonde.

  I saw Heather walk in, and her face lit up when she saw me. I didn’t deserve that at all; she should have been pissed at me, but she’s too damned decent.

  As she walked towards me, a girl named Ashleigh gave her a dirty look and jumped in between me and her.

  “Hey, baby! I haven’t seen you in forever!” she said, grinding right up against my crotch.

  I pushed her away from me. “Excuse me,” I snapped, and turned to see Heather, with a look of hurt flashing across her face, walking towards the coolers. She reached in and pulled out a coke, standing there with her back to me.

  As I walked over to her, two more girls stepped in front of me. I tried to move around them but they dodged, blocking my path, laughing drunkenly, and by then Heather had walked over to a crowd of people, including some guys who were quite happy to see her.

  “Move the fuck out of my way,” I snapped, and they fell back away, eyes widening in surprise.

  Heather was shaking some guy’s hand, and he was introducing himself to her chest. I clenched my teeth and tried to find a way to contain that black ugly tornado of anger that was forming in the center of me.

  “Hey.” Someone’s hand closed on my upper arm and I swung towards him. It was Jason.

  “I know that look. Chill, brother,” he said. “Don’t get arrested twice in one week. He’s just talking to her, he didn’t lay a hand on her…”

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. I didn’t want Heather to see me flip my shit again. I didn’t want to spend another night lying on a hard jail cot wondering if she was all right.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Thanks. I go a little crazy sometimes for no reason.”

  “Ya think?” Jason said, and let go of my arm.

  Heather saw me standing there, and turned towards me, looking up at me questioningly. Which Slade was she going to get? She was wondering. The smooth-talking charmer or the moody dick?

  I walked over to her and slung my arm around her slim waist and led her away from the crowd, off the deck and down onto the sand. She smelled like honeysuckle and sunshine. Warmth spread through me, and I felt the storm clouds parting.

  “I’m sorry about back there by the car,” I said. “There are things I can’t talk about. Ever. I moved here when I was 14, and I worked at the bar and lived with my uncle until I moved out a couple years ago, and any questions about my life before that…are just off limits.”

  “I understand,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It wasn’t prying. The problem is me, it’s not you. Normal people can talk about their past. I’m not normal.”

  I kept my arm around her waist and we walked on the beach, towards the water, and found a place on the sand to sit, away from the crowd.

  I put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned in to me, and I could feel each beat of my heart thumping in my chest.

  We sat there in silence for a few minutes, watching the waves crashing into the shore. Rolling and crashing, again and again, hurling themselves onto the sugary white sand.

  “I love being with you,” she said. “I can’t help myself, I’m just…I’m happier when I’m with you.” And something tight inside me uncoiled, something that I hadn’t even realized was there. I felt the tension in my shoulders drain, and I tightened my arm around her, fingers wrapping around her slim arm.

  When she tipped her head up to look at me, I couldn’t stop myself. Didn’t want to stop myself.

  I dropped my beer bottle in the sand and took her face in my hands and kissed her hard, and I felt her soft lips part and I was lost.

  I pulled her on top of me on to the sand, and she bent down and brushed her lips across my mouth and an explosion of heat flared through my body. I tangled my fingers in her hair and pulled her head towards mine and I kissed her hungrily, our tongues entwined, our bodies pressed together. “Oh my God,” I said. “You are so fucking beautiful. I want you so much it hurts.”

  I moved on top of her, and we kissed and kissed until I felt dizzy, my hands moving down her body.

  “Take me home,” she whispered. “I mean…your house, you know, I-“

  “It’s your house as long as you want it,” I said. “I want you there.”

  Chapter Ten

  Heather

  “I – I’m not a virgin!” I blurted out, as we walked into Slade’s livingroom.

  He laughed. “Thank God for that. I don’t know what I’d do with a virgin.”

  I blushed, face flushing red. I sounded like the biggest nerd in the world. Seriously, I couldn’t believe this guy liked me. Wanted me.

  Was about to have sex with me.

  He turned to look at me, gathering me into his arms, and kissed me again, long and hard, before he pulled away and stopped to stare into my eyes.

  “Are you sure that this is what you want?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding?” I shook my head in frustration. “Stop being so careful with me! I’m not a porcelain vase, for God’s sake. You won’t break me.”

  I leaned up and this time, I took the lead, my hand on the back of his head, and I brushed my lips across his and when he leaned in for the kiss, I pulled back ever so slightly. “I’ve wanted you from the second that I saw you. Which was when I was 16, by the way.”

  “Really.” That amused, cocky grin quirked his face.

  “I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you.” That was true. Terrible, but true. I’d been with one other man – and I’d never wanted him as much as I wanted Slade.

  I grabbed his hand, suddenly bold, and placed it on my breast. My nipples were rock hard, and he ran his thumb over my nipple and then pinched it gently, and I gasped. “Ohhhh,” I said, and he swept me off his feet and carried me into his bedroom, and dropped me onto his soft, satiny black comforter.

  Our clothes flew off so fast that they were a blur of motion. I felt a ball of fear curled up in my stomach – fear of not being good enough. Fear of disappointing him.

  But as he slid his smooth, hard body on top of me, his hard shaft pressing against the wet petals of my sex, it was pretty cle
ar that he’d be taking charge.

  He kissed my neck, and then slowly began working his way down, stopping at my right breast. His mouth closed on my nipple, hot and wet, and slowly he sucked my nipple into his mouth, and I gasped out loud.

  “Oh, God.” His mouth, His hot, hungry mouth, moving down my stomach. I knew where he was headed.

  He kissed and bit me, and I lay there moaning and shivering with pleasure, my fingers tangled in his silky hair.

  Then he was between my legs, his fingers parting my lips, and he lapped at me with his strong, firm tongue. It was all that I could do not to scream out loud. The pleasure was so intense it was agonizing. I wanted him, I wanted to melt into him and become him, I don’t even know what I wanted. I wanted the pleasure to last forever and I wanted it to end because it was so intense that it was painful, because it filled me with a hunger that I feared I could never quench.

  His mouth closed on my clit, which was swollen and so sensitive that the contact wrenched a wail of mingled pleasure and pain from me. “Oh, God!” I wailed. He was killing me.

  Then, while his mouth moved on me, his fingers slid up inside me and began stroking the inside of my inner wall, and suddenly he’d found a spot which made me writhe and cry out helplessly. I don’t even know what kind of noises I made. I wailed like an animal, and orgasm after orgasm rolled over me, hot waves of pleasure leaving me drenched and gasping.

  So that what it felt like to come.

  “Oh, my God. I want to make you come,” I begged. “Please. Let me.”

  “You can do anything that you want to me, baby.”

  I moved on top of him as he lay there, and he was hard again, and I reached down and stroked him. It was like satin wrapped around steel, silky soft and so hard.

  “I’m on the pill,” I told him.

  “We’ll use a condom. I’m always careful, but I’d want to be tested before I’m inside you without protection.”

  Oh my God. So that was in our future.

  He grabbed a condom from his nightstand and rolled it on. He was sitting up, and I climbed on top of him and sank down onto him, and he was so big that he stretched me and it hurt, in an achingly pleasurable way.

  I sank all the way down until he’d impaled me, until I was resting on his lap, and he groaned and grabbed my hips. He began moving, thrusting upward, and I moved in perfect rhythm with him until his harsh groans reached a crescendo and he was shuddering in my arms, his face buried in my hair as he moaned my name.

  Afterwards we lay tangled in each other’s arms, his fingers tracing slow circles on the skin of my back.

  “I should tell you something,” he said, and my stomach tensed with fear. He had a wife somewhere? He wanted me to pack up and leave right now? I’d been terrible in bed and he’d somehow faked his orgasm?

  “When I see others guys talking to you, flirting with you…I want to fucking kill them. It’s all I can do not to break their necks.”

  I felt myself relax, and I pressed harder against him, arms tightening around him. I wanted to melt into him, wanted our cells to flow together until we were one being, so I’d never be apart from him.

  “I’d never be with another guy. All I want is you.” I stared up at him, and he looked down at me and smiled.

  “I know,” he said.

  I slapped his arm. “Hey! You don’t have to be quite that self-confident.”

  “Well, I am pretty good in certain areas. I didn’t hear any complaints from you, anyway,” he said.

  “What about you, with women flying at you like you’re some kind of giant super-magnet?”

  “None of them were ever you. You’re the only woman who’s stayed at my house for more than a one night hookup. The only woman I want to be with again and again.”

  He leaned down and kissed me again, bruisingly hard, and I opened my mouth and drank him in.

  Chapter Eleven

  I’d gone through my whole life without knowing Slade…so why was it now that I felt that I needed him like I needed oxygen?

  The day after being with Slade I moved in a daze, my body aching with Slade’s absence. He’d filled me with his hard flesh, and without him inside me I felt empty. Was this was what love was like? I wondered. Because it kind of felt like the flu. But a glorious, wonderful kind of flu.

  I had the day off and I had just gone shopping for the necessities of life at the pharmacy. Razors, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, sun block. Slade’s uncle was in the hospital with the flu and Slade was at the bar doing some handy-man stuff.

  He’d kissed me a thousand times before I left that morning, and muttered various threats against the male population of Hidden Cove in the event that any of them should even glance my way. He’d offered to skip working at the bar and just hang out with me until my shift started, but I’d said no. I didn’t want to turn into that girl, the girl who comes up with a couple name and creates a Facebook couple page and and clings to her boyfriend like a barnacle until he flees screaming into the sunset.

  Especially because our “couple” name would be awful. Sleather. Or Hade.

  No good. I hoped that wasn’t some kind of omen.

  As I walked aimlessly down the sidewalk with my little plastic pharmacy bag, I started mentally combining our last names instead.

  Tremaine + Monroe = Tronroe. Or Monraine. Also not so good.

  I looked up to realize that Sheriff Blackstone’s patrol car had rolled up next to me, and I turned to glare at him as he climbed out to talk to me.

  “If this is more parental harassment in the guise of false accusations, I swear to God, I have had it,” I snapped. “You can let me father know-”

  He held out a cell phone to me. “Your mother wants to talk to you.”

  “The feeling isn’t mutual.” I resumed walking, and Sheriff Blackstone scrambled to keep up with me. The cell phone cover was pink with cherry blossoms on it.

  “Bu I do like your cell phone,” I added sarcastically.

  “Your mother fed ex’d it to the police station and asked that I find you and give it to you. She said that she doesn’t want you to be without a phone.” He was still keeping pace with me, much to my annoyance.

  “Seriously? She’s using the police department as her personal messenger service?” I rolled my eyes. “I guess that’s how life works when you have enough money that you basically own the damn town.”

  “Your family doesn’t own anything but their house,” Blackstone snapped. I’d apparently touched a nerve. I’d heard rumors that the rich kids bitched about him all the time because he’d never cut them a break when they got caught acting like douchebags, so I was probably being unfair, but I was frustrated and furious with my family, and I didn’t care.

  So I kept walking.

  “Heather, I am asking you to take this phone and just talk to the woman.”

  I spun to face him. “Or what? You’ll arrest me again?”

  He looked me square in the eye with that expression that said he’d more than had it with me and every other bratty, entitled teenager in town. “Or nothing.”

  I grabbed the phone and said “Thank you,” with a forced smile, and walked away from him. His car peeled away in a cloud of smoke.

  I held the phone up to the ear.

  “What?” I snapped. “I’m about to throw this phone into the nearest garbage can, so make it fast. And I’m sorry your little plan to have me prosecuted for trespassing didn’t work out.”

  “What are you talking about?” My mother’s voice was slurred, and my stomach lurched.

  “I went to our house to look through dad’s file cabinet. I’m sitting there in our own house, and I hear footsteps coming towards me. I go to use the cell phone to call for help and it turns out that dad had the service turned off.”

  “What! I had no idea. He never told me. He said that you’d called and gotten your phone turned off.” Her voice was a little less slurred now, and more panicked.

  “He’s a god damned liar, and you
know it. He doesn’t tell you a lot of things. The footsteps were a police officer, by the way, and dear old dad tried to have me prosecuted for trespassing.”

  “He can’t do that,” my mother’s voice was confused. Blurry. “That house is in both of our names.”

  “Mother, your voice is very slurred. I hope to God you’re not driving anywhere. Do you need to go to rehab again?”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line, and I wondered if she’d hang up on me. I’d never dared mention that word to her before, never acknowledged that she wasn’t really on “vacation”. We’re Tremaines. We don’t air our dirty laundry.

  Except I wasn’t a Tremaine any more. I didn’t even know what I was.

  When my mother’s voice crackled across the line, I let out a breath of relief and I realized that I didn’t want her to hang up.

  “I am taking certain prescription medications which help me with a chemical imbalance,” she said, very slowly and carefully, struggling not to slur her words.

  “Listen to me. I do not live a lie any more, and I’m not going to help you do it any more either. You are an addict even if you’re doing it legally, and you’re drowning in a sea of pills because you’re miserable married to my father. People do get divorced, you know. Even very wealthy people. You have friends who’ve gotten divorced.”

  She let out a bitter laugh. “They’re not my friends any more. They disappeared.”

  “Well, then you weren’t a very good friend to them,” I snapped. “Maybe you should reach out to them now and say you’re sorry. I need to go. I hope you decide to go find the help that you need, but I just don’t have the energy for this right now. I’ve got my own problems. I need to go.”

  “There’s a lot going on that you don’t know about,” my mother slurred. “For your own safety, you need to let this go.”

  “For my own safety?” I barked out a harsh laugh. “My dad screwed the maid, knocked her up, and now he’s refusing to help out his illegitimate daughter. You both are acting like dad committed treason and is facing the death penalty. Dad needs to get over himself.”

  Dead silence again, and when she spoke her voice was slow and sad. “If I agree to go to rehab and talk to a divorce attorney, would you…would you give this up? I could move out of the house…we could find our own place.”