He looks at me horrified. “That’ll destroy me.”
“I know,” I grin.
“You fight dirty.”
“Did you expect anything else?” I ask him. “After all, you’re the one who taught me how to play.”
He looks at me with nothing but love in his eyes. “I never thought I’d end up with the one girl who could put me in my place and get away with it,” he tells me as he goes to get up.
I shake my head and hold him down. “Where do you think you’re going?” I question.
“Back to the party,” he says slowly, confused with where I’m going with this.
“So, you want to skip over the whole make-up sex thing?”
“Hell no,” he says, settling back onto the bench as a wicked grin crosses his lips. He leans back against the wall of the boat shed and runs his fingers down my side, bringing a shiver over my skin just like he knew it would. “But I think I’d prefer kinky, dirty sex.”
“In a boat shed?” I gasp as I grind down onto him to feel him hardening beneath me.
“Why the hell not?” he grins.
“What if someone walks in?”
“Then they can join in,” he says. “We can make it a party.”
“No,” I laugh as he slips his hand under the back of my shirt and unhooks my bra. “I don’t share my toys.”
“Really? You wouldn’t have a threesome?”
“Depends,” I say as I shimmy his shirt up between us. “Two girls or two guys?”
He helps me pull his shirt over his head and my eyes instantly drop to his sculptured chest. “Two girls, of course,” he says.
“What?” I gasp in disbelief. “So, you can disappoint two girls at the same time?”
“Hey, now,” he says, grabbing my ass and lifting us both up off the bench. He turns around and lays me down on the bench before coming down on top of me with a smug grin. “You think I’m capable of disappointing a woman during sex?”
I smile up at him and go to tell him that it’s definitely possible, but we both know I’d be lying. His lips come down on mine and he swallows my retort as my body arches up into him.
His hand travels up my waist and pushes my shirt up with it making me desperate to feel his skin against mine. I pull the shirt up over my head and slide my unhooked bra off my arms. Nate looks down at my body with pure desire before diving in. He sucks my nipple into his mouth and a gasp sails out of mine.
Wow. This is like cloud nine.
My fingers twine through his hair as I find myself at a loss. I need his lips on mine then on my neck, but I don’t want his tongue to stop flicking over my nipple. That need only gets stronger as his hand travels down my stomach and cups me between my legs, releasing only a fraction of built up tension.
I need more. So much more.
I reach for his belt and get it undone in seconds when Nate pulls back and looks down at me with a strange confusion. “What’s that?” he says.
“Huh?” I grunt as he flies off me. “Come back.”
“I smell smoke,” he tells me, looking around the dark boat shed.
I smell the air but get nothing. “I think you’re imagining things,” I laugh as my body truly starts to miss his touch. “Now, get back over here before I have to do it myself.”
“No, seriously,” he says, walking across to the opposite side of the boat shed and looking out the window. I sit up on the bench and watch him. He actually seems really concerned about this.
A loud noise sounds at the door of the boat shed and my head whips around. I don’t see or hear anything but someone or something is definitely out there. My hands slap across my boobs and I dive for my shirt, desperate to cover myself up. “Shit,” I curse as Nate flies across the small room to the door.
He pushes on it but it doesn’t budge. “Fuck. It’s locked.” He slams his body against it, trying to free us but nothing works. I look up at him with wide, panicked eyes. “Get dressed,” he tells me as he does up his belt buckle.
“What are we going to do?” I question as he reaches for his shirt. He shrugs his shoulders but I don’t ask again as I recognize the look in his eyes. He’s deep in thought and I wonder what he’s thinking. Whether he’s looking for a way out or trying to figure out who the hell locked us in here.
Nate goes back to the door as I work on hooking my bra behind my back. I look up out the window and a strange orange glow stares back at me from the outside. “Oh, fuck,” I gasp. Nate was right. “There’s a fire.”
“What?” he demands spinning around with a speed that’s not humanly possible. “Fuck,” he curses as he takes it all in. He looks around the small boat shed for some way out which is when he points out the cans of gas in the corner.
“Shit.” I hurry to the opposite window and try to get it open as Nate turns back to the door and slams himself into it, over and over again.
“Fuck, it’s not budging,” he growls.
“Either is the window,” I tell him before turning around and searching out something that could break the stupid thing.
Nate grabs a plank of wood and hurries down to me before telling me to step back. He slams it against the window but all it does it rebound back. “Fuck,” he yells as I start to smell the smoke rising in the shed.
I turn around to the glowing window, only it’s not glowing now, it’s completely lit up. Flames lick the bottom of the shed and are quickly spreading up the walls and across the floor. “No, no, no, no,” I begin chanting as fear completely rocks through me.
I scramble around, trying to find either mine or Nate’s phone as he continues trying to break the window. The adrenaline is pumping through me and I can hardly hear a thing over the sound of my blood pulsing through my ears.
I find Nate’s phone on the floor beside the bench and quickly bring up Jesse’s number. It rings twice and I beg him to hurry and answer. “What the fuck was that, man?” Jesse demands as he answers the phone.
I don’t have time for this bullshit.
“We’re in the boat shed,” I rush out. “It’s on fire. We need help.”
“Fuck,” he curses. “I’m coming.”
I practically throw the phone down as I run to the door and desperately continue trying to get out. The heat begins rising in the shed and the smoke grows thicker. My eyes panickily look back at the big cans of gas. We’re fucked if the flames reach that.
“Tora. Here,” Nate yells. I spin around to find him slamming the plank of wood into the corner of the window, desperately trying to loosen the frame from the building. “It’s loosening,” he tells me.
I hurry over to him as the flames continue climbing up the wall and eat through all the available oxygen in the air. “Jesse’s coming,” I tell him as the smoke starts to make me feel lightheaded.
He doesn’t answer, just keeps trying to save our lives. My body begins to sweat with the increasing heat as smoke fills my lungs.
I hear what must be Jesse and the boys on the other side of the door as they try to pry it open from the other side. “Nate? Tora?” Jesse yells through the thick wood.
I hurry over to the door and call back. “Go to the window. Nate’s nearly got it.”
He doesn’t respond but a second later, I see him and the boys on the other side. A few other people come and try to put out the flames with water from the lake but the fire is already too big. They’re going to need a lot more than just a few buckets of water.
Nate continues slamming the wood into the edge of the window as the smoke gets thicker and thicker. I start coughing and Nate yells at me to mask my face with my shirt.
I grow weaker and so does he, but he’s not giving up.
The fire billows around me and the noise of the flames is incredible.
Tears streak down my face as my throat begins closing up. We’re running out of time. If we stay in here any longer, we’ll either be burned alive or die of smoke inhalation. Either way, we die in here tonight.
Unable to take deep breaths, I fal
l into the wall before crumbling to the ground. Nate’s movements grow slow and weak and not a moment later, he’s falling down beside me, clutching my hand in his. “They’ll get us out,” he promises through a course throat. “We’ll be ok.”
I clutch his hand with both of mine. “I don’t want to die,” I cough as tears stream from my eyes.
“They’ll get us,” he repeats, trying to soothe me but the fear in his eyes does the exact opposite.
I know they’ll get us out, but the question is… will it be too late?
My throat hurts and I focus on the feel of Nate’s hand in mine and the sound of the boys on the outside, not the heat or the way the flames take over the whole wall, not the way they quickly creep towards the cans of gas, and not the way the thick billowing smoke stings my eyes and has my chest rising and falling with quick shallow breaths.
My eyes close as it becomes too much for my body to bare. “No, babe. Open your eyes,” Nate says, but not a moment later, I pass out, wondering if I’ll ever see him again.
Chapter 10
I’ve been stuck in this stupid hospital room for two days. It’s awful but necessary, considering I nearly died in that fire right alongside Nate.
Apparently, they got us out not long after we passed out. They dragged me through the broken window while Jesse went back for Nate. Puck performed CPR on me and Jesse did the same for Nate while they waited for the emergency services to show up and take over.
I woke up in the back of an ambulance holding Brooke’s hand as a paramedic hovered over me, saying things that I couldn’t make out. Someone told me to stay still while Brooke cried and eventually, I ended up here, still without a clue where the hell Nate was.
It was easily the worst moment of my life. Brooke stayed with me as we waited to hear what was going on with Nate. All she could tell me was that he was still out when our ambulance took off. I remember mom running in with tears streaming down her face. She pulled me into her arms and held me so tight. It hurt like a bitch, but all I could do was hold onto her and cry. The rest is all a blurry mess.
Except for when Jesse came in.
I would have been in this hospital bed for at least two hours before he appeared in the doorway. Relief poured over his face the second his eyes landed on mine. “Thank fuck. You’re ok.” I searched his face, desperate for the answers I’ve been dying for since the second I woke in the ambulance. “He’s fine,” Jesse said, walking into the room. “I broke a rib doing CPR, but he’s good. Stable.”
I closed my eyes as the relief washed over me.
Now, two days after that, I’m more than ready to get out of here. I’ve been poked and prodded at by nurses and doctors, reprimanded for not wearing the oxygen thingy in my nose, and nearly tube fed when I refused to eat from my throat being too sore.
My voice is scratchy as hell but in a few hours, I’ll be discharged and finally sent home where mom can fuss over me all she likes.
Nate has been a few doors down, but naturally, we’re not allowed out of bed to go and see each other, but that didn’t stop Nate from walking down here in the middle of the night and climbing into my bed. He held me all night, refusing to release me for even one second.
Neither one of us slept, despite how desperately our bodies needed it. We needed each other more.
We gave mom a bit of a shock when she walked in the next morning. But just that one time, she let it slide. She sent him straight back to his room with specific instructions to keep his ass there. I think she blames him for what happened. Maybe If we weren’t together, I wouldn’t have been in that boat shed in the first place, but that’s not fair. I was the one who stormed down there. I was the one who had the problem. Not him. Never him.
I tried explaining that, but all she did was shush me and make me drink more water, saying my throat needed to heal.
It’s only a few hours before I’m due to be discharged when Jesse walks in. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” my mother reprimands.
He scoffs and leans over to kiss her cheek. “How could I go to school with all this excitement?”
“I think excitement is the wrong word, sweetheart,” she says, giving him that ‘mother knows best’ tone.
“Compared to the rubbish those teachers were spouting at me this morning, I’d definitely say all the excitement is here,” he tells her. “Besides,” he adds, pulling a little brown paper bag with the logo from the café downstairs from behind his back. “If I were at school, how would you have gotten this caramel slice?”
“Really?” she asks as her eyes widen. She takes the little bag from Jesse and instantly peeks inside. “You’re an angel,” she tells him with a sigh of relief. “But I’m assuming this is to butter me up so I’ll leave Tora alone for a while?”
He gives her a tight smile. “Well… when you put it like that it sounds bad.”
She rolls her eyes and gets up from the chair beside my bed before giving Jesse a stern look. “Don’t let my daughter ride off into the sunset with your brother while I’m gone.”
Jesse salutes her. “Yes, ma’am,” he grins.
“You,” she says, looking down at me and giving me the stern mom look. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. If you’re not right here when I get back, there will be trouble.” With that, she takes her caramel slice and walks out the door.
Jesse instantly takes her place and pulls out his phone. He brings up Nate’s number and hits call before talking into the phone. “Come down to Tora’s room,” he says. “Mumma bear is gone.” He hangs up and looks down at me to see my scowl. “Still haven’t got a replacement phone?”
“Nope,” I grunt before having a moment of silence for my fallen phone which turned into a mangled piece of metal during the fire. “Mom refuses to leave me long enough to go and get one.”
“That sucks,” he says.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “What are you doing here?”
He goes to answer when Nate walks through the door. He ignores his brother and walks right up to me. I wriggle over and make space before he climbs in beside me and wraps his arm around me. “How come you get to wear normal clothes?” I question, hating that I’m still in this ugly hospital gown which flashes my ass every time I get up.
“Because I refused to wear this stupid thing,” he says pinching the fabric of my gown between his fingers. “Besides, it makes it easier to get around without the nurses noticing.”
“I should have known,” I chuckle, wincing as the laugh tears up my throat.
Pain flashes behind Nate’s eyes as he reaches over to the little table beside my bed and grabs the glass of water. “Drink this,” he says. “It helps.”
I do as he says as he turns towards Jesse. “What’s going on? What’d you find?”
“Find?” I grunt.
“What?” Jesse says, looking at me. “You think that fire was an accident?”
I look away. My mind has refused to go there. I think I’ve been too freaked out to actually think about it but now that he’s in my face telling me things I should already know, it’s a bit hard to ignore. “Are you saying someone tried to kill us?”
“No,” Nate says, squeezing my shoulder. “I think whoever did this was just trying to scare us.”
“Why do you say that?” Jesse asks, probably more on board with my theory. “The door was locked.”
“Because the cops said that whoever did it had tried to put it out,” he says, making me wonder when he spoke to the police.
“What do you mean? How?”
“Apparently there was a burnt jacket that looked as though it was used to try put it out. But that fire was huge. A jacket wasn’t going to do shit,” Nate says.
“We need to get that jacket,” Jesse says.
“Why?”
“Come on, princess. Keep up,” Jesse groans. “The jacket will lead us to the fucker who needs to have the shit beat out of him.”
“Him?” I question.
“Just a guess,” he replies, leaning back in h
is chair and pulling his phone out again. “Everyone was talking about it at school,” he grumbles.
“What’s new?” Nate grunts. “What’s the worst of the rumors?”
“Oh,” Jesse says with his eyes lighting up in amusement. “There are some pretty good ones, but the best was that after you stood off against Brooke, you took Tora to the boat shed and locked you both in there before setting the fire and killing her.” Jesse looks to me. “Your funeral is apparently on Thursday and kids are lighting candles in front of your locker. There’s a whole fucking shrine.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I was,” he laughs. “Originally the story was that you were both dead and all the chicks were sobbing, but when they saw me there… well, they figured I wasn’t that heartless to go to school after my brother died. So, at least they got that part figured out.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Didn’t you guys tell them what really happened?”
“After the fifth time of trying to explain it and not being believed, I just started putting a hand on my heart and saying ‘may she rest in peace’.”
“Jesus,” I grunt. “There’s got to be some bad juju coming your way.”
Jesse laughs and goes to say something when the door of my room is pushed open and a very familiar face steps through. My jaw drops and I’m pretty sure a gasp comes sailing out.
My father steps through the threshold of the room, first his face is filled with worry and concern and I’m about to run into his arms, desperate for my daddy when his concern is replaced with anger. “What the hell is this?” he demands as he takes in Nate laying in my bed with his arms wrapped securely around me. “Get your filthy hands off her.”
I try to say something but not a damn word comes out as all I can think about is why the hell he’s here? And why isn’t he running to me, looking me over and making sure I’m ok like every other father on the planet? I haven’t seen him in well over five months for god’s sake. Why aren’t I his priority right now?
“Excuse me?” Nate says, releasing his hold on me as he pushes himself up off the bed. He walks forward and puts himself directly between me and my father, blocking my view of his disgusted glare. “As I recall, you care more about your work than being her father, so why start giving a shit now?”
Broken Hill Hurt: The Broken Hill High Series (Book 3) Page 9
