Gin Fling: Bootleg Springs Book Five

by Score, Lucy

  I felt the tension in him as he recalled it.

  “She didn’t listen to me. I was the overprotective big brother. She had it all under control. She just wanted to help.”

  “That sounds like Shelby,” I said.

  He nodded. “She cares too much. Thinks she can fix everything, and there are just some things, some people, you can’t fix.”

  He rubbed his palms together slowly as he worked through his memories.

  “One night, he showed up at her apartment. She didn’t let him in, and he tried to kick in the door until one of the neighbors called the cops.”

  “Shit,” I said, clenching my fists.

  “Yeah. Her supervisor reassigned her. They’d seen shit like this before. The kid was obsessing. He’d do things just to get Shelby to show up at his place. Anything for her attention. So they tried to take her out of the equation. Assigned the family to a guy social worker.”

  “How did Shelby feel about it?” I asked.

  George shrugged. “She keeps stuff private a lot. She doesn’t like people worrying about her. But from what I could gather, she thought she failed him. Like somehow she should have convinced him to stay on his meds. They helped when he took them. But he’d forget, or he’d pretend to take them, and then he’d just lose control.”

  He got up and paced restlessly now. A brother who loved his sister.

  I wondered how I’d feel if someone tried to hurt Scarlett. The wave of raw anger, fear, was instinctive.

  “Anyway, one night, the mother called Shelby in a panic,” he continued. “The son had chased her and the rest of the kids into a bedroom with a kitchen knife. They were locked in, and he was kicking and punching at the door.”

  “Why didn’t she call the cops?” I asked, dreading the resolution of the story.

  “Didn’t want her son to get taken away. Shelby knew that. She told the mom to hang tight, she’d handle it.”

  I closed my eyes, took a breath.

  “So she goes over there—”

  “Alone?” I interrupted.

  He nodded. “Like the innocent do-gooder she was.”

  The past tense got me.

  “He was waiting for her. His mom told him through the door that Shelby was coming to help him.”

  “She knocked on the damn door, but it was already open.” George rubbed a hand over his mouth, taking a moment. “It was dark inside.”

  My hands were clenched again. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for the words he didn’t want to say. The story I didn’t want to hear.

  “She walked in. All by herself. He came at her with the knife. They struggled. He got in a lucky swipe or two, the whole time screaming about how he loves her and they’re going to be together. But his grip slipped because of the… the blood.

  “She started to run, and she either tripped or he pushed her. But she took a header down the stairs.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “You know her,” George said with a ghost of a smile. “Odds are she tripped over her own feet.”

  “Yeah, odds are.”

  “Anyway, another tenant—because everyone was in the hallway now calling 911—picked her up and carried her into his apartment. Another couple of them confronted the kid, got the knife away from him, held him down, until the cops came.”

  “Meanwhile, Shelby’s texting me and my parents all like ‘Don’t freak out, but I’m heading to the hospital.’”

  I could picture it.

  “What my idiot sister didn’t tell us is that kid nicked her femoral artery and she almost bled out in a stranger’s apartment. By the time I flew in and my parents got there, she’d had a transfusion or two and was all smiles. Looked like that fucking vampire from the Twilight movie. So damn pale. Insisting that she was fine.”

  “What happened to the kid?” I asked.

  “He was sixteen. He went into a juvie mental facility. I kept an eye on the court proceedings. He was charged as a minor, sealed record.”

  “So he’s just out there now?” I was horrified.

  “His family moved out of state. When he got out at eighteen, he moved with them. Shelby had moved too by that time. Different apartment. New neighborhood. Better security. She decided to go back to school and get her doctorate. I think she just wanted to find a different way to help people,” he confessed. “Like it scared her bad enough that she couldn’t work one-on-one with clients anymore. Moving into research made us all feel better.”

  “Smart girl,” I said.

  “That’s why she’s not on social media. You never thought it was weird that our little social scientist isn’t on Facebook or Instagram?”

  I hadn’t given it much thought. Hadn’t thought to ask.

  “She cares too much and worries too little,” George said. “The whole thing scared the hell out of me and our parents.”

  “She ever talk about it?” I asked, thinking about her diagnosis, her reluctance to discuss it.

  He shook his head. “I think she thinks she’s past it, but you’ll see that fear every once in a while if something startles her.”

  I’d seen it and written it off.

  “Brave girl,” I said.

  “The bravest. Sometimes I wish she weren’t so brave. That she didn’t think she had to handle everything on her own. She was always big on proving herself. And after seeing how worried we were when she was attacked, well, she’d probably never willingly tell us anything again. We hovered and smothered, did the family thing.”

  And that explained a lot. But it sure as hell didn’t excuse her for shutting out the family that loved her.

  “Well, she’s safe here. She’s got you, me, and an entire town of weirdos ready to back her up,” I said lightly. But I meant it. I didn’t know exactly what was happening between the two of us. But I was invested enough to make sure she never had to face that fear again.

  36

  Shelby

  The lake was bathwater warm, but I sure as hell wasn’t lounging in it. No, I was dragging my butt through it like it was molasses and I was a wrecking ball.

  Something grabbed my ankle, and I shrieked under the surface. I surfaced sputtering.

  “Shelby, honey, you gotta pull your face out of the water every once in a while. You don’t have gills,” Jonah said calmly as he tread water next to me. I got a good grip on his muscled shoulder and held on for dear life.

  Purposely depriving myself of oxygen while traveling through water that I could have easily crossed in a boat was stupid. Who invented triathlons anyway?

  “How far did I go?” I gasped, spitting out another mouthful of fishy lake water. I was swimming off Scarlett’s dock.

  “A hundred yards or so,” Jonah gauged. We’d been working on speed to break up the monotony of the endurance workouts. He’d been yelling instructions from the end of the dock until I apparently stopped listening.

  He was shirtless. Just the way I liked him. I tried to take a peek beneath the lake’s surface to see if he’d lost his shorts, too.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “You just need to pull up more often. The more oxygen you get, the better you’ll feel in the water.”

  “You jumped in here just to tell me that?” I asked, still breathing heavily. I wanted to try winking at him, but there was too much water on my eyelashes, and I ended up just blinking fast.

  His eyes warmed as they skimmed my body beneath the surface.

  “Maybe I had a few other thoughts I wanted to share with you,” he said.

  “I would very much like to hear those thoughts,” I said, trailing a finger over his shoulder.

  Was there anything sexier than a smiling, turned-on Jonah Bodine? I was willing to do some research, but I had a feeling it wasn’t necessary.

  “Have you ever gone skinny-dipping?” I asked suddenly.

  He grinned at me, and my bikini bottoms got unrealistically wetter. “Not since my wayward teenage years. And, let me tell you, Jetty Beach water isn’t nearly as wa
rm as this lake.”

  “You know, if we weren’t swimming off your sister’s dock, I’d dare you to skinny-dip with me.” I let my fingers take a wet little stroll up his chest and over his shoulder. He grabbed my hand, brought my fingers to his mouth, and sucked.

  “Gah!” I forgot to tread water and went under.

  Laughing, he pulled me back to the surface. We both looked back at Scarlett’s house. It was awfully close to the water. And Devlin’s SUV was parked in the driveway.

  So much for a skinny-dipping fantasy.

  “Let’s focus on what we’re here to do,” he suggested, reaching beneath the surface and skimming fingers over the bottom edge of my bikini. I grabbed onto his shoulders to keep my head above water.

  His eyes were watchful, sharp as I wrapped my legs loosely around his waist.

  “I like swimming better than running,” I confessed. His finger traced over my folds through the bathing suit bottom. My legs trembled. “And I like this better than swimming.”

  He grinned. “If we weren’t in full view of my sister’s house.” He sighed.

  “What about those hot springs everyone’s always talking about?” I asked, sliding in for a wet kiss.

  “You mean the secret hot springs that only the residents know about?” Jonah teased.

  “I mean the hot springs where my brother met June and she asked him if he was masturbating.”

  He winced. “I really don’t want to think about what other people do in the springs.”

  “But we could be doing it, too,” I said, looping my arms around his neck.

  “I tell you what. After you finish your triathlon, I’ll take you to the hot springs.”

  “What if I don’t finish?” I asked, biting my lip.

  He spun us around so our backs were to the land and the lake stretched out before us. “You gotta play the mental game, too, Shelby. Don’t just focus on the physical training. See yourself running. See yourself finishing.”

  I released him, rolled onto my back, and looked up at the blue, blue sky.

  I tried to picture it. Me being driven over the finish line by a helpful ambulance. No. Me limping and sobbing my way to the finish line. No. Scratch that. I rewound the tape. If I put in the work, if I paced myself and fueled myself properly, I didn’t have to limp and sob. I could finish strong.

  “What do you see?” he asked, his voice husky. His hand snaking out to hold my ankle. I loved his touch.

  I loved that I was still sleeping in his bed, but that wasn’t all we were doing anymore.

  “I see me,” I said, bringing back the picture.

  “Uh-huh. What are you doing?”

  “I’m crossing the finish line—running, not on a gurney,” I added. “People are cheering. Someone has a piece of pizza for me.”

  Jonah laughed softly.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Invincible,” I whispered.

  “Then that’s how you’ll finish,” he promised.

  The tips of my fingers brushed his as we floated side by side. Then his fingers were linking with mine. “You can do it, you know,” he said.

  “I’m starting to think I can.”

  “I tell you what,” he said, releasing my hand and sinking back into the water. “I’ll race you back to the dock.”

  “That’s not even remotely fair.”

  He raised a hand. “I’ll give you a head start. If you finish strong, you get to pick your reward.”

  My reward? A make-out session with him in the water. An entire 12-pack of Mountain Dew. A whole day without training. More sex.

  I grinned slowly.

  “What kind of reward makes you smile like that?” he asked.

  “I want to practice the Dirty Dancing lift with you in the water,” I insisted.

  “I really wish I didn’t know what that was.” He sighed.

  “But you do, and you will?” I pressed.

  “Two attempts,” he offered.

  “Two? It’s gonna take more than that. Five,” I countered.

  He eyed me thoughtfully. “Five.” He nodded.

  “Ready. Set. Go!” I dunked him and, with more enthusiasm than actual grace, swam like hell for the dock.

  I cut through the water, remembering to pop my head up and breathe more often. It helped until I heard his approach behind me. Jonah did everything athletic well. And that included things that happened in the bedroom and the forest and the back seat of his car. The man was a prime physical specimen. And my body was on high alert as he pursued me through the water.

  I’d been chased before. Had been terrified by it. But this kind of a chase brought out something exciting, something primal in me.

  I felt it click. The effort. The training. The endless research on proper form. And suddenly I was a fish. Jonah was closing in, but the dock was in sight. I shut off my mind and let my body do what it had learned to do.

  I was the water and the air. I was the sun warm on my back. As the dock speared up in front of me, I reached for it. And felt his hand close around my ankle. He yanked me backward, and I sucked in half a lung of lake water in protest.

  “Hey!” I sputtered, trying to swipe my bangs out of my eyes and cough up the lake I’d inhaled.

  “Sorry, Shelbs. I won fair and square,” he teased.

  I fumed, splashing him in the face. “There was nothing fair and square about that! You cheated.”

  “Damn right I did. Had to! You got fast. Real fast.”

  I preened at the praise. “I did, didn’t I? It all just kicked in at the same time.”

  “Maybe I should chase you the whole way through the triathlon,” he mused.

  “I’d have a heart attack halfway through it,” I predicted. Though my heart sped up at the thought of Jonah chasing me again. “And since you cheated, I demand my prize.”

  He feigned a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. But don’t knee me in the face.”

  “Yay!”

  “Hang on,” he said grabbing me when I tried to turn away from him. “Let’s get closer to shore. I need to be able to stand up.”

  “Oh, right.” I plowed through the water toward land, escaping his hands and the heat they scorched me with.

  “Okay,” he said, stopping me in the water. “You stay here.” He backed away from me several paces. “You ready?”

  “I was born ready.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Remember. No kicking me in the face,” he called as I started running—or slogging—through the water at him.

  Kicking wasn’t a valid concern. Our first attempt had me kind of lunging at him. His hands slid under my arms and lifted me straight up.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” he said under me.

  “No, I’m supposed to be like horizontal. Our bodies should be perpendicular,” I deduced.

  “Right. Okay. So come in faster this next time, and I’ll grab your waist,” he suggested, still grinning up at me.

  “If you put me down, I will.” I expected him to toss me back into the water like a discarded fish. But instead, Jonah lowered me slowly into the water. Our slick bodies sliding against each other. Oh, I liked that. A lot. Too much.

  He liked it, too, I noted with a satisfied smirk as I felt the prod of his erection.

  “Okay, faster,” I said as though I hadn’t just slid down his body like a stripper pole.

  “Faster.” He nodded.

  I returned to the starting place and hurled myself at him again.

  The results were the same. “This isn’t working,” I called down from my vantage point above his head.

  “This looks familiar,” he said to my navel.

  “Let’s try going a little deeper. I’ll kick off the dock and kind of launch myself at you,” I suggested. “No kicking,” I promised him before he could remind me.

  The next two attempts were closer. Jonah actually fell over backward, which I considered to be respectable progress in our scientific method. We surfaced laughing, and this time he scraped my bangs out o
f my face.

  “One more try,” he said with a sexy eyebrow wiggle. I didn’t even know eyebrows could be sexy before Jonah.

  “We’ve got this,” I said with confidence. “We’re a good team.”

  I swam back and assumed the position. “Are you ready for me? Because I’m coming in hot.”

  “Oh, I’m ready for you,” he assured me.

  And he was.

  His hands went around my waist, and just like with the swim, my brain shut down, and my body took over. I jumped as he lifted, and then I was airborne. Arms spread, core taut. I was flying, and Jonah was holding me up.

  “We’re doing it!”

  “We are when we get home!”

  * * *

  Scarlett: I’m not sure, but it looks like Shelby and Jonah are practicing the lift from Dirty Dancing off my dock.

  Cassidy: So cute! Also, we need to re-watch Dirty Dancing immediately.

  Scarlett: Agreed. Hang on. I have to get a picture of this. We can give it to them at their wedding.

  Cassidy: I’ll go halfsies with you on a frame.

  37

  Shelby

  “That scar,” Jonah noted, when I climbed in the car next to him, soggy on the outside yet physically aroused inside. The plan was to go home, enjoy a quickie, as the cool kids called it, then meet my parents who were pig-sitting for June and GT. He trailed a finger over the jagged mark that scored my upper thigh.

  It wasn’t exactly a question, but I felt like he was hunting for an answer anyway.

  “It happened a long time ago,” I said. “Hey, have you seen Gibson lately? Your Mom was asking how he was handling this whole ‘Callie Kendall is officially dead’ thing.”

  “It looks like it was a pretty deep cut,” he said casually, completely ignoring my segue.

  I, being a trained observer, was instantly suspicious. “After I graduated with my bachelor’s, I worked in the city as a social worker for a while. One of my house calls didn’t go well.” I said it lightly. I’d earned the right to say it lightly. To not tremble every time I thought of what happened in that apartment.