I sniff back more tears and then wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “I was going to tell him after the party. I didn’t want to ruin it for him.”
“Chad is a wreck,” he says. “He’s physically okay, and the drugs are out of his system, but he’s scared of what you must think of him.”
I get on my knees, wanting to plow past him to go find Chad. He must be out of his mind with worry. I can’t imagine if the tables were turned and he was the one to find out I was drugged. “Where is he? I have to find him.”
Julian grabs my shoulders, settling me back down where I was. “He found you. He’s here.” He nods out the door of the treehouse. “Right down there. We came straight here as soon as they released him from the hospital. He wanted to come up first, but I thought hearing the truth from someone else might be best. He’s already been punched once tonight,” he says, raising his injured hand. “I was afraid you might give him a second shiner before he could tell you everything.”
“Thank you,” I say to the person who knows me almost as well as the man standing at the base of the tree.
“Are you ready to see him?” he asks.
I nod over and over as tears well up in my eyes in anticipation.
Julian touches my hand in support before he backs out and climbs down the rope ladder. My heart is beating so wildly I can hear it pounding in my head. Never in my life have I been so happy and so sad at the same time. He didn’t use drugs. He didn’t cheat on me. We’re still Chad and Mallory. But at the same time, he’s been violated. And I’ve never wanted to kill someone as much as I do right now.
I feel the treehouse shake as Chad climbs up the ladder. Before he gets all the way up, he pushes a sleeping bag through the entrance. I wipe away the tears that spill over my lashes when I realize it’s the same old sleeping bag I brought up here as a kid. He must have asked my dad for it. When he completes his ascent, I push the rolled-up bag out of the way and catapult myself into his arms.
“I love you,” I say at the same time that he says, “I’m sorry.”
Then he says, “I love you,” when I say, “I’m sorry.”
Then we simultaneously ask each other if we’re okay. Then we laugh through our tears. Then we kiss through our tears. Then we hold onto each other like we’re the lifeboat that will save us from drowning.
When I can finally get myself to pull away, I take in his face in the moonlight. “Can I see?”
He pulls out his phone and turns on the flashlight. I trace my fingers lightly across the red and purple bruise that surrounds his left eye. “Does it hurt?”
He shakes his head. “Not nearly as much as my heart does. I’m so sorry this happened. It’s all my fault, Mal. If I had never gotten mixed up with her. With drugs . . .”
I take his whole face in my hands. “This is not your fault, babe. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I’m the one who insisted they come into the party. I invited Paul. You did nothing wrong. And you know if this wouldn’t have happened tonight, she probably would have found some other way. At least this way, Julian was there, and Kyle, Ethan, and my dad. They had your back. If they hadn’t called the police and figured this all out, it could have turned out much differently.”
“It scares the shit out of me to think how this could have turned out. What if I’d . . . God, Mal, what if I’d slept with her? I thought she was you. She smelled like you. She looks like you. She was in our bedroom. Our fucking bedroom.”
Tears stream down his cheeks at the thought of what that would have done to him. To me. To us. “Shhhhh,” I say, pulling him close to me. “I’d still love you, Chad. Even if that happened. I promise you I’d still be here.”
“It was like I was in a dream,” he says, holding me tightly. “I knew everything that was happening to me, but it was like my mind was disconnected from my body. Reality was altered. The laws of physics didn’t exist. I remember all of it. Every detail. You offered me coke, but I wanted you more, so I pushed it away. Then when you came in the room, there was two of you, the one on top of me and the one yelling at me. And then I was being punched by Julian, but I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t even know it was Heather until they told me later at the hospital.”
I shake my head in utter disbelief. “I can’t believe she did that. Did she think she’d get you hooked on drugs again?”
“I guess so,” he says. “She was desperate for work. Desperate for the pathetic life we once shared. Paul was in on it, too. Although he claims he didn’t know about the drugs. I don’t believe him. Not even Paul would be so dense to think that bitch could seduce me.”
“So what’s going to happen to him?” I ask. “Julian said he wasn’t arrested like Heather was.”
“There wasn’t enough evidence to hold him.”
I frown in disgust. “He should have to pay for what he did.”
“Oh, he will,” he says. “If nothing else, at least he’ll feel it in his wallet.”
“You fired him?” I look at him with a reluctant smile.
“Hell yes, I fired him. So did Lila. And I’ve called two other people who I know he represents. So I’m pretty sure by this time tomorrow, the only clients he’ll be able to get are the small, furry, four-legged kind.”
“What will you do? Who will be your manager?”
“Kendra is already putting together a list.” He sees the concern etched across my face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. If Paul knows what’s good for him, he won’t fight me on this. I’m fairly confident a few of our party guests recorded the whole thing, and Julian tells me Paul cried like a fucking baby.”
I can’t keep my hands off him. I want our bodies close, so I can protect him.
He points to the sleeping bag. “Let me set that up for us. We can lie here and stare at the stars like when we were kids.”
“Good. I think I’d like to sleep here,” I tell him, as he spreads the bag open. “Because there is no way I’d be able to sleep in that bed.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he says. “I’ll burn the damn thing. Hell, we don’t even have to go back there if you don’t want to. We can find a new place.”
“I love that apartment, Chad. But the bed has to go. I’d never be able to look at it again without picturing how she was leaning over you and how you were touching her.”
“And the perfume,” he says, cringing. “It has to go, too. While I love it on you, it’ll always remind me of what happened.”
I pull away and look at him in confusion. “She was wearing my perfume? Did she steal if from my vanity? Wait—it’s still packed. How . . . ?”
He shakes his head as if in pain, still clearly affected by tonight’s events. “Do you remember last spring at Ana’s party when Heather asked about your perfume? I thought it was strange and completely out of character.”
My hand comes up to cover my gasp. “Oh, my God. Was she planning this all along?”
He shrugs. “She was planning something,” he says. “But it just goes to show you, she would have gotten to me one way or another. You can’t beat yourself up over the Paul invitation.”
Another tear rolls down my cheek. “I thought I’d lost you,” I tell him. “I wanted to die, Chad. I wanted to lie here and rot away so I didn’t have to feel what I was feeling. But I knew that would never happen. I knew I would always love you even if you betrayed me.”
He lies down and pulls me next to him as I rest my head on his chest. “I will never betray you, Mallory. I know it may seem like I did, but I would never willingly break my promise to you.”
“I know you wouldn’t. I know you didn’t.” I rest my head on my hand and peek up at him. “I promise I won’t jump to conclusions again. I’ve done that twice now.”
“With damn good reason both times,” he says. “I promise I will do everything I can to make sure we’re never put in a position like this again.”
“I promise to throw away every bottle of ‘Desire Me’ that I own.”
He kisses the top of my hea
d. “I promise to buy you a whole damn magnum of any other perfume.”
“I promise to always let you know when I get dead rodents in the mail.”
He laughs and my head bounces up and down on his chest. “I promise to never use tongue when I kiss other women.”
“Any other fiancée would be offended,” I say, giggling. “But I think that’s very romantic of you.” I kiss him through his shirt. “I promise to be the best wife I can.”
He wiggles beneath me and pulls something from his pocket. “Give me your hand,” he says. I hold it up, sad that for a few hours the ring I threw at his head was missing. He slips it back onto my finger. “I promise to never be a stupid bastard.”
I admire the ring back in its rightful place. “I promise to never take it off again.”
He pulls me on top of him. “Did we just write our vows, future wife?”
I laugh. “Those are some pretty crazy vows,” I say.
“To go with our pretty crazy life,” he says. “But it’s our crazy, and I love it. Just like I love you.” He threads his hands into my hair and pulls my lips to his. “I promise to make you scream my name every damn day of our lives.”
Right before our lips meet, I make one last vow. “I promise to let you.”
His lips capture mine, gently at first and then demanding. Almost like how a whisper becomes a shout. We taste each other knowing after what we’ve endured, nothing can tear us apart. Our kisses are salty reminders of the bond we have that can never be broken.
His hands come up to unbutton my blouse. He reaches inside to cup my breasts and I quiver. I want to remember every touch; every kiss; every sound of our love. Because it was almost taken away from us in an instant.
“Mal, I want you so much,” he says. He turns to his side, spilling me off of him as his hand reaches down to unbutton my pants. “I promise to fulfill your every fantasy,” he says, looking at my bare chest. “Because right now, you’re sure as hell fulfilling one of mine.”
My eyes mist up thinking of the time he told me he used to fantasize about what we would do in this very treehouse. I wanted him, too. Even way back then. Even when I couldn’t comprehend that the tingles running down my spine meant I was falling for a twelve-year-old boy. Even when I didn’t understand that the butterflies in my stomach meant my heart belonged to a sixteen-year-old man.
Our clothes become a heap on the clapboard floor of the old battered treehouse. He peels my panties slowly down my thighs, inhaling my scent along the way. He spreads my legs and buries his mouth in me making me writhe and buck beneath his expertly placed tongue. I grab his hair, weaving my fingers through it, holding him tightly to me until his name rolls off my lips in pleasurable waves.
He climbs up my sweat-slickened body, kissing my scar, my breasts, my neck, as he works his way on top of me. And as he enters me and we become one, his hot whispers caress my ear. “I’ll promise you anything. I promise you everything. Just promise me you’ll always be mine.”
I moan at the feeling of him filling me so completely. At the feeling of his hot flesh on mine. “I’ve always been yours, Chad. Since the day we met. Maybe even before that. I was made for you.”
He rocks his body into me, faster and faster with every delicious thrust. “I need to hear you say it, Mallory,” he begs, as he works a hand between us, bringing me once again to the precipice of ecstasy.
I lift my hips and squeeze my thighs, my stomach tightening with my impending explosion. “I promise,” I say breathily, just as he shouts into the night, emptying himself into me as I pulsate around him.
~ ~ ~
Dawn wakes us, our backs sore from sleeping on the hard wooden floor. Our bodies battered from the love we bestowed upon each other time and time again. Pain has never felt so good. Chad wraps our naked bodies in the sleeping bag as we hold on to this moment that will be etched into our memories until the day we die.
I feel a wave of heat cross my face when I hear my father yell from the back door. “Coffee and pancakes in ten!” he shouts.
“Oh my gosh,” I say, burying my head into Chad’s shoulder. “Do you think he heard us last night?”
He laughs. “Babe, I think New Jersey heard us last night.”
He hands me my clothes and we get dressed before climbing down to the ground. On our way to the house, we pass the driveway. Chad grabs my hand and pulls me to a stop. He nods at the basketball. “One last game?” he asks.
I smile before I tell him, “But I have everything I could possibly want. There’s nothing left to play for.”
He stares me down. His brilliant blue eyes are thick with determination. He wants something. He wants it bad.
“Fine, I say, walking over to pick up the orange ball. HORSE?” I ask.
He shakes his head, smiling deviously. Maybe he’s hungry and wants a shorter game.
“PIG?” I ask, with the bounce of the ball.
He shakes his head again.
I’m confused. “Well, what game do you want to play then?” I ask.
He walks over and steals the ball from me, setting up for his first shot. Then he turns and stares into my eyes. It’s then when I see it. I see what he wants. I see our entire future as he’s mapped it out. And I know with one hundred percent certainty that everything he wants—I want. I’m not even surprised when he tells me the name of the game we’re going to play. “BABY,” he says with a crooked smile, right before perfectly netting his first shot.
Tears cloud my eyes as I go to retrieve the ball. My blurred vision makes it almost impossible to sink my shot. But that’s okay. Because I’m fairly certain no matter what I do next—we’re both going to win this game.
Epilogue
Chad
Seven years later . . .
I can’t wipe the huge smile off my face. I look over at Mal and know she’s feeling exactly what I’m feeling as we watch the kids on the basketball court in our backyard.
Brayden, Julian’s son, and Mallory’s brother, Ryan, who are both seven years old, are teaching Kiera, our six-year-old daughter how to play.
Mallory reaches over to grab my hand. We know all too well what’s in store for them. The fun they will have growing up together. The bad times they will help each other navigate. The memories they will make. The incredible friendship they will all share.
“Do you think one day Brayden and Kiera will be sitting here watching their kids do the very same thing?” she asks.
I squeeze her hand. “They could only be so lucky.”
I look around the patio and see Mal’s dad and step-mom sipping lemonade on this warm summer day. I glance over at Ana, who is bouncing a laughing toddler on her knee. I look at my beautiful wife and place a hand on her growing belly. This is what it’s all about. Not the awards lining the shelves of my study. Not the houses we own or the numbers in our bank account. This—family and friends—this is what makes life worth living.
Kiera squeals in delight when she finally makes her first shot.
We all clap and smile with pride. Mallory turns to me with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know where we’ll end up or what the future holds,” she says. “But I’m telling you this right now—we will always have a basketball hoop.”
I smile and nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. “And a treehouse,” I say. “Definitely a treehouse.”
THE END
Stay tuned for STONE VOWS coming in the fall of 2017. If you enjoyed Stone Promises, you might want to check out The Mitchell Sisters series, beginning with Purple Orchids:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UHPKXMS
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00UHPKXMS
To keep up with my releases, see cover reveals, and get a chance to read ARCs, please sign up for my mailing list here: http://www.samanthachristy.com/contact.html
Acknowledgements
I can’t believe this is my eighth novel. I’m still pinching myself. When I started this journey a mere three years ago, I questioned my ability to publish one bo
ok let alone eight. It has been an incredible ride. And for that, I have my readers to thank. If it weren’t for you, loving my characters and encouraging me to write more (and write faster), I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.
Thank you to my editors, Ann Peters and Jeannie Hinkle. Editing is boring, repetitive, tedious work and for all that and more, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
To my beta readers, Laura Conley, Heather Durham, Tammy Dixon and Angela Marie: thank you for your tireless work that surely made this book a much better read.
My family has stood by my side and watched me become a full-time writer. They’ve taken over the housework and the cooking, allowing me to follow my dreams. None of this would be possible without you.
about the author
Samantha Christy’s passion for writing started long before her first novel was published. Graduating from the University of Nebraska with a degree in Criminal Justice, she held the title of Computer Systems Analyst for The Supreme Court of Wisconsin and several major universities around the United States. Raised mainly in Indianapolis, she holds the Midwest and its homegrown values dear to her heart and upon the birth of her third child devoted herself to raising her family full time. While it took time to get from there to here, writing has remained her utmost passion and being a stay-at-home mom facilitated her ability to follow that dream. When she is not writing, she keeps busy cruising to every Caribbean island where ships sail. Samantha Christy currently resides in St. Augustine, Florida with her husband and four children.
You can reach Samantha Christy at any of these wonderful places:
Website: www.samanthachristy.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamanthaChristyAuthor
Twitter: @SamLoves2Write
E-mail: [email protected]
Stone Promises (A Stone Brothers Novel) Page 31
