Breathing hard, he made a guttural sound and put his forehead to hers. “Whooh. We gotta go somewhere.”
Samantha was barely beginning to understand what he meant when the room began to empty. “The prom,” she managed to say.
“No. Somewhere alone.”
“The prom,” she insisted. She wasn’t missing her first prom for the world. She wanted people to see her with Teague Runyan. They were a great-looking couple. Lydia would die when she saw how cool they looked, not to mention the fact that super kissers had to be super dancers. Samantha wasn’t doing anything else until she danced with Teague.
She did, actually. She shared another beer with him in the truck, driving between Jake’s house and school. They finished it parked in a dark corner of the lot, away from the others. This time when he gave her an open-mouthed kiss, right at the start, she knew just what to do. She was feeling smart and strong. The only thing she was thinking about was having a good time. Life was too short to be uptight about drinking. Look at her mother, a good little do-bee who followed every rule in the book and was now lying in a coma because someone she didn’t know had hit her car.
Teague came over her in the cab of the truck, holding her head while he kissed her, then dropping a hand to her breast. Samantha had ended up wearing no bra, so she felt every inch of his fingers. Startled, she cried out into his mouth, but he soothed her with words she barely heard, and his kneading felt good, so good.
“Fuck the prom,” he whispered.
“No, no,” she said and pulled away. He was moving too fast, scaring her a little. She wanted to know what she was doing, wanted to be in control. “I want to go.” She took his hand and dragged him from the truck. Seconds later, he had her pinned against its side.
“You’re a tease, Samantha.”
“No. I want to go to the prom.”
“Can we do this after?” he asked, pushing both breasts up, lowering his head to kiss the swell he had created above her dress.
It felt a little rougher now, not as good. She wanted to tell him that, but the words didn’t come, and all she could think to do was to slither out from under him and say, “This is my prom.” If she was relieved that he came along without a fight, she forgot it the next minute. This was her prom. She was with the coolest guy in the world, and she turned him on. It didn’t get much better than that.
But it did. The school gym was transformed by dark red lights into something pretty neat, and with everyone she knew in the world watching, Teague was an awesome dancer. He didn’t move much, just kind of throbbed in time to the music with his eyes on her the whole time. She felt the same tingling inside as when he kissed her, so that when the slow dancing came, body to body, it was a relief.
She put her head on his shoulder and moved with him, feeling tired now, more mellow. When he said he needed air, she didn’t argue. They walked outside, back to the truck. He popped open a couple of beers and chugged his fast, helped her with hers, and opened a third. He kissed her, touched her. She pulled him back into the school.
JACK and Hope stood in Rachel’s studio, surrounded by wood moldings that would soon be frames.
“Are you sure you know how to do this?” Hope asked.
“You bet,” Jack said. “I’ve done it before.” But not in years, and never for a show. “Those lengths of wood”—he pointed their way—“have to be cut to size with that”—his finger shifted—“miter saw. Then you predrill nail holes, apply wood glue, hammer in nails, clamp in that”—he pointed toward a heavy metal contraption—“miter vise. Piece of cake.”
“But … but what about putting the picture in it?”
“Not tonight. The frame has to dry in the vise. Then it fits on the canvas, and we pack it in with nails.”
Hope grinned. “Piece of cake.”
“You bet.” If it didn’t come out well, he could dump the framing on Ben. “I was thinking you’d help. It isn’t hard. Want to?”
Hope’s eyes told it all, even before she said an excited “Yes.”
“Which picture first?” he asked.
After giving careful consideration to the canvases that were lined up and ready, Hope pointed to the loons. “That’s my favorite.”
Jack didn’t know if she had chosen it to please him, but he wasn’t about to argue. The loons were his favorite, too. When he projected himself into the scene, he felt closer to Rachel, which was something he very much wanted to feel on this night. He had thought that taking a break from the hospital would be good, but he missed being there. He had called. Rachel was the same. Still, he felt unnerved.
No doubt some of that had to do with Samantha. He didn’t think he had handled her well, but hell, he was groping blind. Maybe Rachel would have known what to do and say. Then again, maybe not. In any case, he would have liked her input. They used to discuss things—Rachel had rightly told that to Katherine. Now Jack was feeling the loss firsthand. Deciding whether to punish the temper tantrum of a four-year-old with a spank or time alone in the bedroom was a far cry from deciding whether to insist on a curfew, forbid drinking, or lay down the law about sex—and Teague Runyan was into sex. Jack didn’t doubt it for a minute. The guy was too good looking, too physically developed, too cocksure of himself not to be experienced.
Jack should have insisted Samantha take the phone.
Whether she would have used it was another matter entirely.
His stomach was knotting for the first time in days. Taking a deep breath to relax it, he scooped up a bunch of the moldings and the miter saw. “Okay,” he told Hope as he carried them to the worktable, “let’s see what we can do.”
SAMANTHA and Teague left the prom shortly after ten and followed Pam and Jake to Ian McWain’s house. The music was canned here, but there was pizza, beer, and a punch that was incredibly sweet and good. Samantha was starting to recognize more faces, so she didn’t feel so alone when Teague wandered off. But he wasn’t gone long. He was never gone long. He always returned, eyes bright at the sight of her, arms catching her up and swinging her around.
She was relieved. He seemed to be having a good time, which must have said something for his feelings for her. If he didn’t like her, he would be bored. He would be aching to leave. He would be standing against a wall with a scowl on his face.
But he was treating her like she was gold, grinning nonstop, bringing her drinks, dancing body to body regardless of how fast the beat, and he wasn’t the only one warming to the night. Minute by minute, the kids grew looser and louder, the music faster, the dancing wilder than it had been at school. When the dining room table was cleared of pizza boxes, bottles, and cans, and became a dance floor, there was hysterical laughter all around. Laughter turned to applause when one couple jumped up and began necking. The applause was joined by raucous calls when a girl removed the top of her dress as she boogeyed.
Teague was holding Samantha from behind now, doing that same throbbing thing to the beat of the music with his body flush to hers. He had his arms wrapped around her and was alternately nibbling on her ear and moving his hands along the undersides of her breasts, teasing, teasing, she knew, and it felt good.
“Look at her,” he whispered, leaving his mouth open, and Samantha couldn’t seem to focus anywhere else. The girl on the table was laughing and singing with her arms over her head now, her bare breasts bobbing to the beat of the dance. Samantha might have been embarrassed, if that part of her hadn’t been muted. She was high, feeling part of the crowd, part of the fun, part of Teague Runyan even, so that when he maneuvered her back, swiped a pair of fresh long-necks with one hand, and led her outside, she wasn’t alarmed. She could hear the beat even from here. Teague felt it, too. They danced in the dark, body to body in a way she would never have thought to do, never have dared to do before, but it was nice, drinking beer as they danced, so nice, exciting, even dangerous. She was dizzy with laughter and dance. She felt sexy and adult. When Teague took her hand and, laughing, ran toward his truck, she went right along.<
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Pulling her close on the bench, with an arm around her and his beer dangling between her breasts, he started driving.
“Where to?” she asked, wondering how he could see, since her world was still spinning, but he was older, larger, protective.
“Somewhere quiet,” he said. “You’re too special to share.”
There was nothing she could say to that, so she smiled, closed her eyes, and buried her face in the rough spot under his jaw where his beard was a darkening shadow, and even that was erotic. None of the other boys she knew had to shave more than once or twice a week. Teague’s stubble was a manly thing.
They hadn’t driven far when he pulled the truck off the road. Killing engine and lights, he took a long drink, put the bottle on the floor of the cab, and turned to her. He didn’t say anything, just caught her face and held it while he kissed her. She tasted beer first, then his tongue, and it was firmer now, but welcome. Her body was a mass of tingles, confusing almost, so that the only thing it knew was that it needed something more.
He held her face until she was into the kiss, then he lowered both hands to her breasts. He kneaded them and found her nipples, tugging until she felt it all the way to her belly. She arched her back, wildly dizzy but feeling good, especially when something changed. It was a full minute of bliss before she realized that her breasts were bare, scooped right out of that stretchy dress. She looked down at them in amazement, until his head blocked the view, and then while his thumb rolled one nipple, his lips caught the other, and suddenly the sensation was too great. She made a sound of protest, feeling dizzy and high and confused.
“Ride with it,” he whispered and, shifting, lowered her to the seat.
“Teague, I don’t—this isn’t—”
“Sure it is,” he said in that grown-up, sexy way he had. He was moving against her now, making a place between her thighs and slipping a hand there. She tried to close her legs, but he rubbed her, and it felt so good that for a minute she let him, let him, even moved against him until the dizziness prevailed.
“We—have to—stop,” she whispered, trying to think straight when a part of her wanted him to keep on, but more of her was frightened. His teeth were rougher on her nipple now, and she didn’t know how, but his hand was suddenly inside her nylons, touching things he shouldn’t be touching.
“No,” she said, trying to slip out from under him the way she had at the truck earlier, but she was on her back with her legs wide, and his weight pinned her this time. His hips were moving rhythmically, allowing only enough room for his hand, which rubbed and opened.
“I’ll do it with my finger first,” he said, breathing hard, and she started to squirm. It wasn’t fun anymore. She pushed at his shoulders for leverage, but his finger followed. He was hurting her.
She tried to scramble back. “Let me go!”
“I’ll get you ready—”
“I feel sick,” she cried, and it was true. Through the nausea and the dizziness, she found his hair and pulled.
“What the—”
Kick him in the groin, her mother had always said, and Samantha did it. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t do it very hard, but it moved him enough for her to wriggle free, tug at the truck door, and fall out.
“What the hell’d you do that for?” Teague yelled through the open door.
But she’d had enough of music and dancing and beer, and more than enough of Teague Runyan. Tugging her clothing back into place, she ran. She stumbled when her heels caught in the grass, caught herself, and barreled on. She ran through a small wooded stretch, ran until she couldn’t breathe, then stopped and was violently ill in someone’s pitch black backyard. Holding her stomach, she backed up to the dark house, slid down to the ground, turned sideways against the wood, and drew her knees close. When more threatened to erupt from her stomach, she swallowed it down. She took shallow breaths, listening hard in between. She couldn’t hear Teague, couldn’t see Teague, but there was a noise in her head and her eyes wouldn’t stay in one place long enough for her mind to figure out what she saw.
She lost the battle with her stomach and threw up again. As soon as she was done, she pushed up and away from the house. When she searched the street from behind a tree and saw no sign of the truck, she ran in what she hoped was the opposite direction. She turned a corner and sat on the edge of the road to regain strength in her legs, then forced herself up and ran until she rounded another corner. She retched again and sank to the ground, praying that no one would see her. She was in a residential area. She had no idea which one. Her head was starting to hurt. If she’d been able to dig a hole, she would have climbed in and pulled the dirt in over her. She felt sick and embarrassed and scared.
She started off again, clutching her shoes to her chest and walking in her stocking feet, trying to recognize the names on street signs and failing. She turned one corner just as a pickup approached, and ducked behind a shrub, but it wasn’t Teague’s truck. She walked on, feeling sick in deeper ways now. She turned another corner and another pickup passed. She didn’t duck away this time, just kept walking as though she knew exactly where she was headed, all the time wondering where she was headed and what she was going to do. When the same truck passed a third time, more slowly, she was uneasy.
“Hey, baby,” said a voice that sounded older and more dangerous than Teague’s, and suddenly she’d had enough of being alone. Terrified, she turned in at the nearest walk and fumbled in her purse as though for the house keys. When the truck drove off, she stole away.
She ran the length of several blocks through people’s backyards, and emerged desperate to find a phone. She felt sick enough to vomit again, and wanted to lie down, just lie down and sleep while her mother kept watch, only her mother was in the hospital in a coma, and she couldn’t call Lydia, after what she’d done, and she didn’t have a phone!
She listened, trying to separate out traffic sounds from the other ones in her head. She walked another block and listened again, then headed in the direction she thought would be right. Her head hurt, her breasts hurt, her stomach hurt, her feet hurt. Looking behind her when she thought she heard another truck, she missed a break in the sidewalk and fell on her wrist, and that hurt, too.
She imagined what might happen if those men found her, or if Teague did. She imagined wandering around all night, freezing in the night air, making it to morning and not knowing what to do then.
More frightened by the minute, wanting only to be home, she began to cry softly. She was nearly frantic by the time she reached the end of another block and recognized the name on the street sign. Thank God thank God thank God, she murmured and started running again. It wasn’t more than five minutes before she found her phone. She lifted the receiver, dialed the number, and waited for her father to answer.
chapter seventeen
JACK WAS PAINTING when the phone rang, and felt an instant jolt. He didn’t have to look at the clock to know that something was wrong. He had sent Hope to bed at midnight, more than an hour before. Either Rachel was in trouble or Sam was.
Dropping palette and brush, he grabbed up the phone. “Hello?”
There was a pause, then a broken “Daddy? Come pick me up.”
He swallowed hard. Not Rachel. Relief. Fear. “Where are you? What happened?”
“I don’t feel good.”
“Too much to drink?” It was the least of the evils.
“I feel sick. Can you come?”
He was already wiping his hands. “Right now. Tell me where you are.” When she gave him a set of cross streets, he asked for the house address.
“It’s a pay phone,” she cried. “Can you come soon?”
He could do the drive in thirty-five minutes if he pushed it, but a pay phone? “Are you alone?” Where in the hell was her date? And what had he done?
“Hurry, Daddy.”
“Samantha, do I need to call an ambulance? Or the police? Is there trouble—”
“I just want to come home
!”
“Okay, sweetheart, okay—I’m on my way—just stay there—don’t move—and if anyone stops, call the cops, okay?”
She said a shaky “Okay.”
He had a thought. “Give me five minutes, then call me in the car.” He wasn’t sure what all had happened, but he didn’t want to hang up and imagine her alone and sick for the length of his drive. Better to talk her through the time. That way, if she passed out or ran into another kind of trouble, he could call an ambulance himself.
“I don’t know the number,” she wailed.
He told her and made her repeat it. “Five minutes, okay?”
“Okay.”
He hung up the phone to find a wide-awake Hope inches behind him. “Can I come?”
He didn’t answer, just took her hand and, snatching up his wallet in the kitchen, ran with her out to the car.
FIVE MINUTES passed, then ten, and the car phone didn’t ring. He gripped the wheel and pushed the car as fast as he could through a shifting fog, praying she would still be there when he arrived.
“Okay,” he said to Hope. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Nothing.”
“Loyalty changes sometimes, you know. Showing loyalty to your sister right now means helping get her home safe and sound.”
“She knew I didn’t like what she was doing, so she didn’t tell me. You were the one who was supposed to ask where she was going.”
“I did and it didn’t get me very far.” So he was trying to blame Hope, but that wasn’t fair. Hope was right. It was his job, and he had bungled it.
At least Samantha had had the sense to call.
Coast Road Page 27
