One Week of Summer

by Amber Rides

  “Your boyfriend’s family is a piece of work, you know that?” he snarled. “Did he even tell you the truth about what they did? Or did he just lead you around by his dick and you took his word as law?”

  I tried to answer, but the pressure on my chest just made me wheeze out a noncommittal sound. Jimmy was too involved in his own story to care anyway.

  “Big Ted destroyed my dad’s reputation and swindled him out of his life’s savings. Then finally – after years of negotiation, the bastard was finally going to sign a deal that’s going to set things right, and what does he do? He dies. Him and his wife. And what happens next? Junior inherits, and do you think he’s going to honor the fucking deal? Hell, no. So I try to help my dad out. I try to get to Jolene to get to him and that backfires right the fuck up in my face and suddenly I’m the bad guy too. Thank God she didn’t last long, Ghost. Because my family couldn’t handle another scandal. Which brings us right back here to you and to Teekay.”

  At the end of his speech, he eased up off me just enough that I could gasp out, “I still don’t know what you mean. I don’t know who Jolene is or—”

  His knee came down again, twice as hard as before.

  “Where’s my fucking phone, Maggie? Where are my fucking pictures? I know the redhead gave them to you guys after she stole them! I’m not going to let the two of you destroy my reputation the way Junior’s dad did to my father!”

  “I don’t know! ”

  He cuffed me with the back of his hand.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know! Where?!”

  I shook my head and closed my eyes and braced myself for a second blow. Instead, I heard a click.

  And an authoritative voice called out, “Stand up, Mr. Monroe, and put your hands on your head.”

  My eyes flew open.

  Booted feet and blue-clad legs swam in the corner of my vision. And before Jimmy could make another move, handcuffs slapped onto his wrists, and he was being dragged away.

  The police.

  Relief overwhelmed me, and I closed my eyes once more.

  “Miss Mooreland?” This time, the voice was feminine and gentle. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” I rasped.

  “That’s good. Can you open your eyes again?”

  I did, and a penlight flashed. A police woman with a kind face examined my reaction to the light.

  “Can you tell me your full name and what today’s date is?” she asked.

  “Margaret Elizabeth Mooreland,” I said. “And it’s—”

  “Is she in there?” The question, spoken in a familiar, heart-wrenching voice, carried across the room, cutting me off.

  “She’s here, Mr. Marcus,” came the reply. “But you need to wait until we’ve cleared the room.”

  “Fuck that!”

  If I hadn’t been so surprised, I might’ve laughed. But I just sat there, speechless as two strong hands lifted the cop up and moved her aside before he knelt beside me.

  “Mr. Marcus!” the police woman chastised.

  If she said anything else, I missed it. Because there he was.

  Theodore Kimball Marcus Junior. Teekay. Ripped clothes. Blackened eye. Soaking wet and one hand a bloody mess. And looking at me like I was the last glass of water on a deserted island.

  24)

  It took the police a little over an hour to get my statement, and as they left, they assured us that they’d have someone outside, just until morning.

  And the second the door closed, Teekay began to pace the room, his face clouded with emotion. After his initial check to make sure I was still breathing, he’d refused to meet my eyes.

  But I couldn’t look away from him.

  I decided to break the silence myself. “You don’t have to stay, Teekay.”

  His gaze finally whipped to mine. “You want me to go?”

  I swallowed, and bit back a plea for him to never leave again. “Did you call the police?”

  Teekay ran a hand through his hair. “Yes.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Kirby.”

  “What?”

  His answer came in a whisper, his voice as torn up as his appearance, and it seemed to have nothing to do with what I asked. “I wanted an excuse to kill him, Maggie. I’ve been looking for an excuse to hurt him for years.”

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy?” I echoed.

  “He took my sister from me, Maggie. I couldn’t stand the thought of him taking you too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it was stupid of me to think you’d be helping him. I know you. The last week…He tricked you into taking those pictures of you together, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared at Teekay as he resumed his strides across the floor. He was so worked up and so tense, and his statements were so all over the place that I didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  “I knew it,” he muttered. “I knew it when I found this.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little notebook where I’d drawn his portrait against the backdrop of ocean and sky.

  “I knew it, but I fucked up, Maggie. The second you walked out my door…But I was too damned stubborn to admit it. And I knew if I stayed in St-Marie Pierre, I’d give in and find you. So I took off. I thought if I put some space between us, I’d be able to…I don’t know what. Forget that I was wrong. So fucking wrong. The further I got, the more I was sure I’d made a mistake. So I turned around. And…Jesus. I came home to half a dozen messages from Kirby, warning me that Jimmy was looking for you. She said he’d gone crazy, showed up at her house…” he said, then shook his head. “My fuck-up could’ve killed you.”

  “I’m okay, Teekay,” I said, but he flinched at my reply.

  “I just need to tell you everything. I need to explain to you my reasons why. Then I’ll leave.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  But he didn’t let me finish. He collapsed on the couch beside me, his body not quite touching mine. He dropped his face into his palms and began to speak into his hands

  “I was seventeen when my parents were killed in a car crash, Maggie. My sister, Jolene, was fourteen. And all hell broke loose. My father’s real estate business…He’d got tied up in some questionable stuff. And every time I turned around, Jimmy Monroe’s dad seemed to be involved. I left school to deal with it. I dragged my sister with me. But I was so busy fighting to keep everything from sinking that I forgot to look out for Jolene. For us, as a family. But Jimmy – who was just as much of an asshole as his dad – he saw it. And he took advantage of it. He wasn’t much older than Jolene. Sixteen when she was fourteen. And then, bang. She was into everything he was. The drugs and the partying. And one night…one night she showed up at the same party I was at. Hanging on Jimmy’s arm. Sucking on Jimmy’s face. My baby sister. I told her what I thought. I was honest with her. Too fucking honest. I sent her packing on a bus to a boarding school, her head full of what I knew about Jimmy. His manipulations. His conquests. Girls like you, Maggie. I was so fired up, I’m not even sure what all I said. Just that I held nothing back. And three days later, on my nineteenth birthday, I got the call. She was dead. Overdosed.”

  I put my hand on his knee and he drew in sharp breath but didn’t pull away. “Teekay…I’m so sorry.”

  “They never proved Jimmy gave her the drugs. But I know he did. And when Jolene died, I went crazy. Wilder than I’d ever been. Girl after girl, party after party. I was close to losing everything. I’m ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of a lot of things about my past. But I thought I was going to die too. I thought maybe I wanted to. I thought I might make it happen. So I checked myself into a hospital and I got help. I swore I would never let anyone I cared about get hurt again. And then I hurt you, Maggie. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

  “It’s okay,” I whispered.

  “It’s not okay,” Teekay argued. “I never want to do
that again. I never want to live through that again. For the last week, I’ve felt more whole than I’ve felt since I lost Jolene. Since I lost my parents, even. You saved me, Maggie. So tonight, I called the police so Jimmy couldn’t get to you. I understand if my reasons aren’t good enough. If I’m not the kind of bad guy you can keep rooting for. And I understand if you can’t forgive me. But I just needed you to know.”

  “Teekay, I do.”

  “What?”

  “I forgive you,” I said, and never had I felt more empowered. “And I love you, with all your honesty and all your baggage, and all I want is you, just like this.”

  He cupped my face in both his hands. And I kissed him as hard as I could because I knew he’d saved me too.

  Epilogue – 1 Year Later

  I looked at Maggie from across the pool, wondering if I would ever get used to the sight of her perfect, beautiful scarred face, looking back at me with such wonder.

  Or the fact that her pretty little feet dip in the water without me forcing her.

  “Teekay…”

  Her voice dragged me from my fantasy of tossing her into the pool, ripping off her clothes and fucking her against the natural stone wall.

  “Mm hmm,” I replied.

  “There’s something in the middle of the pool.”

  “Is there?”

  She frowned. “It looks like…a box on a drink holder.”

  I suppressed a grin. “Weird. Better go grab it then, before it sinks.”

  “You’re in your bathing suit, you get it.”

  I held up the real estate contract in my hands. “Work.”

  Maggie sighed and came to her feet, and just about tripped over the other box at the end of her chair.

  “What the heck!”

  At her idea of a curse, I covered a laugh with a cough. “You should be careful.”

  She shot me a dirty look and grabbed the box. It fell open, and a bikini and a pair of water wings fell to the ground.

  Maggie’s face went pink and she shot me a dirty look. “Hilarious.”

  “You should put those on.”

  With that little bit of defiance that I loved, she tossed the box at me. Then the water wings. And then…She dropped her robe. She had nothing underneath.

  I groaned. “You’re torturing me on purpose, aren’t you?”

  “Definitely.”

  She grabbed the bikini from the ground, slipped on the bottoms first, then the top. She was even more alluring with the swimsuit in place.

  And when she jumped directly into the water and bobbed to the top, I couldn’t stop the hardness from forming between my legs.

  Fuck.

  I needed to wait it out as badly as I needed to be inside her.

  She swam out to the floating drink holder and snagged the palm-sized box from its surface before she swam back to the edge.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Not sure.”

  She shot me disbelieving look, but opened the box anyway. And found another, smaller box.

  “Teekay!” she complained.

  “What?”

  With an exaggerated sigh, she flipped open the second box and found a third. And this one was a distinct, small, velvet one.

  Maggie’s eyes flew to mine.

  Now I had her.

  She swallowed hard enough that I could see it from where I sat. And she opened it.

  The ring sparkled in the sunlight, but it wasn’t as bright as her smile.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “You wanna get married, darlin’?”

  She tried to feign a frown. “I’m very indecisive.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think…You should put the damned thing on before I come over there and show you how used to getting my way I am.”

  Maggie held the ring over the pool, then tossed it in.

  “Come and get me,” she dared.

  And I knew that was a yes.