T is for...he's a TOTAL jerk (Grover Beach Team #3) (28 page)

Of course they did. But after everything that had happened, I wasn’t the right person to tell them. I rose from the couch, my knees suddenly trembling. “I’d rather come with you and look for Cloey.”

“I can go to your aunt
’s,” Susan offered then. “With the crutches, I can’t jog down the beach anyway.”

“All right,” Hunter agreed, grabbing Liza and his jacket, getting ready to go. “Frederickson, can you drive Susan?”

Nick nodded.

We all rushed out to the cars and headed off.

Darkness pressed against the windows. I concentrated hard on the eerie circles of light that Tony’s headlights cast on the street in front of us, but my mind trailed off anyway. What if Cloey wasn’t all right?
It looks so bad, Hunter!
Brinna’s hysterical voice rang in my ears. Cloey had been such a mean bitch. But I didn’t want her hurt.

A half-finished lollipop appeared in my peripheral view. “To soothe your nerves,” Tony said. “Maybe the sugar will bring back the color to your face.”

I felt cold and numb. My fingers trembled as I took the lollipop from him, put it in my mouth, and looked out the window again. I sucked the candy absently until finally I was chewing on the empty stick.

The taillights of Hunter’s Audi flashed deep red in the distance. We were there. Tony pulled up behind him, and we climbed out to meet the others.

A salty breeze wafted toward us from the sea. Cold crept under my sweatshirt. Tony tucked me tight against his side and spoke up. “Okay, guys, we do it like this. Hunter, you and Liz walk up the beach. Sam and I will walk down. And Allie, you and Sasha search the street up here. Whoever finds her first calls the others. Let’s go.”

We walked off, using the flashlights o
n our phones in the dark.

“Cloey!” everyone called out
at short intervals. The voices behind us faded fast.

At
a pace that had me panting after a few hundred meters, Tony and I headed down the beach. There was no sign of her, and with the many footprints in the sand, it was impossible to tell whether someone had walked along here recently.

“Do you think she’s all right?” I asked, unable to keep the anxiety out of my voice.

“If she could walk away from the car and also call Brinna, it might not be too bad. But if she’s trashed, she might get into trouble down here. With the water and all.”

“It’s probably my fault she got drunk tonight.”

“No, Sam! It certainly isn’t your fault. With what happened last night, you saw that she has serious issues.” He paused. A sigh escaped him. “In fact, I think it’s actually got to do with me and not with you.”

I looked at Tony, waiting for him to explain, but we didn’t stop walking.

“I heard what she said to you today. About not wanting you to have me. I never told anyone, but from time to time, she still sends me messages.”

“Really?”
I gasped. “What does she say?”

Tony cleared his throat, and I could be sure that this was a subject he really was uncomfortable with. “Sometimes she just writes meaningless shit. Like where she’s at the moment and if I wouldn’t like to come and meet her. Other times, she asks for a second chance.”

Oh my God. My cousin was desperate. She loved Tony more than I had thought. It must hurt her unspeakably to see him with me now. No wonder she’d lost it. Maybe I would react the same way if it was the other way round.

No, I wouldn’t.

But in the end I could understand her actions and hatred toward me. “We must find her,” I whispered, frightened.

“And we will,” Tony reassured me.

But the farther we got, the more I lost hope when we couldn’t find her anywhere. None of the others had called yet. Where the hell was she?

“Maybe we should go back and look somewhere else?” I suggested. “If she’s really down here, we should have found her by—” The last word froze in my throat. The beam of my flashlight
had landed on a pair of discarded shoes. Skyscraper-high heels.

“Cloey!”
I croaked, turning around, lighting as much of the beach as I could. “Cloey, if you’re here, goddammit, answer!”

“Sam,” Tony said calmly a second later, placing his hand on my forearm. When I looked at him, he pointed ahead of us.

I traced the direction of his arm and, holding my breath, I heard the sobs of a young woman. Cloey was sitting in the sand, out far enough that the waves brushed around her legs and waist. She’d buried her face in her folded arms, which rested on her bent knees.

Paralyzed, I stood and watched my cousin cry. When I found my strength again, I took a step forward. “Cloey,” I said
loud enough this time for her to hear me over the crashing waves.

She lifted her head and looked into the flashlight, squinting. A nasty cut sat over her right eyebrow
and blood streamed down one side of her face. “Samantha—” she said in a slurred way. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“You had a car crash. We came looking for you.”

Behind me, I heard Tony call the others, telling them where we’d found her. They would be here soon. I concentrated on my cousin again. As I walked closer, my heart knocked against the base of my throat. “Come on, we’ll take you home now.”

“Oh no…” she almost sang. Then she jerked up and walked away from me backwards, into the sea. “No! Go away.
I hate you!
” She stumbled, falling sideways into the water, but she climbed to her feet again. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

I stopped dead, afraid to scare her even farther out. She sure had lost control over her body. In the pitch
-black night, we would never find her should she disappear into the waves.

“Cloey, you’re hurt.
And confused. Let us take you home to Aunt Pam. Your parents will take care of you then.”

“
Noooh!”
she screeched, almost deafening me. “They can’t know. The car is a wreck. Dad will kill me.”

“They won’t be mad. They’ll just be happy you survived. Now come out of the water, please!” I took another tentative step toward her, but Cloey immediately lurched back, and this time, she tripped, lost her ground
, and fell completely under water.

“Cloey,” I yelled, running forward.

But she resurfaced before I reached the waves, spluttering water. “Fuck off, you bitch! You shit! Go away! Leave me alone! Why can’t you go back to Egypt and fuck off out of my life?”

My heart dropped to my feet. I didn’t take another step.

A gentle hand landed on my shoulder. Tony. I had completely forgotten he was there, too.

“Let me talk to her,” he whispered in my ear.

Shocked beyond words at my cousin’s reaction, I couldn’t answer, but let him just move forward.

Heartbreakingly soft
ly, he said, “Hey, Cloey.”

“Tony?” She sounded like she didn’t trust her ears.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I came with Sam. You had us worried.”

“Yeah, right!”
She snorted a drunken laugh. “Like you’d ever care how I feel.”

“Why do you think I wouldn’t?” He cocked his head and took a step forward
. Either she missed it, or she was fine with
him
coming for her, because she didn’t shout at him to stop. His feet were in the water now.

“Because you dumped me?” she
said through gritted teeth, walking backwards again. “Because you never answer any of my calls or reply to my messages!” With clawed fingers, she raked her wet hair off of her forehead, pressing her palms to her temples, looking eerily insane. “Because you never fucking talk to me when we have training together!”

Slowly, Tony waded deeper into the waves. This time even I almost missed it. “I tried to be friends with you after…we dated. But you made
it clear that a friendship wasn’t possible for us.” Two more steps. The sea drenched his jeans up to his knees. He was only two arm-lengths away from her now.

“
Yes
. Because I was
in love
with you!” She started to sob again, her arms dropping loosely back into the water. “And I can’t make it stop, even now!”

I placed both my hands over my mouth, horrified
by her confession. Trashed like this, she probably wouldn’t remember any of it later, but it must have cost her to come out with it. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to take her in my arms and calm her. But the chasm between us was too deep.

“I’m sorry I hurt you so much. Let me take care of you now.” Tony walked on
, and even though Cloey whined and told him no, she didn’t back away anymore. She just stood up to her waist in water and cried in the cold night.

What happened then hurt me deep in my soul. Tony reached out, took her face between his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. I didn’t hear what he said to her then, but I knew it was something very intimate and personal. Cloey reached up and closed her fingers around his wrists, shaking her head slowly, choking on her tears. He caressed her wet hair,
then he pulled her tight against him.

At the sight of them being so close in the beam of my flashlight, my heart stopped and my throat tightened.
Hold your shit together
, I told myself. There must be a simple reason for this. But when Cloey put her arms around his neck and he let her, I wanted to drop to my knees and cry.

Tony bent and scooped her up in his arms, lifting her out of the water. Her hold
on him grew even tighter as she buried her face in his throat. Turning, he carried her out of the sea.

My breath froze in my lungs as I watched them coming toward me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to shake this picture out of my mind for the rest of my life.

“Get her shoes,” Tony told me emotionlessly. He didn’t stop and wait for me. Heading back the way we had come, he carried my cousin through the night.

If I can’t have you, I don’t want to live any longer.

The words rang out in my mind time and again—all the way from the police station, where Sam and I had to give evidence
about the events tonight, until we arrived at my aunt’s house. I cut the engine and pulled the key out, but I couldn’t make my body move to get out of the car.

“Are you cold?” Sam whispered. It was the first thing she
’d said to me since the moment I’d walked into the sea to get her cousin out.

“I’m freezing,” I
answered in an equally low voice, tilting my head back and staring at the roof of the car.

“You should go home and take a shower to warm you.”

“In a minute.” There was something I needed to tell her first. Something I hadn’t told the police or Cloey’s parents when they had found us down at the beach with Cloey. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Do you still hate your cousin?”

When Sam didn’t answer, I cut her a sidelong look. Her lips had thinned as she studied me silently.

“Do
you
hate her?” she asked eventually.

Tell me you love me. Tell me you love me, or I’ll drown myself tonight.

I—Love you.

“No… I feel sorry for her.”

After another long pause, Sam whispered, “Me, too.” By the sound of it, I knew she wasn’t telling the entire truth, even when she continued. “I’m just glad she finally told her parents that it was her who devastated my room and put the money and Scotch bottles there. And also about accidentally breaking her father’s watch and then hiding it because she was scared.” She sighed. “But she still hates me.”

“She
’ll get over it. Just give her some time.”

“Yes, maybe.
But will she also get over you?”
And you over her?
The unspoken question gleamed in her eyes.

I couldn’t answer her real question immediately.
Because I didn’t want to lie to Sam. “Eventually, she will. But out in the sea, when I held her in my arms, I realized something.” Turning my head toward her, I swallowed, and it hurt my throat. Sam looked scared. I knew she’d been hurt when she saw me carry her cousin and hug her. “The way she feels about me…it won’t change for a long time. And I can’t drop out of her life completely. It was a mistake to think I could.”

Sam’s lips trembled slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Cloey’s unstable. I was the one responsible for what happened to her tonight, because I ignored her. She might do something reckless like this again.”

“You think she’s suicidal?”

I nodded.

“Then it sure isn’t your fault. You don’t owe her anything.” Her hurt gaze dropped to my hand on the gearshift. “Just tell me one thing.”

“What?”

“When you held her in the water
…” She looked at me again. “What did you tell her?”

“I
’d rather not say.” The words came out on a painful breath.

Sam chewed on her bottom lip. Then she sniffed. “I understand.” She turned away, opened the door, and stepped out.

Fuck
.

I got out, too, rushed around the car, and caught her arm before she could walk away from me. “You
don’t
understand, that’s the problem,” I said, more harshly than I meant to. “I didn’t mean what I said to her. She needed to hear it, so I spit it out, but I—
Fucking. Didn’t. Mean it.
Because there’s only one girl in this world I really wanted to say it to at that moment. Or now, or yesterday, or last weekend, when I kissed you in the woods.”

Letting go of her arm, I cupped her cheeks and made her look at my face so she saw the truth in my eyes. “I
’ve never said that to a girl, because I never felt it before. Not even for Liza. And it took you walking into my life to make me realize that, Sam.”

Her eyes grew wide, but
in the next instant she pushed against my stomach, her expression tight. “Stop it. I don’t want to hear any of this.”

I knew she doubted every word I’d just said.

Oh girl, don’t make me fall to my knees in front of you
.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not.
Because it’s the truth, and whether you like it or not, you’ll have to fucking deal with it. I love you, Bungee.
Only
you.”

And then I kissed her so hard, she gasped against my mouth. It was time for her to see, hear, and feel what I felt for her. There was no place for doubts or an argument. She was my girl. And I didn’t intend to ever let her walk away from me again.

When her lips remained tensed and closed, I feared she was going to kick me in the gut. But not even that could stop me. I pressed my mouth harder against hers, stroking her cheeks with my thumbs.

And finally, she loosened up. The push of her small hands against my stomach eased,
then she clutched my sweatshirt, pulling me tighter against her.

I swept my tongue across the seam of her lips, and she opened her mouth for me. This time, I didn’t go gentle on her. I couldn’t. I was so in need of this girl that it hurt throughout my body, centering in the tiny spot at the left side of my chest. I found her tongue with mine, played with it, danced with it, slid in and out of her mouth slowly, seducing her to love me the same way I loved her.

She tasted wonderful. Sweet. Soft. Like cherry candy and Sam. And when she lifted to her toes, wrapping her arms around my neck, I knew I had her. All of her. She was mine. No doubts left.

Her breath was hot on my skin as she yielded to my demand
s, exploring my mouth with her tongue in turn. Her delicate body pressed against my front, making me want to feel every inch of her. My hands dropped from her face to roam up and down her back; once, twice. The third time, I scrunched up her sweater between my fingers and shoved it up. Sam shivered as I touched her naked skin there, giving me one helluva good feeling.

I nipped her bottom lip. Then I broke
off the kiss, staring into her eyes with only a couple of inches space between us. “Don’t go away from me,” I breathed. “It was so hard to win you.”

Sam took my face between her hands, pulling me toward her so she could place a brief, soft kiss on my mouth. “I’m not going,” she whispered and kissed me again, and again. “I’m not going, Tony.
Never.” Her lips suddenly tasted salty and wet, but she wouldn’t let me look at her. She just kissed me, and the kiss turned deeper, harder, and hungrier.

Good tears
, I told myself. They had to be. I licked them away from her lips, meeting her hunger with the same eagerness for another long moment. Time seemed so unimportant when I was with her.

“Scary how easily I can make you cry,” I said softly
against her mouth then.

Sam
’s lips stretched in a smile. “You only can because I love you.”

Thrusting my fingers into her hair, I pressed a kiss to her brow,
then I cuddled her against my chest, resting my chin on top of her head. She was the perfect fit for me.

“I’m so tired,” Sam whispered against my shirt. “I feel like I could fall asleep standing right here.”

It was a good thing we’d all gotten excuses to stay home from school tomorrow. Sam could sleep in then. “Let’s get you inside and into bed, Bungee.”

She let me walk her up to the house
, tucked under my arm. With the key Carry had given her today, she unlocked the door, then she turned to me. I was ready to say goodnight, but Sam didn’t release my hand.

“Could you sleep here tonight?
Up there, with me. Not like…you know. Just beside me, so I won’t be alone?”

Carry sure
wouldn’t mind, but I knew my mom was still up and waiting for me. I’d told her at the police station that I would only take Sam to my aunt’s house and then come home as well. I sent her a short message, saying that I would be home tomorrow morning.

Sam smiled at me when I put the phone back into my pocket. We sneaked upstairs into her new room, and she
slumped onto the bed, dipping back. “What a weird day…” she drawled.

“Absolutely.”
I pulled the wardrobe open, knowing that Carry always stored some spare clothes on the top shelf for the kids who came here. A white tee and light gray cotton shorts would do for tonight. Turning to Sam, I gave her a half-smile. “Mind if I rush into the shower? I feel wet to the bone.”

She didn’t look up, just waved a dismissive hand at me. “Go. I’ll get the bed ready in the meantime.”

With the clothes tucked under my arm, I went to the bathroom. For the next three minutes, I enjoyed the hot spray of water warming me from top to bottom. Hell, I’d so needed this. I toweled off, ran a hand through my damp hair, then slipped into the borrowed clothes.

As I came back
into the room, the sight of Sam lying still on the bed made me smile. Silently, I walked up to her. Her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and even. She looked adorable.

Kneeling in front of her, I unlaced her boots and slid them carefully off her feet, one
at a time. Her socks went next.
Pants?
I wondered, standing again. No one could sleep well in army pants. The way she lay only halfway on the bed, it wasn’t too troublesome to remove them without waking her. The hoodie provided a bit more of a problem, and it was then that I unintentionally woke her.

Her eyes opened to tired slits. “Tony?” she
murmured, but I doubted she really saw me.

“Come on, baby,” I whispered
as I scooped her up in my arms, carrying her around the bed and setting her gently down. Her head sank into the pillow. She had already drifted off again before I could drape the duvet over her body.

I turned off the lights
, then slipped under the duvet, too. In her sleep, Sam turned around and nestled against me. I breathed in the beautiful scent of her hair as I fell asleep with my girl in my arms.