Taken by Storm (Give & Take) - By Kelli Maine Page 0,10
the sooner he left the better.
The house he rented with two roommates was only for the school year. The problem was that they were teammates, or had been before he got booted off the baseball team. Now he didn’t know if they’d welcome him back or if he’d have to find somewhere else to crash. He only had a couple weeks to figure it out.
With one last look, he stepped back from the window. She’d shaken him. From the minute he heard her voice tonight, he’d been out of his mind. His sanity had already been hanging by a thread since Rachael, his dad’s girlfriend, had shown up, before Maddie had strutted into the driveway and back into his life.
MJ crashed down on his bed and squeezed his eyes shut tight so the room wasn’t spinning. From outside his bedroom door, he heard his grandfather, the only other person in the house, pad down the hall. He didn’t think the man ever slept, probably thought sleeping was a waste of time when he could be scheming how to ruin someone’s life. The man was sadistic, worthy of being the evil dictator of a third-word country.
MJ shucked off his jeans and yanked his T-shirt over his head. He was hot from drinking and wondered what temperature the cheap Old Man had the AC set to. Didn’t help that thinking of Maddie made him sweat.
He ran his hand over his chest and stopped above his heart where a black tattoo of an ornate skeleton key was inked on his skin.
She had its other half—a lock in the shape of a heart with a keyhole in the center—tattooed on her lower stomach beside her right hip bone. Laying on top of her, he’d slide down to kiss her breasts and their two tattoos would come together. Lock and key.
God.
He ran his hands over his face, roughly.
He had to stop thinking about her. She wasn’t his and never would be again.
His pillows shifted and the sheet tangled around his legs as he rolled over and buried his head. Sleep. He just needed sleep. Everything would look better in the morning.
Sometime during the night, MJ’s lip had swollen to double its normal size. It throbbed like it had its own heartbeat. So did his head.
Hungover and feeling the aftereffects of his night of heavy drinking, he stumbled out of bed and staggered to the adjoining bathroom.
Why did he have to be so stupid?
After taking the hottest shower he could stand, he dressed and headed down to the kitchen to find food. The greasier the better. He smelled bacon and his stomach growled.
He rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped dead in his tracks. Rachael sat on a stool at the breakfast bar jabbing a text message into her phone. Yesterday he’d been hesitant and a little nervous when she arrived. Now he just wanted her gone.
She looked up and saw him standing there like an idiot. “Morning,” he said.
“Morning.” Her eyes had dark bags under them. “What happened to your lip?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He spotted a plate of bacon and some toast on the counter and helped himself to it, clamping his teeth down on a slice of toast and tearing a piece off.
“Right.” He could feel her eyes boring into his forehead. Her phone chimed and she struggled to keep back a smile that tugged at the corners of her lips as she read the message on her screen.
“Merrick?” he blurted without thinking. Damn if he didn’t sound anxious for it to be his dad she was texting.
Her eyes darted up to his, dark brown and guilty as hell. “No,” she said, and flickered her eyes back to her phone. “Sorry.”
Bullshit. MJ knew something was going on.
Rachael tucked her phone into her back pocket. “So, are you coming to Turtle Tear with me to visit with your aunt and uncle and meet your cousins, Holly and Sam?” She patted her pocket with the phone. “That was, um, Beck, the pilot. He wants a time to meet at the airport.”
Beck the pilot, huh? “I don’t think I’m going with you. I’m going to pretend none of this ever happened after you leave.”
Rachael smirked, silently calling bullshit on him. “Do what you have to do.”
MJ’s grandfather slipped into the kitchen. “Why are you eating in here? We have a dining room.” He put a hand on Rachael’s back. MJ watched her flinch. “How are you this morning, dear? Have you heard from my son?”