Jacked - The Complete Series Box Set (A Lumberjack Neighbor Romance) Page 68

  "How does it feel to be married?" Abby asked Makani.

  "Amazing," she said, smiling.

  "Hold on to that. Whenever he pisses you off, just remember women live longer than men do. He's going out first," I said.

  "Not all of us are cynics like you, Nate," Keno said, laughing.

  "When he fucks up, just tell me. I'll sort him out," I told her. She laughed.

  "I'll take that as an invitation to make Abby the same promise," she said.

  "Am I still on probation?" I asked, laughing.

  "You've lasted this long without messing up," Keno said.

  "It never ends," Makani said. "We're sort of a package deal." She wasn't kidding. That was sort of what life here was about: that weird closeness you develop when there's so few of you around. It would take getting used to, but I was getting there. Any day of the week, this beat LA, hands down.

  The entertainment began, and I went up on stage to perform a song I had written with the wedding band. That was sort of my thing now. I only did things that I cared about for people I cared about. It was a hell of a way to live. I didn't know why I hadn't started earlier.

  Epilogue

  Abby

  Two Years Later

  Something I always thought would make me love Lanai even more than I already did was being able to see the sun rise over the water instead of setting. The morning sun had just begun illuminating our bedroom.

  I was awake, just sort of slipping in and out of wakefulness, enjoying the feel of the sun on my naked body and the sound of Nate's playing infiltrating the rest of the house from the living room.

  The wall facing the water in our bedroom wasn't a wall at all. It was all glass, with a sliding door that opened onto a balcony. He had asked for it just for me, knowing how I felt about mornings. We had gone back and forth about the design of the house for months before agreeing on something that was small enough for me to be comfortable in, and grand enough for Nate to feel like he was giving me a gift by having it built.

  I had been a little sad about leaving my beachside hut near the Four Seasons, but this place was nice, too. We had designed it from the ground up, and Nate had called it my present for our one year anniversary when we had moved in. I had wanted something small and cozy for two people to live in that didn't feel cold and empty. He had drawn inspiration from a beachfront villa he and his parents would stay in when they would come to Hawai'i when he was a child.

  The compromise had been a scaled down villa on the eastern coast of the island overlooking the beach. It was secluded, but not isolated. We had our privacy, but the city was less than twenty minutes away when we really wanted to go.

  I stretched in the sunlight like a lizard basking on a rock. Nate often played in the morning. His inspiration hit at the strangest times, but I loved when the sun was just creeping up the horizon and his playing infiltrated my fading dreams. I could hear his voice, too; he was singing. He composed and wrote more than he sang, so it was always a treat when he did.

  It was time to get up. I wasn't even tired anymore; I was just being lazy. I had graduated a while back, and the summer peak season had just come to an end. I was enjoying my days off after a busy season. I climbed out of bed and walked to our split closet. I pulled on a pair of panties and grabbed one of his worn old t-shirts to go downstairs in.

  I walked down the stairs, following the music. The closer I got, the clearer I heard the song. I recognized it. It was the one he had written for me his first summer here. He tended to play a lot of the old stuff he had written with Remus, too.

  He had distanced himself from the band since he had ventured out on his own solo career, but since he had writing credits on so many of the band's songs, people were constantly finding out about Nate through the band anyway.

  If the balcony upstairs was for me, the recording studio basement was for him. I had felt he needed it to make up for the fact that we lived so far from Los Angeles where the people he collaborated with lived. Having a studio at home meant he didn't always have to leave when he needed to record. The times he did have to travel for shows were bad enough, especially when I couldn't join him.

  His beautiful grand piano was in the living room. I walked into the room seeing him, but stopped. It was starting to get light outside, but the room was illuminated with soft yellow light from candles on the mantle and coffee table. A sea of blood red rose petals covered the floor between me and Nate at the piano. The scene was soft and romantic, but we’d already celebrated two years a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know what this was for.

  "Nate?" I called carefully, walking into the room, feeling petals beneath my feet. The playing stopped, and he looked over his shoulder at me. He didn't have a shirt on. He was on the bench in just a pair of pajama pants. He smiled seeing me and waved me over.

  "Morning, babe," he said, grinning.

  "Hey," I said smiling, walking up to the bench. I sat next to him with my back to the piano so I could face him. He kissed me sweetly. "What happened in here?" I asked.

  "Do you like it?"

  "It's beautiful, but I don't know what we're celebrating."

  "Do I need a reason to do something nice for you?" he asked, smiling.

  "This is for me?"

  "Everything I do is for you, Abby," he said.

  It had been two years of hearing him say things like that to me, and they still never failed to fill me up with insane pleasure. He was a songwriter; he knew how to say things to make them sound the sweetest, but that wasn't even where it stopped. I believed him when he said things to me because he was generous with his words, his heart, his body, his money. He gave me everything.

  "I love it," I said. "Thank you."

  "I love doing things for you; don't mention it. I should be the one thanking you," he said.

  "Me? What for?" I asked.

  "For all the delicious food you make me, for coming with me on tour, for being my biggest supporter," he said making a list.

  "I do those things because I love you, Nate. You don't have to thank me."

  "I wouldn't be able to do anything without you, Abby," he said.

  "Oh, come on. What were you doing before we met?"

  "Nothing," he said seriously. "Nothing good. I wasn't making music, I was high all the time; I was a junkie."

  I sighed. I remembered. The more distance we gained from the time, the more dire it seemed in my remembrance of it. We were both here on the other side of it, in love and stronger than ever, but when we had met, this man that he was today was somewhere obscured behind the pain of a broken dream, a failed marriage, and addiction. It was hard to think sometimes that he was the same person.

  His left arm was covered in beautiful, dark tattoos instead of track scars now. He was inspired and healthy, and through it all, he was still the creative, beautiful soul I'd been drawn to when we met.

  "All that happened in the past. You aren't that person anymore. You got better, and you took your career back."

  "I didn't do shit, Abby. You're the one who got me here."

  "I just didn't let you ignore me," I said, smiling.

  "You treated me like I was someone worth saving," he said. "I wouldn't be alive if you hadn’t driven me crazy the first summer I got here." I smiled, remembering how upset he would get when I'd wake him up in the morning.

  "Yes, you would, Nate," I said. "I'm not the one who beat your addiction — you are."

  "If you weren't there, I wouldn't have been able to do it. You were it, Abby. You still are. I'm alive because of you, and you deserve every last one of the years I have left on this earth." I felt my eyes well up.

  "You don't owe me anything, Nate. Here and now with you is enough." He shook his head.

  "I don't want here and now Abby; I want every day." I watched him stand and round the bench. "Abby," he said quietly. He took one of my hands and sunk down on one knee. My heart started pounding as I realized what was happening.

  "Every good thing in my life I can trace b
ack to you. I had nothing when we met, and you gave me everything. I didn't know what unconditional love felt like before I met you and when I think of the future, you're the only thing I know I can't live without. I have a life because of you, and I don't want to live life without you."

  I wanted to say something, but I couldn't, my throat was closed, and tears were pouring down my face. I saw him reach into his pajama pants pocket and pull out a ring.

  "Abby Terrell, I love you, and I don't want to live a life without you in it. Marry me?"

  I nodded because I couldn't speak. He slid the ring on my finger and stood up. I looked at it. It was a beautiful pink stone in a rose-gold band.

  "I thought..."

  "You thought I'd never ask you?"

  "I thought you didn't want to do it again," I said.

  "I didn't want to do it again with the wrong person," he said. "You're the right person, Abby. You're the only person. Do you want to be my wife?"

  "Yes," I said, looking up at him. "Of course. I just want to make you happy."

  "You already do, babe," he said. I smiled. He made me happy, too. Happy, excited, passionate...full. He was my missing piece to paradise. Now I had everything.

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  GAMED

  By Claire Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Claire Adams

  Chapter One

  Quinn

  His face on the magazine cover kept eclipsing my textbook. I recognized him from high school, junior high school actually, and the thrill of seeing him again was more exciting than gross anatomy. I tried to tell myself it was the magazine that was grabbing my attention. I had obsessed over the new hit multiplayer online game Dark Flag since it came out. Owen Redd was rising to dominance as the game's first clan leader. He was a star in the gamer community.

  And my sister's boyfriend, I reminded myself.

  I never understood how he put up with Sienna. She had wanted to change him from the moment they met. My perfect sister, with her stellar GPA. and her driving ambition to be a surgeon, wanted her boyfriend to be more than a gamer. I always suspected she started dating him as a challenge. Sienna was always trying to improve, perfect, and control the world around her. Owen struck me as another project she took on – change the school's most popular rebel into the prom king. She kept a framed picture of their prom court on the desk in her dorm. Owen's crown was crooked, but he and Sienna were still together.

  I wondered if she knew he was on the cover of a magazine. Sienna would not be impressed, but it really was a big deal. I reached for my phone.

  "The studying going well?" my roommate asked.

  "Can you believe the professor gives us a quiz at the start of every class? Seems cruel," I said.

  Darla shook her head and laughed. "I heard he charts the quiz scores on a board."

  I groaned. My sister's name was on the top of that board and I could not help but look at it every time I sat down to struggle through another quiz.

  Darla gave my long hair a sympathetic tug. "Have you ever considered changing your major? I know nursing is a noble profession, but as far as I can see, you don't like anything about it."

  "I like it," I said. "It’s just a lot of memorizing and papers and sitting around studying new research. There's not a lot of, I don't know, action to it."

  "Well, if you're looking for action, I heard there's a Dark Flag party over in the basement of the Mathematics lab," Darla said.

  My roommate was the opposite of me in many ways – an art major with a concentration in textiles – but she was also a gamer. I stood up to lead the way out the door.

  "Wait, you forgot your phone," Darla stopped me. "Ugh, I think your advisor is calling."

  I looked at the caller ID and bit my lip. Alice Bonton had a sixth sense about when I was going to do something fun instead of study. There was no reason I couldn’t let the call go to voicemail, except my father's nagging motto: never put off for tomorrow what you can deal with right now.

  "Ms. Alice, how is your evening?" I asked. Darla shrugged her shoulders and left without me.

  "Quinn, I'm glad I caught you. I mean, I'm not glad, I'm just grateful you answered your phone," my advisor said.

  "If this is about skipping class last week, its sounds much worse than it was. I was actually volunteering my time down at the blood drive. I just forgot to get a volunteer form signed," I said.

  "Skipping class again? That's the fourth time this month. That's once a week. Quinn, I'm concerned. I know this isn't the time to discuss it, but–" her voice cracked. "I'm not sure how to do this."

  "I can make up all the work, I promise. I'm studying right now. Literally, the book is open in front of me. I love nursing, I really do. I've just been distracted lately." I stopped myself before I started talking about the new game. My college advisor would not be impressed to hear how dedicated I was to a new online game.

  "When was the last time you went home? Spent any time with your family?"

  "I don't know, fall break? So, well, I guess about a month," I said. "But I'm going home for Thanksgiving. Sienna wants to stay on campus, but I agreed to go home. I'm in charge of making the gravy. Sienna makes the best stuffing, but she's only staying on campus to get a head start on studying for finals. She's pre-med and wants to be a surgeon."

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, when I had held my breath long enough to see a few stars creeping around the edges of my vision, my advisor said, "I know you look up to your sister, but I hope you have considered finding your own path."

  I could feel dread hanging over the conversation. Ms. Alice's words were heavy and she struggled to speak. The same weight settled over me. "Am I getting kicked out of the nursing program?"

  "What?" my advisor asked. "No. I mean, I don't know, the skipping class is getting out of hand. I just think now is a good time for you to consider what you really want to do. You shouldn't stick with a major just because of family expectations. Instead of following in your sister's footsteps–"

  "Ms. Alice, are you alright? Maybe I should make an appointment during your office hours," I said. "I'm going online right now to put in the request. I don't want to take up any more of your time this evening."

  "Wait, Quinn, I'm calling late for a reason," my advisor said. She cleared her throat and paused again.

  "Oh, no! You're right. I didn't know how late it was! I promised a friend I would cover his shift at the front desk of our dorm. I gotta go, Ms. Alice. I'm sorry. Thanks for your concern. We'll talk soon!" I hung up the phone and put it down as if it burned my hand.

  I was never rude and I never lied, but I had been both to Ms. Alice for no discernible reason. Something in her heavy tone and her pauses made me nervous. I looked at the clock. It was past 10 o'clock on a weeknight. My stomach twisted. Why would my college advisor be calling so late?

  I stood up and brushed my hair back, doing my best impression of my sister's hair flip. Sienna never let other people bother her. My sister would have cut the strange phone call short 20 seconds after it started. On the other hand, I was wracked with guilt. I felt as if Ms. Alice was trying to tell me something and I had not done a good job of helping her spit it out.

  Despite the guilt, I brushed my hair and got ready to join Darla at the gamer party. I moved quickly and was out the door before I could even shut my abandoned textbook.

  "Oh, sorry. Excuse me," I said.

  The taller of the campus security guards held up both hands. "Whoa, slow down. Are you Quinn Thomas?"

  My stomach turned sour. "Yes?"
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  "Your advisor is Alice Bonton?" he asked.

  "Yes. Wait, what's going on?" I asked.

  His rotund partner shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled. "Your advisor needs you to meet her at Alton Tower. We're here to give you a lift. That's all we know."

  "Please come with us, Ms. Thomas." The taller guard stepped aside and ushered me past.

  I took a step before I saw the sharp look pass between the two men. "What is this all about? Has something happened?"

  Neither said a single word more. I fought the urge to run, and instead walked downstairs and out the front doors. The fat guard waved a thick hand towards the campus vehicle. My feet froze and an angry buzzing started in my ears. The taller guard stepped around me and opened the passenger side door, relegating his partner to the back seat.

  "Where are we going?" I asked.

  The lanky man folded himself into the driver's seat. Instead of answering, he turned the key in the ignition. I tried to close my eyes and take a calming breath, but an incessant flashing of lights stopped me. An ambulance drove past and joined the whirling lights of a police car not far away.

  Alton Tower. That's where the guard said my advisor was waiting. I knew it because it was my sister's dorm.

  The campus vehicle bucked the curb and drove right onto the lawn outside Alton Tower. Another campus security Jeep, the police car, and the ambulance blocked the front door of the dorm. I sat in the car, not sure where I was supposed to go.

  Ms. Alice appeared, skittering around the front of the police car. She ran up to my door, and I could see she was talking before she opened it. "Quinn, I'm so sorry, but I was afraid you wouldn't answer if I called back."

  "What is going on?" I asked. I gripped the side of the passenger seat and refused to get out.

  "There's been a…um, well, an accident," my advisor said. She reached for my hand.