It hasn’t been for months.
“I’ll search the top level while you circle the lower half.”
When Holden jerks up his chin, happy with my plan, Desiree whacks him in the stomach. “We’re here as guests, not Summer’s fun police.Ifshe needs our help, we will step in. If she doesn’t…”
I take the stairs two at a time to drown out her reply. She doesn’t know half the shit I overheard today, so she doesn’t get to summarize a situation for which she doesn’t have all the facts.
When I reach the landing at the top of the staircase, I run a hand over the scruff that’s thicker than a five o’clock shadow. I’d usually shave before an event like this, but with the hope Summer’s scent was still lingering on my skin, I acted like a pussy who’s never had his dick sucked.
Ryan ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald stops sucking face with a girl I’m reasonably sure isn’t the one he introduced me to two weeks ago when I tap on his shoulder. “Have you seen Summer?”
The brunette’s groan booms over the bass thumping out of the speakers wired through Cody’s house when Fitz yanks away from her to answer me. “Yeah. Around five minutes ago, down by the den. She was hanging out with your old man.”
“My father?” I double-check, certain I heard him wrong. I’ve veered past over two hundred people since I arrived. None of them would be over the age of twenty-five, so what the fuck is my forty-five-year-old father doing here?
“Yeah.” Fitz grins like the situation is nowhere near as bad as it is. “She looked a little green around the gills when he started putting moves on her. I’ve never seen someone so eager to retreat from a Cabarello.”
He has to shout his last three words since I take off in the direction he nudged his head within a nanosecond of my father’s surname leaving his mouth. When I reach a second stairwell—yes, Cody’s house is so overcompensating, it needs multiple sets of stairs—I swing my head to the left before drifting it to the right.
When I spot Holden on the lower level, I mouth, “Anything?”
He shakes his head. “Matheson mentioned he last saw her with your dad. He said she seemed a little shaken, so Cody was going to take her to get some air in his room.”
An unease fills me, my eyes meet with Desiree’s, soundlessly asking if that’s enough evidence Summer needs help.
Mercifully, her deliberation doesn’t take long. “Holden, take the pool house. I’ll do the patio while you search the sleeping quarters.”
“Which are?”
The knot in my stomach tightens when she replies, “From the murmurs of the girls left out in the cold, they’re in the far back corner of the second floor.”
When I point in the direction I just raced from, Desiree jerks up her chin. I sprint past Fitz for the second time three seconds later, my speed only slowing when I spot Summer climbing the stairwell. She’s no longer being hassled by my father as per numerous reports, but the clutch Cody has on her hand is extremely possessive. Even if Summer didn’t want to walk in the direction he’s taking her, she wouldn’t have a choice. He’s leading her wherehewants her to go.
Not on my fucking watch, bozo.
“Summer Ramsay,” I growl out for the second time tonight when my approach has her spinning on her heels and attempting to dash back down the stairwell.
She’d make a quick getaway if Cody didn’t ramp up his endeavors to coerce her in the opposite direction. His bedroom is only mere feet from where I’m standing, and he’s so eager to get her in there, alone, he hasn’t noticed me at the top of the stairwell.
His grip on her wrist is firm enough to mark her delicate skin, but not so firm I don’t dislodge her from his grip when I brutally shove him in the chest. As my name rips from Summer’s throat in a long, breathless scream, Cody’s back whacks into the balustrade. His groan only rumbles through my ears for half a second before it’s taken up by the booms of Summer’s fists as she pounds them into my back after I toss her onto my shoulder.
She’s as mad as hell, but since she isn’t the only one, I continue walking her through the throng of people surrounding us, conscious we don’t only have my teammates’ eyes on us, we’ve gained my father’s smug gawk as well, but I’m too worked up to care.
Cody wasn’t taking Summer to his room for a breather.
He wants to claim something he has no right to claim, and I’m too pigheaded to ignore that. Summer Ramsay isn’t my girl, but she sure as hell won’t be Cody’s either.
19
Summer
“Lennox…” I grind out through clenched teeth when he storms through the partygoers gawking at us like the risqué amount of leg my mini-dress is exposing is enticing. “People are watching. Put me the hell down!”
When he ignores me, instead of whacking my fists into him like I did when he threw me onto his shoulder as if I am weightless, I drag my nails down the tanned skin stretched across the taut muscles in his back. I don’t have those super glossed nails you get from the salon, but there’s no denying their sharpness. Even with Lennox wearing one of his favorite Morrison training shirts, they pierce through his skin firm enough to mark, but regretfully, they don’t slacken his strides.
“Lennox!”
I thrash, wail, and kick, my fight only losing steam when water splashes the tips of my toes peeking out of my stilettos. He isn’t walking us back to our hotel room to chain me to the bed. He isn’t even guiding me to Cubie. He’s heading straight for the waves crashing to shore. Except he doesn’t stop when the water laps at his knees. He keeps walking until the current pulls his feet out from beneath him, and I’m clinging to him in fear for my life.
