One Week of Summer by Amber Rides Read Free Book Online Page A

question, Donnie offered us a shrug before he slipped from the room.
    The second the door closed, worry reared its head.  I was alone with Teekay.  Was I really unsafe?
    The rattle of a closet drew my attention back to the room.  Teekay paid me no mind as he stripped off his wet t-shirt and soggy jeans and then slipped into a pair of flannel pajama bottoms.  He didn’t even make a suggestive joke, and when he turned a cool-eyed stare my way, my nerves spiked.
    “You’re in my chair,” Teekay announced. “And my room.”
    “Didn’t you—”
    He didn’t let me finish. “Fourth room.”
    “I—”
    He cut me off again. “I didn’t mean for you to count the bathroom.”
    I could feel my cheeks heating up and I fought it.  But I couldn’t suppress my automatic apology.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Yet you’re still sitting there.”
    The coldness in his voice made me jump from the chair like it was on fire.  But once I was on my feet, I remembered I had nowhere to go.
    The huge house was too far from my own cottage for me to walk there.  It was too far from anything for walking.  That was probably one of the reasons the rich built the homes up the mountain in the first place.
    I considered whether or not Donnie would help me.  He might.  Except he’d made it clear his priority was his obligation to Teekay’s father.  If he had to leave Teekay behind to take me back down to the beach, I doubted he’d choose me.
    And Teekay himself clearly had no intention of going anywhere.  I wouldn’t dare ask him to drive me home anyway.
    He was pacing the room in his pajamas, a sullen expression on his face.  He paused in front of the window, opened it, and let the wind and the rain sweep over his body.
    Any trace of the protective, caring guy who’d pulled me from the clutches of Kirby and her friends was gone.
    Or maybe he was never there.
    Yes, he’d saved me, but if I really thought about it, he’d been violently angry then, too.
    I glanced nervously toward the closed door as the gravity of my situation finally started to hit me.
    How had it even happened? 
    I was always careful.  Well-schooled in the art of self-preservation.  I rarely, if ever, let my guard down.
    How had I let myself go from an afternoon of solitude on the beach to being trapped in the bedroom of this possibly unstable man?
    I wasn’t a crier, not usually.  Tears gave bullies fuel for their fires of cruelty.  But for the second time that day, my eyes burned.
    Never before had I wished so desperately for a cell phone.  I’d never needed one before.
    The fourth room, I remembered.
    The real one.  Teekay had tried to send me there. 
    Maybe it’s a guest room.
    Maybe I could go there, at least until the morning.
    I took two steps forward, but before my hand could close on the doorknob, Teekay’s voice stopped me.
    “Can I trust you, Maggie?”
    It was an odd question to ask a stranger.  An intense one.
    I turned in Teekay’s direction.  He’d sunk down into the chair I’d vacated.
    “I get this feeling that I can,” he added, eyes closed. “I don’t know why. It’s been so long since I even wanted to trust someone…But I want to now, Maggie.”
    For the first time, he looked vulnerable.  Even when Donnie had him pinned to the ground, he’d been far from acquiescent.  His body had been rigid with restraint at his forced stillness.
    Now, he sat completely still again.  But it was different.  His powerful frame sagged in on itself.  The fist he’d used to punch Donnie hung at his side, already swollen, and the marks I’d left on his chest seemed even redder.
    In spite of my worry, a sympathetic lump formed in my throat.
    “Those girls back there,” I said softly. “They’re my life.”
    His eyes opened. “What does that mean?”
    “It means that day in and day out for the last four years, someone treated me like that. Until today when you stopped them. So, yes, I think you can trust me.”
    “Come here,