Feels Like Summertime (18 page)

W
hen I spot
Cole’s blond head circulating with the responding EMTs and police officers as if he is one of them, I realize it is up to me to take action now. This has gone on for far too long. Everything I love is at stake. Every
one
I love is at stake. I have no choice and I know it.

I need a gun.

I know Jake’s gun cabinet is locked and I don’t have the combination. But I need to shoot the bastard so we can stop this madness. I need some peace. I need to be able to go on with my life.

After the last time Cole showed up, Jake wanted my parents to be prepared, so he left his Colt .45 in a locked box under the bed. I know where the key is: on the shelf in the closet.

I let myself into the cabin and go to the bedroom. I drop down to the floor to reach beneath the bed so I can grab the locked box. I swipe my hand under the bed, finding nothing but a bunch of dust bunnies, just as someone’s hands wrap around my feet and jerk me out.

I scream and kick, and I hear a grunt as my foot connects with some soft tissue.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jake whispers harshly at me. “Stop kicking!”

I scuttle out from under the bed and stand up, brushing my hair from my eyes. “I’m trying to arm myself. Did you move the gun box from under the bed?”

“Yes, I moved the gun box from under the bed! Alex found it and Adam caught him trying to pick the lock. And don’t walk away from me like that!” Jake hisses. “You scared the life out of me!”

“Did they catch Cole?”

“No.”

“Is your dad okay?”

“He’s too hard-headed to die,” Jake grunts out. He runs a frustrated hand through his hair.

“What about Sally?”

“Your parents took him and the kids to the vet’s office.” He pulls me against his chest and kiss me hard. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Take your hands off the mother of my child,” a deep voice says from the doorway.

Jake freezes and slowly raises his hands in the air. He shields me with his body. “Cole,” he says, his voice controlled.

Cole walks farther into the room. “How’s the baby?” he asks me. He talks around Jake, who is still between us.

“He’s fine,” I say. I lean around Jake to look at him. “No thanks to you.”

Cole chuckles. He raises the gun in his hand and points it directly at Jake. My heart beats a rapid pace. But my nerves are cool. Cold, even. Steady. I know what needs to happen.

I lift Jake’s gun from the holster under his arm, step from behind Jake, and point it at Cole.

Cole’s gun wavers ever so slightly and he backs up a step. “Put that down,” he says.

“You first,” I reply tonelessly. I look down the sight.
Steady
. I can almost hear Jeff’s voice in my ear.
Steady. You can do this, Katie
.

I know
, I whisper back in my head.

You’re strong
.

I am
.

Despite my cool resolve, tears sting my eyes. In my darkest hour, of course Jeff’s with me, at least in spirit. Thoughts of him give me strength.

“There’s still time to stop this,” I tell Cole evenly.

“Stop what?” he asks.

“Stop this. Walk away.”

He shakes his head. “Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love you.”

“You don’t love me.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel!” he shouts.

“Shoot him, Katie,” Jake whispers. “Pull the trigger.”

I can’t, though. Not with Jake halfway between Cole and me. Jake would take Cole’s bullet. I can’t risk that.

Jake raises his hands a little higher in the air. “Put the gun down and we’ll all walk out of here,” he says softly.

“All I ever wanted was to love you, Katie,” Cole says quietly. This is the quiet before the storm. I’ve seen it all before. This is how it starts. Then the anger comes.

“This isn’t love,” I tell Cole. “You don’t pull guns on people you love.”

His hand shakes. “You do if they won’t listen to you!” he shouts.

Suddenly, Freddy calls out from the doorway. “Drop the weapon!”

Cole spins to face Freddy and fires off a shot, just as Jake lunges at Cole, knocking him from his feet onto the floor. Jake punches him and Cole drops his gun. It skitters across the floor. The room fills with police, and they force Jake to step back.

Freddy lies in the doorway.

I rush over to him and drop to my knees. There’s a red stain growing on his shirt front. “Freddy! Speak to me!”

“That hurts like a motherfucker,” Freddy says with a small laugh.

Jake comes to kneel beside me. “Fred, you’re going to be all right.” The EMTs are already rolling a gurney into the room. “You hear me, Fred? You’re going to be just fine.”

Freddy grunts as they shift him onto the gurney then straighten its legs. “Hey, Jake,” he says.

“What, buddy?” Jake says, grabbing his hand as they rush him toward the ambulance.

“I took a bullet for you,” Freddy says. And he grins.

Jake smiles and wipes his face. “Yeah, you did.”

“You know what this means?”

“What?”

“It means that you never get to hold it over my head again. The thing with me and Laura, you can’t hold it against me anymore.” Freddy grunts as the EMTs make Jake let go of his hand. “Did you hear me, Jake?” Freddy calls. “I took a bullet for you!”

“I heard you!” Jake yells back. They’re already closing the doors of the ambulance, and they put Laura and the baby in a police car to follow. She’s too much of a mess to drive herself.

“Is he going to be okay?” Jake asks the EMT.

“Looked like it went straight through the shoulder, but we won’t know anything for sure until we get to the hospital.”

Jake finally takes a deep breath.

Cole struggles as they load him into the police car. He curses and calls out to me, pleading for help.

“Katie!” Cole screams. He fights against the officer’s hold, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him break free.

Time slows in my head as I watch Cole struggle with the officer. Cole grabs the handle of the officer’s gun and pulls it from the holster. He lifts it, pointing the barrel directly at me. His face contorts as he pulls the trigger. His shot goes wild and fury fills his eyes.

Jake throws me to the ground and covers me with his body. I look up at Cole and watch as the first bullet, shot by a nearby officer, hits him. His body jerks. Then the second bullet slams into his chest. He falls back against the squad car and slowly sinks to the ground, his hands grasping to hold on to something. Anything.

Cole says my name as a gurgle of blood rushes from his mouth.

The officer who fired the fatal shots holsters his weapon and swears.

Time speeds back up to normal as the officers converge on Cole’s fallen body.

Jake rolls from on top of me. “Are you all right?” He runs his hands over my body, checking for injuries. Then he pulls me up to stand next to him.

“I’m fine,” I rush to assure him. “I promise. Totally fine.”

“Oh my God.” Jake runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I saw him raise that gun and I thought it was over.” Jake pulls me against him. “I thought I’d lost you.”

I watch as the EMTs work on Cole. But I already know he’s dead. And my name was the last word to cross his lips. A shiver crawls up my spine.

“It
is
over. Finally.” I allow myself to take a deep breath.

“Are you sure you’re all right” Jake whispers.

No. I’m not all right. “It’s over,” I whisper back.

He kisses my forehead and holds me close. “Yes, it’s over.”

A
month has passed
since Cole was caught and killed, and while I still mourn the loss of his life as I would that of any human being, I am glad that I no longer have to look over my shoulder every minute of every day. My family is safe.

I close my bedroom door and fall back onto the bed. I’m spending the night at Cabin 114, and tomorrow is the day I’ll marry Jake. I have no doubts in my mind that this is what I want, and Jake assures me he wants this too.

My Aunt Carole arrived today. She’s Adam’s twin sister and, technically, she’s my mother, if DNA is anything to go by. She and Gabby spent the evening arranging my hair in preparation for tomorrow, and they practiced my makeup. We all had manicures and pedicures, and now I’m tired. I just fed Hank one last time and he’s sleeping in a portable crib in the room with Gabby, presumably so that I can get some rest. Aunt Carole is with her, and she’s supervising the care of my youngest child. Laura is sleeping on the pullout couch and her daughter is with Freddy.

Freddy had surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder and he has been here all summer, along with Laura, recuperating. I thought it would be strange having my husband’s ex-wife, his best friend who cheated with his ex-wife, and their love child around, but it really hasn’t been. The ten years that Laura and Jake spent together made them really close friends who share some memories that Jake and I don’t share, but aside from that, there’s nothing there except fondness.

I reach back to adjust my pillow so I can crawl under the covers, and I hear a tap on my window. Immediately, my mind goes to Cole, but then I remind myself that he can’t hurt me anymore. There’s no way he could be tapping on my window.

Someone raps on the window again. I open it and Jake looks up at me. “Come outside with me,” he whispers. His green eyes gleam in the moonlight, and he smiles at me. My belly drops just like it did when I was sixteen years old.

“It’s two in the morning,” I whisper back.

“I know, but I miss you.” He motions for me to come out.

“I’m not dressed,” I protest.

He waggles his brow at me. “Even better.”

Jake’s standing in the dark with a tiny flashlight in his hand, and he shines it at his own face. He hasn’t shaved since this morning, and beard stubble shadows his jaw.

“This is bad luck,” I remind him. “Go away.” I start to lower the window, but he reaches out and grabs it.

“We’ve already had our share of bad luck,” he says quietly. “Come out and play with me.”

I look toward the door.

“I’ll bring you back before Hank gets hungry. I promise. I just want you for a little while.” He puts his hands together like he’s praying and the flashlight shines up toward the heavens. “Please?”

I huff out a breath and raise the window all the way up.

“Lean toward me. I’ll pull you out,” Jake says.

I reach for him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders with my weight resting on him. He eases me out the window until my legs are free, and then he stands me up.

“See?” he says. “I got you.”

I step up onto my bare tiptoes to kiss him, wrapping my arms around his naked torso. His lips touch mine. “Where are your clothes?” I ask him.

He shines the flashlight at his lounge pants. “Pop gave me these. Look,” he says. The lounge pants are black and they have tiny naked women on them. “I figured I’d never get to wear them again, so I put them on.”

He’s not wearing a shirt, so I let my fingers skim across his naked chest. He turns away from me. “Hop on. I’ll carry you.”

Since I came out the window with no thought of shoes, I hop onto his back and wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders. “Don’t drop me,” I say.

He hitches me a little higher, hooking my thighs with his hands, and looks back over his shoulder at me. “I’d never drop you, Katie,” he says softly. “You should know that by now.”

I hug him tighter.

He carries me all the way to the water, and then he sets me in the sand, and the wet sand oozes between my toes. The full moon shines on the water, and the only sounds are crickets and a breeze blowing through the trees. The water shines like glass, slick and solid, but soft and wild. Jake takes my hand as I step into the canoe. “Where are we going?” I ask.

I sit down on one end and Jake sits across from me. The gleam of his teeth appears white in the darkness of the night. “You’ll see,” he replies.

Jake paddles around the shoreline bend and then moves toward the shore. It’s the same sandy beach we visited when we were sixteen, the night before I left to go home. “Jake,” I breathe, “this is perfect.”

He gets out and spreads a blanket on the grass just beyond the shore, and then he fetches a small cooler.

“I don’t like sleeping by myself,” he says. “I missed you.”

He lies back on the blanket and opens his arms to me. I fall against his chest and nestle in that little spot that’s all mine, right where his shoulder meets his neck. I let my fingers play in the fine dusting of hair on his chest.

He squeezes me tight and kisses my forehead. “How’s Gabby doing tonight?”

I lift up a little, cross my hands on Jake’s chest, and rest my chin on them. “She’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“She knew Jeff the best,” he says. “She had him the longest. I just thought she might be getting a little nostalgic.”

“If she is, she hasn’t told me. I think she’s fine. No matter what, her father is gone. He’s not coming back. And she loves you, Jake.”

He snorts. “She didn’t love me very much last week.”

I laugh too. “That’s because you caught her behind the tree kissing that boy and made her go home early from the dance. She got over it.”

“That little bastard,” Jake grumbles. “Boys are walking hormones.”

“So are girls,” I remind him. “They’re thinking about all that just as much as boys are.”

“She didn’t speak to me for the whole next day.” He chuckles.

“That’s the thing about teenagers,” I remind him. “They get over it. Eventually.” I poke him in the side. “And they’re still kissing. She told me this afternoon.”

“I wonder…do they still make chastity belts?” he asks.

“Yeah, they’re called
fathers
.”

I immediately realize my mistake. Jake’s not her father. Silence falls upon us like a wet woolen blanket.

“I didn’t mean—”

But Jake squeezes me tight. “I know what you meant. I kind of…wanted to talk to you about that anyway.”

I sit up and cross my legs, and Jake sits up too. He takes my hands in his. “I won’t be angry if you don’t want this…” He winces. “But the kids… I’d like to be their dad.”

“You’ll officially be their stepdad as of tomorrow,” I remind him.

“No,” he says. He growls low under his breath. “I want them to legally be mine. I’d like to adopt them. All of them. They could take my last name, if they wanted to, but they don’t have to. What do you think?”

His eyes are shimmery and shiny in the darkness, and I know he has given this a lot of thought. “Are you sure, Jake? You don’t have to take that step—”

“I
want
to take that step. I love them. I want them to be
ours
.”

“They’re already ours.”

“I asked the kids,” he blurts out.

My breath stalls. “And?”

“And they said yes.”

My voice comes out as a squeak. “They did?”

He nods. “They did.
If
it’s okay with you.”

“It’s okay with me,” I whisper.

“Really?” His voice hitches.

“Yes, really. I trust you to take care of them, no matter what. If anything happens to me, they would be yours. I want you to have legal standing with regard to them. So if they agree, then my answer is yes.”

Jake leans forward and grabs me, kissing me softly and sweetly. Then he rolls me beneath him. He toys with the neckline of my white nightgown. “Is this new?”

“Yes. Aunt Carole gave it to me.”

“It’s really lovely,” he says, staring into my eyes. “Do you think we could take it off?”

“Right now?”

He kisses me. “Yes. Right now,” he murmurs against my lips.

He reaches down with his right hand and rucks up the hem of the nightgown. Then he helps me sit up and he lifts it over my head. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he breathes. He reaches behind me and unhooks the nursing bra I usually sleep in, and pulls it down my arms. He cups one breast in his hand, massaging gently.

Over the past few weeks, Jake and I have gotten to know one another’s bodies. He knows what turns me on, and I know how to get him hard. I reach down between us and find him hard and waiting. I shove his lounge pants down over his hips, using my feet to push them all the way off, and grab his ass to pull him against me.

Jake groans and buries his face in my shoulder. “You’ll never believe what I did,” he says.

I grab his hair and lift his face up to look into mine. “What did you do?”

“I forgot condoms,” he says sheepishly and pokes out his bottom lip.

I laugh and wrap my legs around him. “Do you ever think you might want a kid of your own, Jake?”

“I have kids of my own,” he says. “Don’t I?” He rocks against my heat.

“I wouldn’t mind one more,” I say, and he slips inside me.

“Are you
sure?
” he asks, waiting just barely inside.

“Yes.”

He pushes hard inside me, going as deep as he can.

“God, you feel good,” he says, pulling back and then pushing into me again. He makes short, shallow strokes, and I can already feel the warmth building inside me. Suddenly, he pulls out and slides down, spreading my thighs wide with his palms as he licks up my slit.

“Jake,” I say. “Come back up here.”

He murmurs against my lower lips. “You feel too good. It’s different without a condom. I can’t last.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I assure him.

“It matters,” he mumbles, and then he spreads me open wide with his thumbs and latches on to my clit. He sucks me tenderly, but with strength, licking until my legs tremble around his ears. I rock my hips, and then I shatter into a million pieces. Jake suckles and licks as I come apart, my body shaking and shuddering, and just when I think I can’t take any more, he slows down, letting me come back to earth, putting the pieces of me back together.

Then he flips me over. His body covers mine, his palms covering the backs of my hands, his fingers lacing between mine. He kisses the side of my neck, and sinks inside me with one frantic push, letting out a groan right next to my ear. “God, I love you, Katie,” he says, and he pushes and retreats.

“More, Jake,” I plead. Jake moves my legs apart and settles between them, and I tilt my bottom up just right so he can go deeper. “Just like that,” I whisper.

“Come for me again,” he says. “Please.”

“I’m close. So close.”

Jake raises my right leg higher and spreads my ass cheeks, pushing so deep it almost hurts, and I shudder around him. He grunts and shoves himself deep inside, holding tightly to me as he releases inside me with no barriers for the very first time.

He collapses on top of me and brushes my hair back from my face. “Can you breathe?”

“Who needs to breathe?” I mumble, not able to catch my breath.

Jake rolls off of me and falls onto his back. He breathes heavily, and I love the sound of a satisfied, proud man. “You came like crazy,” he says with a laugh.

“Don’t gloat,” I say. I swat his arm like I’m swatting a mosquito. “It’s not attractive.” But I’m smiling. I scoot over to lie on his chest. Jake pulls the edge of the blanket so that it covers us both.

“There’s a tiny little part of me that still expects your parents and Pop to show up in a boat to come and take us back,” Jake says on a chuckle. His chest rumbles under my cheek.

“Then we’d have to clean the bathhouse on our wedding day.” I giggle.

“You know, he knew about that night we spent out here when we were sixteen. He never punished me for that.”

“Us having to separate was punishment enough.” I snuggle into his chest.

Jake tips his wrist so he can look at his watch in the moonlight. “We still have time,” he says.

“Time for what?”

He lifts me over him, draping my legs on each side of him. He brushes my hair back from my face. “Time to do it one more time.” He lifts his hips and he’s suddenly inside me.

“Jake, I just came like crazy, remember? I can’t do it again so soon.”

“Well, then I’ll just stay right here.” He doesn’t move. He just rests there inside me.

“Aren’t you too old to do it over and over?” I grumble.

He laughs. “Apparently not.” He presses my shoulder. “Sit up just a little,” he whispers.

When I do, he sinks farther inside me. “Fine,” I mutter, pretending to be annoyed, but I honestly love the way that he wants me. I balance my palms on his chest. Then I start to ride him.

I’m slippery wet, and Jake moves, his strokes slow and long, and I tip my hips so that I can rub my clit on him. And within moments, I can feel the pressure building inside me.

“Like that?” Jake says.

“Yes,” I whisper back. It’s soft and slow and while I don’t experience the same earth-shattering orgasm like I had a few minutes ago, a warm wash of pleasure sweeps over me, and Jake grunts beneath me as he finishes deep inside. I settle back down on his chest, and he slips out of me. “Will it always be like this?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No.”

I lift my cheek from his chest to look at him. “No?”

He pushes my hair back from my face with gentle fingers. “It’ll be better,” he says. He rolls so that I drop onto the blanket beside him, and we face one another. “It’ll be me and you and the kids. And we’ll live happily ever after.”

“You promise?”

He kisses the tip of my nose. “Yes. I promise.”

Later, when the moon is low in the sky and the stars have lost some of their twinkle, Jake helps me put my nightgown back on, and I fold up the blanket while he gets dressed and loads the cooler back into the canoe.

He rows us back to our beach, and we get out of the canoe. He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear and then kisses me slowly and softly. Jake turns around and I hop on his back. He carries me back to my open window, and he helps me climb through it.