Dirty Summer 8

He didn’t need a second invitation. He pulled her into his arms and pressed his mouth against her. Blair wrapped her hands around his neck and moaned. Did I let her walk away? I am an idiot. She started to giggle as he picked her up, and her legs wrapped around his hips.

“I missed you.” He growled into her neck. “More than I can say in words or in a song.”

Blair leaned into his body. “Then let’s not talk. Wanna get out of here?” She bit the lower part of his ear.

“Hell yeah, I wanna go. No one needs to hear that second set. They’re getting pretty tired of hearing all your songs.” He placed Blair’s feet back on the ground and took her hand. “Come on.”

Blair looked at her car and then back to Justyn. “You want to take my car?”

“Girl, you have been gone way too long. You know the best way to travel around here is by boat.” He flashed her a smile. “We’ll get your car later. Come on.” He tugged on her hand.

Blair followed him down the boardwalk to the slip where he had tied up his boat.

“Let me untie the ropes, and I’ll shove her off. Hold on.” He held out a hand to Blair. Before she boarded, she glanced down at the side of the nameless boat they had cruised on so many times over the summer.

“Carolina Girl?” She smiled.

If it hadn’t been so dark, he knew she would have seen him blushing. “Yeah, well she needed a name. And I needed a way to remember.”

Blair settled into the bench next to Justyn’s captain’s seat. “I think it’s the perfect name.”

He tossed the ropes into the boat and started the engine. “I thought you might say that.” He leaned down and kissed her.

“Where are we going?” Blair gazed into the creek and hugged her sweater a little closer around her arms.

“You have to ask?” He laughed. “I’m taking you to the cove.”

The boat picked up speed, and the fall night encircled them as he cruised out onto the open sound.

“Don’t get me wrong, that’s pretty much all I’ve thought about since I’ve been gone, but won’t we be cold? It’s October,” Blair asked.

He leaned down and whispered over the roar of the engine, “Baby, I’ve been thinking about you for a whole month, and trust me, I have plenty of ways to keep you warm.”

He watched as the words registered. Thank God, she left Dallas. He wanted to love her and show her everything he had been too stubborn to admit over the summer. After all, it was fall now.

Five

Reid

The windshield wipers were on high, and still Reid could barely make out the road. The rain had started falling in sheets before he hit the Cooper River Bridge. Normally, he would be able to see church spires and two-hundred-year-old buildings dotting the Charleston skyline, but the downpour hindered the historic city’s visibility.

He eased the vehicle down the narrow street while he strained to listen for turn directions from his phone. He squinted to see the green signs through the rainstorm. If memory served from his short Coast Guard stint in South Carolina’s oldest port town, the narrow streets and alleys were right on top of each other.

It was going on three in the morning, and he was almost at his destination. What he was going to say when he arrived on Maggie’s doorstep, he had no clue. I just have to talk to her. That thought had been running through his head since Blair confronted him in the boathouse.

Blair wasn’t the only one who had tried to convince him Maggie wasn’t a master manipulator, but for the past month, that was all he could focus on. He wasn’t an idiot; that bubbly innocent act couldn’t possibly be for real. But for the first time since that shitty morning, he wanted to talk to her about it. He wanted answers. He needed them.

Reid rolled his neck to work out the knots six hours of nonstop driving had tied in his muscles. Over the last few weeks, he hadn’t let himself think about how Maggie’s face had fallen or how the tears streaked down her cheeks that morning. Instead, he focused on her calculated betrayal, buried himself in spreadsheets, and sanded the hell out of juniper beams.

After one blow up fight, he and Justyn had an unspoken agreement not to talk about the girls anymore and what happened. They settled into a routine of sanding by day and drinking beer by night. Reid even cut back on fishing trips to the cape. Somehow, seeing the lighthouse up clos

e always created an unwanted tightness in his chest. It was easier to stay in the boathouse and retreat occasionally to one of their watering holes.

“Turn right in four hundred feet.” Siri’s voice snapped Reid into the present moment. He turned onto the street lined with traditional Charleston-style row houses painted in assorted pastel colors. Maggie lives here; this is her street.

Glancing at the street numbers, he realized her apartment should be a couple blocks down on the left. He pulled into a parallel space across the street, and stared at what his GPS map said was her front door. How was he going to do this without scaring the hell out of her? He clutched the steering wheel. He could always wait a couple hours until daybreak. No way, man. You drove all night to get here. You gotta do this. Before he could let himself think about it any further, he hopped out of the Jeep and ran into the rain.

Reid checked the address number one last time before knocking on the door. He couldn’t see inside. Other than the streetlight, it was completely dark on the small porch. He banged on the door again and waited.