No matter how much I want to.
Chapter 10
Laura
“Welcome to the dick party.”
“Holy shit!”
“Son of a bitch!”
Dean and I both shout when he has to quickly swerve the bike right at the end of Shepherd and Wren’s driveway to avoid hitting someone.
“What happened? Is Owen hurt?” Wren shouts into my ear as Dean starts making his way down their long, dark driveway.
After the fifth time I felt my phone vibrating in my hoodie pocket with a call on the way across the island, I removed one of my arms from around Dean to answer it when we came to a stop sign. Realizing there was no reason for him to pull me against him and make me hold onto him so tightly for this ride—since no cars are allowed on the island and the speed limit is an achingly slow fifteen miles an hour—I loosened my tight grip on him with my free arm and talked Wren down from the ledge the rest of the way here. And I did it with my chin resting on Dean’s shoulder, yammering away in his ear the entire time. But I’m not going to think about how I just couldn’t seem to pull myself away from the solid warmth of him right now. I’ve ridden on the back of a motorcycle plenty of times in my life; I could have easily sat up behind him and just held on to the sissy bar at my back.
“It’s fine. Dean almost hit a kid,” I quickly reassure Wren as Dean curses when he has to swerve again, and I have to clutch onto him tighter. “Oops! Almost hit another one!”
“What the fuck?” Dean mutters when he finally stops the bike in front of the garage and kills the engine after narrowly avoiding not one but two teenagers passed out on the ground. Wren is screaming even louder in my ear as I quickly get off the bike. I squint to look around and see what the hell is going on, but it’s too dark out here to see anything.
“Wren, I’m gonna call you back. The house is not on fire. Everything is fine, so stop screaming.”
Ending the call, I turn on the flashlight on my phone, holding it up in front of me and shining it around. Dean swings his leg over his bike and moves to stand next to me right at the edge of the front lawn.
“Jeeesuuus,” he mutters, dragging out the word as the bright light scans over three other teenage boys passed out in various positions in the grass.
“That little brat,” I whisper, cursing my grandson for obviously throwing a party while his parents are out of town. “Now I’m gonna have to yell at him.”
God, I hate being the bad guy.
While I’m busy mentally preparing myself to yell at my sweet, adorable little turd of a grandson, drafting the long scolding I’ll have to give Owen while he bats his eyelashes at me, Dean reaches down and grabs my hand.
“Come on, let’s take care of this.” He turns and starts charging toward the front door, tugging me along with him. And I just let him. I stare down at our joined hands, letting him lead the way as he stomps his boots up the stairs of the front porch and marches to the door, while his words repeat over and over in my head.
“Let’s take care of this.”
Let’s.
Let us.
Us.
I’ve never liked the sound of that word more than right now. Us. Me and you. Two people, working together to take down a common enemy, that which we all know as… teenagers.
I silently watch Dean turn the handle on the front door, shove it open, and shout into the house, “If you are underage and do not live in this home, get the fuck out of it!”
I have never wanted a man more in my entire life.
His big, warm hand wrapped around mine gives me a gentle squeeze before he steps into the foyer and pulls me along with him. I have just enough time to see a flash of Owen running away, out of the living room, and reassure myself that he’s alive and well before teenagers start charging us. They fly around corners, pour out of rooms, scramble off furniture, and run as fast as they can toward us to do what Dean said.
It looks like the entire Summersweet Island High School is in this house right now, and I recognize most of them. A handful work for me part time at the stand, a bunch are Owen’s baseball teammates who have been to my house before, and most of the rest I know by name because I’m friends with their parents. I know these kids. I’ve watched them all grow up. I have at least seventy-five percent of their parents’ phone numbers in my phone, and I should be the one scolding them and kicking them out, but I don’t. I just stand here next to Dean, smiling up at him like a loon, letting him handle everything as the kids file past us and out the front door.
“Go home.”
“Why the hell are you missing a shoe?”
“Get out of here.”