by Elle Casey
Rebel pulls his mouth away but hugs me tight, whispering in my ear. “Raincheck. You’re mine later.”
I hug him tight around the neck, burying my face into his shoulder. “I’m yours now.”
My arms freeze and my body goes tense. I’m embarrassed that something sounding very much like a pledge just slipped out like that. I meant to play around with him and be all sexy, but now it’s like I’ve asked him to marry me or something. I hang on like a leech because I’m afraid to see the look on his face. I wait for his withdrawal.
But instead of letting me go, he squeezes me around the middle a little tighter and lifts me up off my feet. “You make me really happy.” His whisper comes into my ear and spreads warmth throughout my entire body.
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, my heart settles down. Maybe I haven’t screwed everything up by being a complete lovesick idiot. Maybe he likes me back as much as I like him. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
“All right, all right, break it up,” Quin says, coming back over. “Defcon five averted, my eyebrows are as perfect as they ever were. Tea, you either need to get some serious glasses or kiss my ass for saying that.”
Rebel puts me down, and I feign innocence. “Saying what?”
She rolls her eyes and stops in front of me, hands on hips. “Not to change the subject or anything, but I looked at those financials your dad sent you.” She snags my cup out of my hand and then stares down inside it, disappointed to find it empty.
My mood immediately deflates. “Way to bring me back down to earth.” I look around, trying to spot the punch bowl. I seriously need a refill.
“Sorry, but it needs to be said. There’s some serious shit in that stuff from the thumb drive.”
“Serious as in …” Rebel waits for the answer to his question as I chew my lip. I’m not sure I want to know what she found. Would it be rude to leave them standing there to get more alcohol?
“Serious as in book-cooking, serious. Like Betty Crocker of the accounting world, next-level bullshit serious. And I read the memos he had in there, too.” She lowers her voice. “Want to know what I think?” She looks first at Rebel and then at me.
“Yes,” he says.
“No,” I say at the same time.
She puts her hands on her hips again, knocking the cup out of her own hand in the process. I watch it fall to the ground and keep my eyes glued to it. I cannot look at Quin right now, and I know for a fact I don’t want to hear what she’s about to say.
“Teagan, why don’t you want to know? What’s wrong with you? It’s not like you to hide from things like this.”
I’m too mad and confused to answer. I don’t know what to say. I can’t look at her.
“It’s her father,” Rebel says.
In that one small sentence, he sums everything up pretty nicely. My chest feels not quite so full and heavy as I realize that this is the real reason I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know why the man who ignored me most of his life and treated me as an afterthought suddenly decided to entrust something that was obviously so important to my safekeeping. I finally look up.
“Yeah, but that’s why she needs to know.” Quin takes me by the hand. “Come into my room. I want to show you some things.”
I dig my heels in, but she yanks on me pretty hard. “Stop being a pussy, Tea.”
“Go on. I’ll wait here,” Rebel says.
“You come too,” I say, hating how weak I sound.
“No, you go and you can tell me after if you want.” He walks away and goes over to where the beers are waiting on ice in the cooler.
I glare at Quin as she tries to drag me off again.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” she says, changing positions so she can drag me by my waist.
I stop trying to resist as much. I still don’t want to have my eyes opened to my father’s world, but now that Rebel is pretty much expecting me to woman-up, I feel obligated. Damn him for making me be a grown-up. Where’s an asscar driving boyfriend when you need one?
Less than a minute later I’m sitting in front of Quin’s computer while she flicks between different pages and points to different things. I become sicker and sicker with every piece of her stupid slide show.
“This is like, hardcore, man. See this? If you just look at the balance sheet, it all looks fine. But when you line it up with this memo from your dad, you see that this expense should not have been capitalized like a long-term investment would be.”
“So?” She’s speaking Greek as far as I’m concerned.
“So … it means that they’re kind of tricking people into thinking the company is healthier than it is. More profitable than it is. If they had taken these things here and a few others like it and showed them as expenses on the P and L like they should have, it would have made the company look worse-off. Get it?”
“Not really.”
She sighs heavily. “Do you want the nutshell?”
“God, yes.” I drop my face into my hands. “You’re giving me a migraine. Just give me the final episode cliffs-notes.” I wait in my self-imposed darkness to hear my fate. Why this feels like my fate, I don’t exactly know, but there’s no denying the fear that’s eating away at me right now.
“Okay, here it goes … it looks as though your father’s company was about to go public. And in the process of getting the financials ready for the investment bankers, his accounting department cooked the books to make the company look more profitable … more financially healthy. If they get away with it, it’ll bring an asking price up about fifty percent higher than it should.”
I pull my head up. “But what does that mean? I mean, for me. For my dad?”
She snorts in disgust. “What it means is that your dad was a good guy. All those memos? Those were him calling his accounting department on their bullshit. He was telling them to fuck off, that he wasn’t going to be a part of their lies. And some guy … hold on, I’ll tell you his name …” She searches through pages until she stops on one that looks like a scanned letter. “Hen Henderson …” She pauses to smirk. “What a name right? What a freak. Anyway, this turd mobile was insisting that your dad shut his pie hole so they could go through with the offering. I get the impression they weren’t friends.”
I stand up so suddenly, the chair I was sitting on flies out behind me. “I’m going to be sick.” I put my hand on my mouth to keep from spewing all over her keyboard.
“Bathroom!” she shrieks, pointing to the hallway.
I run out and barely make it to the toilet before I vomit the purple punch I had earlier. All I can think is, Thank God I hadn’t eaten any hotdogs yet.
I’m alone for long enough to flush before the bathroom is crowded with both Quin and Rebel. She closes the door and locks it behind them seconds before one of her siblings is banging on the door.
“Fuck off! I’m busy!” she yells.
“I’m telling Mom you’re in there with two other people!” says the little voice.
“Go ahead! I’ll tell her you have condoms in your purse!”
Silence.
Quin grins. “Pays to snoop. All right, so what’s up? Why the vom attack?”
Rebel sits down on the edge of the tub and rubs my back as I struggle to get up off the floor. I close the toilet lid and sit on it, leaning over to rinse my mouth out in the sink and adding a dollop of toothpaste to freshen up before I speak.
“I know that guy. Hen Henderson.” I can actually feel the blood drain from my face as I say his name. I hate what this could mean and the dangerous territory that my mind is straying into.
“Uh-oh,” Quin says, a look of panic appearing. “She’s gonna blow!”
I wave her off and rest my forehead on the cold countertop. “No, I’m fine. I just feel dizzy.”
“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Quin says, laughing for a second.
I look up to shoot her daggers of hate-filled awful.
“Oh, shit, did I just say that out loud? Sorry.” She
has the grace to look embarrassed. Pointing to her mouth she half-grins. “It’s on auto-pilot right now. Motor mouth. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”
“God, would you please shut up?” I say, resting my forehead on the counter again.
Rebel acts like the last thirty seconds never happened. “Who is he? Henderson…”
Quin steps in to explain, which is good because I’m still battling my churning guts. “Hen Henderson is the CFO of her father’s company. He was bad news, apparently. He wanted to misrepresent the financial health of her dad’s company for an IPO. Her dad told Henderson in those memos he sent copies of to Tea that it wasn’t going to fly, that he wouldn’t let it go down like that. Now he’s gone and the company is going ahead with the IPO, as far as we know, with her former step-mother at the helm.”
I twist my head so I can look at them while also still feeling the cold porcelain on my cheek. “Hen Henderson is my step-mother’s brother. Now she’s the CEO and he’s the CFO.”
Quin’s smile disappears and her face goes pale. “Oh, fuck me …”
I finish her sentence for her, “… with a whole box of fuck.”
“Yeah. Two boxes of it.”
She and I stare at each other.
Quin reaches out and squeezes my upper arm. “I’m so sorry, Tea. That is just the worst news you could possibly get.” She takes me in a hug and just keeps at it, even though I’m mostly falling off the toilet and on my knees on the tile.
“Come here, babe.” Rebel’s hands go around my waist and lift me from the floor. He sets me on his lap so I’m facing out towards Quin. She finally lets me go so I can sit somewhat like a normal person again.
I look down at Rebel’s legs beneath mine and then at his arms draped loosely around me. “Thanks, Santa,” I say, trying to be flippant. But it’s not exactly working since I feel like crying and barfing at the same time.
Life was so much easier when I was six years old and really sitting on a man’s lap just to wrangle some kickass presents out of him and his elves. Everything in my life feels like a big lie in this moment. Santa. My father. Hen Henderson. All of ‘em. Bastards.
“We need to do something about this,” says Quin, her face getting that determined expression on it. I’ve seen it many times before, usually about an hour before I’m shit-faced drunk or trying to escape from a really terrible party I knew better than to attend.
“No.” I shake my head, pressing my lips together. “No. I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to get up every day, go to work, and then go to sleep at the end of the day. That’s it.” I’m desperately trying to convince myself that this is a good plan, that I’m okay with just letting my father rest in his grave. I figure with practice, I’ll eventually be able to own the idea in my heart. So what if it makes me feel like a traitor to his memory right now? Time heals all wounds, right?
“You don’t mean that, Tea. You don’t want to walk away from your legacy like that.”
I stand up, finding the bathroom way too claustrophobic for my taste. “Legacy? Are you kidding me? The only legacy I have is the Golden Legacy, okay? That’s my life right now.” I look at Rebel. “No offense.”
He just looks at me and it sends a spearing pain through my heart.
I can’t take it anymore. Escape is the only solution I can come up with that doesn’t make me totally sick. “I have to go.” I walk around Quin, maybe a little hurt that she doesn’t bother to stop me. At the door I pause and turn around. “Rebel, can you take me back home?”
“Where’s that, Teagan?” Quin asks me, her bitchy look going full force. “Home. Where is that exactly, anyway?”
Anger surges up inside me and drowns me in darkness. I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Fuck you, twat breath.” I step outside the bathroom and slam the door behind me, but not fast enough to block out her parting shot.
“I’d rather be a twat breath than a coward who lets some skanky ho-bag murder my dad for money!”
I hold on to the wall as I walk down the hallway. The room is tilting and I’m seriously regretting drinking all that punch right now. I’m pretty sure there’s more inside me ready to make an appearance.
I make it outside onto the front porch just before I heave again. The bushes will never be the same.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“YOU OKAY?” ASKS A GUY standing on the front lawn. He walks over to help me. Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, he looks just like everyone else at the party, but I don’t remember seeing him through the smoke earlier. I was probably too busy going gooey over Rebel to notice anyone, though, so I don’t hold that against him.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask, wondering why he looks familiar. “Party’s out back.”
“Just got here. You’re Teagan, right?” He holds out a hand.
I use my own to wipe off my mouth and take a step back, worried he’s going to get a foul dose of my vom breath. “Do I know you?”
He steps forward, smiling really big. He’s decent enough to look at, but I can’t help comparing him to Rebel. He’s much smaller and more textbook handsome. I immediately decide I prefer Rebel’s brand of hot to this guy’s more basic style.
“Not yet.” He still has his hand out. “I’m Robert.”
I finally take his hand and shake it, giving him the ultimate girly grip, dead fish all the way. I don’t want him getting the wrong idea and thinking I’m interested. “Hi, Robert. Nice to meet you.”
When he lets my hand go and turns to the side, shaking his other hand in his pocket, it suddenly hits me how I know him. Those jingling keys flash a memory of his face across my mind’s eye.
A second guy is coming up the walk but I don’t pay him any attention. Instead I point at Robert. “I know you! You were that guy! The one in the hardware store!” I grin like a fool. My memory kicks ass.
“What?” He smiles back at me, but it’s missing some of the shine it had to it earlier.
I shift my weight to my other leg. “Yeah, that was you. I was buying some stuff for my apartment and then you were there at the end of the aisle, staring at me.”
He frowns. “Nah, that wasn’t me. I don’t think it was, anyway.” He grins again and then glances over his shoulder at the guy who’s almost next to him.
I look at the new guy and take in his outfit. He’s not dressed for a barbecue at all. Who in the hell wears jeans when it’s ninety degrees out? Idiots, that’s who. Maybe he’s selling vacuum cleaners or something.
When he looks up, I do a double-take. “Hey, you’re that guy …” I point to him at the same moment he looks at Robert. They exchange a glance and my super computer brain starts calculating. What it comes up with is making me very nervous all of a sudden.
“You’re the one from the bar,” I say, my tone accusing, “the one that Colin fought. You had a knife.”
“Time to go,” says Robert, looking at the knife guy.
“You guys are together? That’s weird, right?” I take a step back towards the house as they both swing their gazes over to me.
I would like to say that things after that point happened in slow motion. That would be really romantic and cool to think real life is like that. But that’s not really how it goes down. Not at all, actually.
One second I’m standing there on the front walk wondering why two strangers who had been staring at me in the last week are suddenly at the same barbecue, and the next thing I know I’m the meat in a very uncomfortable Teagan sandwich. Each of them has one of my arms and we’re walking as a threesome over to an SUV on the curb.
“What the fuck?” My super-computer brain is in full breakdown mode. I’ve never been manhandled by a perfectly sober guy and never by two at once. I always imagined a threesome to be very different than it’s turned out to be. It doesn’t strike me that I’m being kidnapped until I’m almost to the passenger door of the car.
“Oh, hell no!” I scream as Robert flings the back door open. “Fuck that! Fuck that! I am not ge
tting in that goddamn car!”
A pain like I’ve never experienced in my entire life shoots through my head, via my face.
“You just hit me?!” It probably makes no sense, but I’m going into shock over the idea that a man just hit me in the face for no good reason. I haven’t even insulted him yet.
Luckily, my auto-pilot gets what happening and goes into overdrive. I kick and scream and punch and twist, doing everything I possibly can to keep from being shoved into the back seat.
When I read stories about chicks being kidnapped, I always swore that I’d never let it happen to me, that I’d know exactly what to do to get away. Eye gouge! Kidney jab! Where are those damn testicles, goddammit?!
None of my awesome evasion-of-kidnapping maneuvers works. One more blow to my head and suddenly my feet don’t want to work anymore. It’s hard to tell which way is up, and all kind of hard parts on the car are bruising my arms, legs, and ribs as the two guys throw me bodily inside.
I land face down on the floor of the back seat as the door shuts on the bottom of my feet, shoving them into the car and crumpling my legs up against the vinyl. The carpet is covered in bits of gravel and stank that makes me want to vomit again, but I’m too pissed to throw up yet. I’ll save that awesome sauce for later, when I can aim it at someone’s face.
Struggling to get up, I suffer a few more punches, this time to the back of my thighs.
“Sit still! Stay down there!” growls one of the kidnappers.
“Fuck your father and your mother!” I yell back, howling with rage when a knuckle to the thigh brings up a charlie horse so bad all I can do is fetal-ball it and wait for the pain to stop.
“Easy, Dack,” says Robert, “you don’t need to mark her up or anything.”
“Dack? That’s your name?” I laugh, forcing it out in loud barks. “You look more like a Dick if you ask me.”
He turns around and slaps me, the whiplash motion throwing my hair across my face.
“You want to get caught driving through town with her in the back?!” Dack yells. “Who the fuck arranges a pick-up without a trunk?”